While the headline payrolls number was solid and just as expected, if a more detailed read showed some red flags (downward revisions, rising wages only due to less hours worked), one aspect of today’s jobs report that will likely become a major talking point for Democrats and other critics of the Trump economy, is that the number of multiple-jobholders soared from 7.855 million in May, to 8.156 million in June, to a new all time of 8,389 million in July, a monthly increase of 233K and 591,000 higher in the past three months, which was a clear indication that the jobs number was far weaker than the headline represents if one excludes all those workers who represented two jobs to the BLS’ various surveys.
Yet even this number had its silver lining, because while the Establishment Survey’s 164K increase was impressive, at the same time the BLS reported that the number of Full-Time workers soared by 291K, which together with June’s 453K increase was a dramatic reversal to the trend so far in 2019, where 218K full time jobs had been lost in the January – May period. At the same time part-time jobs rose by only 54K in July, sending the part-time total for the first half to -133K, with most of the improvement thanks to the June number.
However, in keeping with the theme that a record number of workers need more than one job to make ends meet, the BLS reported that the labor force participation rate for workers 55 and old surged to the highest level in 7 years.
As Bloomberg notes, there are several explanations, with the more innocuous one that as Americans live longer compared with prior generations, they work more at an older age. Alas, the reality probably is that Americans simply haven’t saved enough for retirement, so there’s really no choice.
And now, back to the Fed’s scheduled rate cuts which will assure that even more savers have no choice but to work until they die, most likely while working on more than one job.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YCRkpG Tyler Durden