Working Thoughts

Here are the job market and compensation numbers for December 2010 (based on the job report):

Net gain of 103,000 jobs in the month (revised to a gain of 152,000)

• Analysts expected an overall gain of 146,000
• Private sector payrolls increased by 113,000

• Private service producing industries added 115,000
• Goods producing industries lost 2,000




• November was revised to a gain of 92,000 a revision of 71,000 and from an original reading of 39,000 gain
  
• October was revised to a gain of 171,000, from a revised reading of 172,000 and an original reading of 151,000
• Payroll processor ADP reported an employment gain of 297,000 jobs
• Including population growth, the job market is 11 million jobs below the point of when the recession began 3 years ago
  
• The US labor force is smaller now than when the recession began, by 4 million people
• 6.4 million people have been jobless for more than 6 months (long term
  unemployed) – up significantly from the last four months
  
  • 44.3% of the unemployed are long term unemployed – ratcheted up up from 41.9% last month
    
• The
  main type of hire for the past few months was for Temporary Help Service (+16,000) but this month the large gains were in Leisure and Hospitality (47,000) and Health Care (37,100)
  

Unemployment rate dropped to 9.4%

• Analysts predicted it would be 9.6%
• The unemployment rate has been over 9% for 20 months
• 260,000 people dropped out of the employment count producing a labor force participation rate of 64.3% (66.5% is average to good)
  
• The employment to population ratio is 58.3% – relatively unchanged
  
• The
  U-6
  report, which is a broader group to count (workers who are part
  time but want to be full time and discouraged worker), dropped to 16.7%.
  This reflects the same decrease of unemployment rate to 9.4%
  
• PMI,
  a measure of manufacturing pace, is 57% and the 20th consecutive
  month of readings over 50 percent. Anything above 50% means the
  machines are running

Specific Segment Job numbers:

• Manufacturing gained 10,000 jobs
  
• Construction lost 16,000 jobs
• Retailers gained 12,000 jobs
  
• Leisure and Hospitality Services gained 47,000 jobs
  
• Government sector lost 10,000, Federal gained 10,000
  
• Education and Health Services grew by 44,000 jobs

• Health Care and Social Assistance grew by 37,000
  

• Professional and Business Services grew by 7,000

• 15,900 jobs added in Temporary Help
  

Wage (can be revised):

• The average weekly paycheck (seasonally adjusted) is $645.46 – an increase of $2.59
  
• The average hourly earning (seasonally adjusted) is $19.21
  
• Average
  weekly hours and overtime of production and nonsupervisory employees on
  private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector, seasonally adjusted is
  33.6 hours
  

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Job Report Stats Summary