2013 Volume Issue 4

April 5, 2013

For a downloadable version, click the following:

April 5, 2013 PDF

…a bit more compressed version of the PDF

Disastrous Jobs Report for March (March madness)

March Employment Report Update…more to follow in subsequent days

Remain calm! All is well!!

Kevin Bacon from the last scene in Animal House

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDAmPIq29ro

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION — MARCH 2013

www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

Let's keep this as simple as possible. We're focusing entirely on the Employment Status in the Household Survey and what it revealed moving from February to March 2013 on a net basis.

Unemployed dropped by 290,000, but where did they go? Employed dropped by 206,000, but where did they go? Since the Labor Force is equal to the number of Employed plus the number of Unemployed, those 496,000 people simply left the Labor Force that's where they went.

In addition, 167,000 came into the Civilian Noninstitutional Population for the month of March, but where did they go since Employed and Unemployed both fell (again, on a net basis)? They were added to the 496,000 that left the Labor Force, bringing us to a total of 663,000 that moved to the Not in the Labor Force category for the month of March.

To put this into perspective, at 63.3%, the Labor Force Participation Rate is at its lowest point since 1978! [Labor Force Participation Rate = Labor Force (Employed + Unemployed) divided by the Civilian Noninstitutional Population]

If Household Survey continued reporting the same numbers for 15 months:

• The Labor Force Participation Rate would be 59.6%
• The Employment Population Ratio would be 56.6%
• The Not in the Labor Force would be just under 100 million.
• But what the heck, the U-3 Unemployment Rate would be 5.0%

The point is that so long as we continue to see the Unemployment Rate drop due primarily to folks leaving the Labor Force, there is no recovery in the labor markets.