The August Jobs Report, or Employment Situation Report, was released the first Friday of September. There is considerable data to analyze. So far this column has produced the following articles:
- "August Jobs Report: Workers Up, Participation Down" analyzed the Current Employment Statistics (CES) Private Sector Worker data and the Current Population Survey (CPS) Jobs data. Full-time and part-time jobs dropped while workers grew.
- "August Wages and Workers Jump" examined the non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) CES data and found
- "Five Presidents at 19 months: Full-time Jobs"
- "Men and Women: Record August Jobs" examined the full-time and part-time job levels for men and women, as well as their participation rates and unemployment rates.
An untold story in the rest of the media has been the level of multiple job holders. The data that is published is the level of total multiple job (MJH) workers, the number of workers working two full-time (FT FT) jobs, two part-time (PT PT) jobs, and a primary full-time job and secondary part-time FT PT) job. The combination of the number of FT FT workers plus the number of FT PT workers plus the number of PT PT workers when combined does not equal the total value published. There is a category "hours vary" that when added to the sub-total still does not equal the total MJH value. This column calculated a PT FT category to reach the value of total MJH.
Month to month we saw a decline in multiple job holders, year to year an increase. The total number of multiple job worker, or multiple jobholders, dropped 3.74% month to month while it spiked 8.32% August to August. THe month to month change reflects the normal seasonal decline from the Summer peak. The August to August spike indicates the overall strength of the jobs market and the lack of workers.
The Number of Dual Part-time Workers Fell month to month and August to August. The drop in PT PT workers was 12.12% month to month and a drop of 1.11% August to August. This is not a surprise considering that both full-time jobs and part-time jobs dropped July to August. This is normal.
The Number of people working a FT job and A PT job were up month to month and August to August. There was a 1.95% bump in FT PT jobs from July and a 15.34% spike between August of 2017 and August 2018. There was a slight trimming in the level of PT FT workers August to August and a 6.27% decline from month to month.
The data for multiple jobholders, or multiple job workers, was good. We do not necessarily want to see record high levels of PT PT workers or record high levels of MJH, in general. The MJH level does not impact the participation rate. The participation rate is determined by the total number of FT jobs, PT jobs, and unemployed workers. The number of MJH jobs is a subset of the total jobs number. Wages are rising. This should be attracting workers from the sidelines. We are at a record level of total jobs for August so a near record level of multiple job workers is to be expected. Men work more multiple full-time jobs than women and women work more multiple part-time jobs than men. Men worked 586,000 PT PT jobs to 1.197 million women working PT PT. The number of FT FT workers were 189,000 for men and 106,000 for women. The job market is good for men and women (Table A-16 of the jobs report )Participation rates are stabilizing or improving depending upon the month. Unemployment has been falling and should fall through October. There are many ways to examine this data. Almost everything is pointing to a stronger economy.
It's the economy.