This morning the BLS reported a decrease of 64,000 jobs. However, that reflects a decrease of 114,000 temporary census workers.



Excluding the census effect, government lost 7,000 jobs. Were the trend to continue, this would be a good thing because Firing Public Union Workers Creates Real Jobs.



Unfortunately, politicians and Keynesian clown economists will not see it that way. Indeed there is a $26 billion bill giving money to the states to keep bureaucrats employed. This is unfortunate because we need to shed government jobs.

Birth-Death Model



Hidden beneath the surface the BLS Black Box - Birth Death Model added 115,000 jobs, a number likely to be revised lower in coming years. Please note you cannot directly subtract the number from the total because of the way the BLS computes its overall number.

Participation Rate Effects



The civilian labor force participation rate (64.7 percent) and the employment-population ratio (58.5 percent) were essentially unchanged from last month's report. However, these measures have declined by 0.5 percentage points and 0.3 points, respectively, since April.



The drop in participation rate this year is the only reason the unemployment rate is not over 10%. The drop in participation rates is not that surprising because some of the long-term unemployed stopped looking jobs, or opted for retirement.



Nonetheless, I still do not think the top in the unemployment rate is in and expect it may rise substantially later this year as the recovery heads into a coma and states are forced to cut back workers unless Congress does substantially more to support states.



Employment and Recessions



Calculated Risk has a great chart showing the effects of census hiring as well as the extremely weak hiring in this recovery.







click on chart for sharper image



The dotted lines tell the real story about how pathetic a jobs recovery this has been. Bear in mind it has taken $trillions in stimulus to produce this.

June, July Revisions

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised from -221,000 to -175,000, and the change for July was revised from -131,000 to -54,000.

Those revisions look good but it is important to note where the revisions comes from. The loss of government jobs in June was revised from -252,000 to -236,000 and July from -202 to -161,000.

Major Discrepancies



The BLS jobs report for August does not match ADP payroll estimates. Moreover, neither the BLS jobs report nor the ADP jobs report is consistent with the hot ISM number reported Wednesday. Both the BLS (details below) and ADP have a decline in manufacturing employment while ISM had a rise.



Please see Rosenberg says "ISM Flunks Sniff Test "; Cashin calls ISM "an Outlier"; ADP, Other Data Does Not Confirm for more details that suggest the ISM number is nonsense.

Part-Time Employment



The number of involuntary part-time workers increased by 331,000 over the month to 8.9 million. In January, the number of employees working "part-time for economic reasons" was 8.6 million.Now for this month's report ....

July 2010 Report



Please consider the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) July 2010 Employment Report.



Nonfarm payroll employment changed little (-54,000) in August, and the unemployment rate was about unchanged at 9.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Government employment fell, as 114,000 temporary workers hired for the decennial census completed their work. Private-sector payroll employment continued to trend up modestly (+67,000).



Unemployment Rate - Seasonally Adjusted







Nonfarm Payroll Employment - Seasonally Adjusted



Since September 2009, temporary help services employment has risen by 362,000.



Establishment Data







click on chart for sharper image



Highlights





54,000 jobs were lost

19,000 construction jobs were added

27,000 manufacturing jobs were lost



38,000 service providing jobs were added

67,00 retail trade jobs were added

20,000 professional and business services jobs were added

45,000 education and health services jobs were added

13,000 leisure and hospitality jobs were added



121,000 government jobs were lost. Of them, 143,000 were temporary census workers

Index of Aggregate Weekly Hours

Birth Death Model Revisions 2009





Birth Death Model Revisions 2010

Birth/Death Model Revisions

BLS Black Box

Household Data

The number of unemployed persons (14.9 million) and the unemployment rate (9.6 percent) were little changed in August. From May through August, the jobless rate remained in the range of 9.5 to 9.7 percent.



The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) declined by 323,000 over the month to 6.2 million. In August, 42.0 percent of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more.



In August, the civilian labor force participation rate (64.7 percent) and the employment-population ratio (58.5 percent) were essentially unchanged.



The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased by 331,000 over the month to 8.9 million. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a fulltime job.



[Mish Note: In January the number was 8.3 million]



Persons Not in the Labor Force



About 2.4 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in August, little changed from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the

survey.

Table A-8 Part Time Status

The key take-away is

there are 8,860,00 workers whose hours may rise before those companies start hiring more workers.

Table A-15

Grim Statistics

Recap