More job cuts in construction in June, slowed growth in health care, and consistent revisions in 2008 combine for an off-putting BLS report
After skimming through the employment situation report released by the BLS last Thursday morning, I’m starting to think that I could write these reports myself. Save for the minor issue of having credible statistics that are validated by real surveys, anyone who even haphazardly keeps up with the reports could have been able to predict recent employment developments. Since the start of 2008, the country’s payroll activity has been standard in most industries, and unfortunately for us, consistently bad. It looks as though we continued to lose jobs during the month of June…to the tune of 62,000 positions.
The unemployment rate in the U.S. held steady last month, following a dramatic spike to 5.5 percent in May. Compared with June 2007, the nation’s unemployment rate is up by almost an entire percentage point. The civilian labor force (at 154.4 million), the labor force participation rate (at 66.1 percent), and employment-population ratio (at 62.4 percent) all experienced minimal movement in June. In the first half of the year, close to 440,000 jobs have been lost across all U.S. employment sectors.
Those predictable shifts I was talking about occurred mostly in the individual industries. Manufacturing jobs decreased by 33,000 last month in areas such as fabricated metal products and printing and related support activities. Professional and business services dropped over 50,000 positions in June, with administrative and support services and employment services responsible for the bulk of this larger loss. The construction industry cut 43,000 jobs as well, bringing its grand total of lost positions since the sector’s peak in 2006 to 528,000.
Growth in health care slowed considerably; probably one of the only aspects of June’s employment situation report that was out of the ordinary. The average monthly gain in health care jobs over the past year has been around 30,000, whereas this month the industry added only 15,000. Far better than a loss though. Food services and drinking places also added 16,000 positions, while government-related employment trended upward by close to 30,000 jobs.
It’s also about time that we take a look at the damage that revisions have done to the initial numbers from this year’s BLS reports. If you scroll to the bottom of this page, you’ll see that two months after their release, the employment numbers from every report this year have been revised downward, and in most cases dramatically. For example, January’s employment report originally reflected a loss of 17,000 jobs—which skyrocketed to a loss of 76,000 positions by the time March’s report was released. I’ve written about the inevitability of revisions in the past, and the revisions that the BLS has been making as of late certainly aren’t improving the already dismal employment situation in our country.
To round out the findings from last month, the average hourly earnings for U.S. workers continued to rise by 0.3 percent, meaning that we collectively make an additional six cents per hour now. Reason enough to celebrate? Maybe not…but it’s about all we had going for us in the month of June.