Labor

The following article by David Haggith is from The Great Recession Blog:

One reason I started my own economics blog was because of how tired I was of reading government-regurgitated half truths about the economy. Nothing has changed. As Newsmax and other publications report this week that July was a bumper month for lower-wage earners, I continue to have to sift for myself through all the glitter to find the globs of buried truth. First, the dayglo report:

In its latest, July, snapshot of the US economy, the NY Fed observed something startling, and which hasn't received much discussion in the media: when looking at the June report, over the past year the only employment gains have gone to less educated Americans, or as the NY Fed puts it, "over the last year, the employment-to-population ratio has risen for the less educated." It added that "for those with less than a high school degree and for high school graduates, the employment-to-population ratio rose by 0.4 percentage point and 0.9 percentage point, respectively.

And now the dovish Fed has another problem: the BLS reports that in July the US added 209K jobs, beating consensus expectations of a 180K print, while June was revised higher to 231K from 222K, even as May was revised modestly lower from 152K to 145K, for a net gain of +2,000 in the prior two months.

Nonfarm private payrolls rose 205k vs last month's 194k, and above the estimate of 180k, as the drop from durable manufacturing failed to materialize. In a familiar refrain, bars and restaurants hired the most workers of any sector in July.

At 8:30am on Friday, the BLS is expected to announce that in July the US created 180K jobs, down from 222K in June though still in line with the 6-month average of 180K, with the biggest downside risk a slowdown in durable manufacturing payrolls as auto production slumped.

Sellside expectations:

Via StockBoardAsset.com,

On Wednesday, the US added 178k private sector jobs in July, verse 185k jobs expected. The number was just shy of Wall Street estimates, and did not stop the mainstream media and Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi from saying, “the American job machine continues to operate in high gear.”