Good News? May Jobs Report

[Eagle-Keeper]

@Gaius

@Adam

So good news???

Monthly jobs report is out and job growth was 339,000. Much higher than expected And the previous two months were increased by 93,000. So that’s good. Unemployment did tick up from 3.4% to 3.7% but that happens sometimes even with good job growth. The jobs market continues to roar along which is surprising a lot of economists. A very different kind of economy. Wage growth is at 4.3% Still not matching inflation but getting much closer. So that’s good. The link below will give the specific information:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

That is very good news (for the people who got jobs)
But good news in employment does not necessarily mean
“the economy is good and is getting better,” IOW it is not always an indicator of underlying economic health.

Clearly the labor market has remained strong, but as noted it is not a comprehensive indicator on the strength of the overall economy. There are numerous concerns as has been discussed in other threads like this:

Welcome back to 1970s (stagflation) . . . World Bank projects US GDP to grow only 0.5% in 2023

[image] Any economy enters a brief period ( a few months) of stagflation as boom turns into bust. We generally don’t call that unless it lasts for a serious length (presumably> 2 quarters, but there is no official definition) But, according to the World Bank US GDP growth is expected to be only 0.5% in 2023. With a growth rate so close to zero (and below zero in real terms) I think there is a real possibility of 2 consecutive quarters of stagflation. From the report "In the United States…

Also, when it comes to the jobs report, don’t get to giddy unless we are talking about good paying private sector jobs.