News outlets have been abuzz with good news about the job market here in the United States. During the second quarter the job market added 183,000 jobs:
Economists predict that employers added 183,000 jobs — a figure that would show that businesses are growing more confident despite weak economic growth. More jobs would boost consumers’ ability to spend, allowing for stronger growth in the second half of the year.
The unemployment rate is expected to have dipped last month to 7.5 percent from 7.6 percent. The Labor Department will release the report at 8:30 am EDT Friday.
The depressions is over, everybody can go home! Well, not quite. As it turns out the jobs added to the market aren’t full time positions. A majority of jobs are part time:
The 162,000 jobs the economy added in July were a disappointment. The quality of the jobs was even worse.
A disproportionate number of the added jobs were part-time or low-paying — or both.
Part-time work accounted for more than 65 percent of the positions employers added in July. Low-paying retailers, restaurants and bars supplied more than half July’s job gain.
“You’re getting jobs added, but they might not be the best-quality job,” says John Canally, an economist with LPL Financial in Boston.
So far this year, low-paying industries have provided 61 percent of the nation’s job growth, even though these industries represent just 39 percent of overall U.S. jobs, according to Labor Department numbers analyzed by Moody’s Analytics. Mid-paying industries have contributed just 22 percent of this year’s job gain.
In other words, the jobs being added aren’t jobs people can survive off of. This is one of the many problems with labor statistics in the United States. The numbers reported fail to tell the actual story. While an estimated 182,000 jobs were added to the economy makes everybody feel happy the truth is that most of those jobs are crap. In other words the labor market hasn’t actually improved any notable amount, it’s merely sucking in a different way.
I guess the depression is still on.