Friday, June 2, 2017

BLS Jobs Report for May 2017 is Out

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' employment situation report comes out on the first Friday of every month. Most everyone else will read the first paragraph and skip over the rest of the report, whereas I read the first and last paragraphs in the report. The last paragraph lists the job creation revisions of the past two months, meaning that every month is revised twice before the final number is settled on.

This is what the past three months look like:

March: 98,000 --> 79,000 --> 50,000
April: 211,000 --> 174,000
May: 138,000

One year ago, WSJ asked economists what the break-even employment number -- the number of jobs created each month to keep up with population growth -- should be, and the magic number was 145,000.

If we apply the break-even employment number to the actual employment number, we get this:

March: -95,000
April: 29,000
May: -7,000

Under Donald's administration, job growth is not keeping up with population growth -- a frequent complaint from the right during the Obama Administration.

As previously noted, the current business cycle (trough to peak) is the longest on record, and we continue to move closer to full employment. Do you believe Donald and Republicans understand Economics?

I ask this because, if by some odd miracle Donald gets his tax cut plan enacted just as the economy shrinks, the debt and deficit will explode like nothing we've seen since WWII. With the economy in contraction and debt growing rapidly, Republicans will have to confront the choice between expanding the debt even further by Keynesian stimulus or adhere to the austerity dogma through spending cuts.

Running a government is not like running a business. Kansas has already taught us this lesson even if Sam Brownback refuses to learn it.

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