In this month's update of the "real" employment situation we will dig down behind the headlines and look deeper into this morning's release of the Employment Situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On the positive side there were 200,000 jobs created in the previous month and the unemployment rate fell from an upwardly revised 8.7% to 8.5%. Furthermore, while October was revised higher by 12,000 jobs; November was revised lower by 20,000. Now it is time to dig behind the headlines.
As we discussed earlier this week with the ADP Employment report , which showed a 325,000 job increase, this is the seasonally strong time of year for employment increases due to the retail shopping season. This also showed up into today's employment report as 42,000 of the 200,000 jobs "created" were "courier's and messengers" for the holiday delivery season. Therefore, due to seasonality, it is no surprise that we saw a fairly healthy jump in employment but unfortunately many of these jobs tend to be very temporary in nature.
First, let's start by putting things into perspective. If you take a look at the actual number of those "counted" as employed that number has risen from the recessionary trough. However, in reality, employment is still far below the long term historical trend. Currently, the deviation from the long term trend is the widest on record and has made very little improvement.
How can this be if the unemployment rate is falling?
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