Jobs were good; earnings were a disaster – that’s the best summary of today’s jobs report.
As we noted earlier, February suffered the biggest ever monthly drop in average weekly earnings, because not only did hourly earnings drop but so did hours worked, resulting in far lower overall weekly wages.
What caused this? Nothing our readers don’t already know: recall that in January, “70% Of Jobs Added In January Were Minimum Wage Waiters And Retail Workers.”
February was even worse: most of the jobs that were created, if only on a goalseeked, seasonally adjusted basis, were of the lowest paying, worst possible quality as has been the case for the past 7 years as the BLS desperately seeks to “pad” its political mandate of providing proof in a recovery which however is impossible if it were to tell the truth.
As a result, as the BLS itself admitted, “job growth occurred in health care and social assistance, retail trade, food services and drinking places, and private educational services” – all of which are the lowest-paying wage groups.
The full detail is shown below:
The breakdown: of the 242K jobs created in February, 189K were of the minimum-wage variety, in:
- Education and Health (+86K)
- Retail Trade (+55K)
- Leisure and Hospitality (+48K) .
In other words, a whopping 82% of jobs “created” in February were minimum wage teachers, retail trade, and waiters, bartenders and chambermaids.
What about well-paying jobs like finance, trucking, manufacturing or mining? +6K, -5K, -16K, and -18K, for a net loss of 33k jobs.
Perhaps the bigger surprise is how wage growth wasn’t far worse.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/24FXRuF Tyler Durden