Are we nearing full employment, at least among of those that want to return to work? That may be a strange question to ask when the just-arrived Omicron COVID variant is creating more uncertainty about future US job growth.
But the latest unemployment surveys out today showed that the unemployment rate dropped to 4.2 percent from 4.6 percent, and 537,000 more workers joined the labor force.
I like the Calculated Risk graph above that portrays where we are in the job recovery from 2020 peak employment (red line). We are fast approaching what was full employment then, as opposed to the slow job recovery from the 2007 Great Recession (blue line).
However, just 210,000 new payroll jobs were added to payrolls in the separate Establishment survey, which is seasonally adjusted, and means 210,000 more jobs were created above what is normal for this time of year.
“Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 210,000 in November, and the unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 4.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Notable job gains occurred in professional and business services, transportation and warehousing, construction, and manufacturing. Employment in retail trade declined over the month.”
But the change in total nonfarm payroll employment for September was revised up by 67,000, from +312,000 to +379,000, and the change for October was revised up by 15,000, from +531,000 to +546,000, so employment in September and October combined is 82,000 higher than previously reported.
We are nearing full employment because most of the job increase was in leisure and hospitality, which had lagged job creation in the durable goods sector earlier in the recovery.
The leisure and hospitality sector gained 23,000 jobs in November. In March and April of 2020, leisure and hospitality lost 8.22 million jobs, and are now down 1.33 million jobs since February 2020. It has now added back about 84 percent of the jobs lost in March and April 2020, says BLS.
Construction employment increased 31,000, and manufacturing also added 31,000 jobs. State and Local education lost 16,000 jobs, seasonally adjusted, which was a major reason fewer Establishment survey jobs were created.
Nonfarm employment has increased by 18.5 million since April 2020 but is down by 3.9 million, or 2.6 percent, from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020.
So which of the two Labor Department’s surveys—the Establishment vs. the Household surveys—is the most accurate picture of U.S. employment? The Household survey also showed a much larger 1.14 million people found work in November, though it is a smaller survey than the Establishment survey and isn’t seasonally adjusted.
The Labor Department also reported that In November, 3.6 million persons had been unable to work because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic--that is, they did not work at all or worked fewer hours at some point in the four weeks preceding the survey due to the pandemic.
So COVID-19 is still putting a big dent in the employment picture, and we must now wait to see what happens this winter with new variants, and whether the COVID-19 pandemic is tamed.
Harlan Green © 2021
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
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