May Jobs Report

Employment in the US hits a new record!  OK, though this is true, the news isn't great (but it's pretty good).  After looking through the report, there was nothing spectacular or gruesome to report.  The number of jobs added (217,000) was solid and was spread among different industries.  The unemployment rate remained at 6.3% while the participation rate remained unchanged at a 35-year low (62.8%), which was disappointing. Rather than get into the details of the monthly changes (April to May), I think it's more interesting to see what has happened from the previous record level of employment (January 2008) to the low in February 2010 to the new record level reached in May 2014.

Here's a table with the winners and losers over the last 6+ years:

	Recession	Recovery	Net Change
Total	-8710	8808	98
Private	-8790	9407	617
Construction	-1968	496	-1472
Manufacturing	-2272	646	-1626
Retail Trade	-1176.1	924.9	-251.2
Profess. & Tech Services	-400.2	892.5	492.3
Management	-46.9	280.4	233.5
Temps	-568.4	884.7	316.3
Education (private)	125.3	288.6	413.9
Health Care	548.3	1015.1	1563.4
Social Assistance	167.7	375.1	542.8
Food/Drinking Places	-367	1326.1	959.1
Fed Govt, not post office	222.3	-85.1	137.2
Post Office	-89.6	-80.3	-169.9
State/Local Education	33.8	-227.8	-194
State/Local Govt (not educ)	-86.4	-205.2	-291.6

You can read it for yourself, but some of the things that stand out to me are:

During the recession (Jan 2008-Feb 2010): the entire net loss of jobs was in the private sector with the federal government (outside the post office) adding more than 200,000 jobs.  The largest job losses took place in manufacturing and construction while health care added more than half a million jobs.

During the recovery (Feb 2010-May 2014): The private sector recovered all the jobs lost and more while the government  incurred the jobs losses.  The biggest winner has been food & drinking places, adding 1.3 million jobs followed by health (+1 million) and retail trade (+925,000).

Net Change (Jan 2008-May 2014): The economy has added nearly 100,000 jobs since the start of 2008 (617,000 in the private sector, loss of half a million government jobs).  The winners were health care (up more than 1.5 million) while food/drinking places added almost 1 million.  though they have recovered somewhat, employment in manufacturing and construction combined has declined by 3.1 million.  Given the weak economy, it's no surprise that social assistance employment has risen by more than 500,000 since the start of the recession.

Given the net employment gains and losses, construction employment has declined from 5.4% of total employment at the start of the recession to 4.3% otday while manufacturing has declined from 9.9% to 8.7%.  Meanwhile, health care has risen from 9.5% to 10.6% while food/drinking places rose from 7% to 7.7%.  Just a few more stats before we finish.  Full-time employment fell from nearly 83% at the start of the recession to 80% in early 2010 before rebounding to 81.3% (so part-time employment rose from 17% to 18.7% over that same period).  The percent of people self-employed declined from 7% to 6.2% with the entire decline taking place during the recovery phase.

What are the key takeaways?  Though overall employment hasn't changed much during the last 76 months, its composition has changed significantly.  The goods sector (manufacturing/construction) has incurred a substantial decline while food/drinking places has experienced a very strong recovery.  Meanwhile, health care continues its long-term growth, though at a slower pace in recent years.