Must-Read: Jared Bernstein: September Jobs
Must-Read: Jared Bernstein talks about the firm establishment survey, but there is also information in this month’s employment release from the household survey. The employment-to-population ratio is now back to 59.2%–a level it reached last October. No progress in raising the anemic and disappointing share of Americans with jobs in 11 months:
Now some of this is demography: the aging of the very-large baby-boom generation into retirement. But not much of it is demography: since 2000, the total employment-to-population rate has fallen at a faster pace than the prime-aged rate, but that faster pace is only 0.07%/year faster:
: September Jobs: “Someone asked me the other day what the Fed would have to see…
…in this jobs report to make their mind up one way or the other about a rate hike in either their October or December meeting. The answer is: no one report could have that effect. If the report was a large outlier… it would be considered… um… a large outlier. If it was somewhat off trend, like today’s report, it would raise eyebrows…. If… suspicion is reinforced by the next two jobs reports, the Fed will very likely incorporate that into their evaluation at their December meeting and hold their target rate near zero…. ‘High-frequency’ data is but a dot on a painting by Georges Seurat. It’s not enough by itself to paint a picture of what’s going on in the job market, but if you combine it with a bunch of other dots, you may be onto something.