Nathan Newman wrote:
>It's worth noting that the jobs report also showed a drop in overall hours
>worked, and a drop in the workweek. The economy, despite spreading the
jobs
>around a bit better this month, is still not producing net new demand for
>more hours of labor each month.
-It did, yes, but it was a strong report. It's too early to say the -trend has changed, but there's not much point in denying it was the -best payroll performance in four years.
I'm not denying it, but I think the drop in hours worked is more significant than a "yes, but" qualification. The key question in the economy is can it produce the need for more labor. Theoretically, we could eliminate unemployment at any time but just cutting back hours of work and handing those hours to the unemployed-- an occasionally popular idea on the left in bad times.
But the equity of job sharing still doesn't eliminate the problem in this months report that no net new demand for labor was created last month; in fact, demand for hours of work actually dropped.
If you look at the BLS series on aggregrate hours worked-- http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm, aggregate hours worked has been essentially stagnant for the last year, after falling substantially since 2001 (see http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/AWHI/11/10yrs).
Without increase in demand for aggregate hours of work, it's hard to see the jobs data as a statistical blip rearranging and shuffling the hours among different people.
Nathan Newman