Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hiring dropped sharply in May, the weakest in 6 years

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 38 posts

Re: Hiring dropped sharply in May, the weakest in 6 years

#21

Post by dragonwriter »

dev1n wrote: post #19
dragonwriter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to contrast it with new unemployment rates. IIRC, the concern is that hiring slowdowns tend to lead increases in unemployment. But, yes, the unemployment rate (not just the headline rate, but all of the alternative measures from BLS as well) is still dropping.

the unemployment rate dropped because more people left the workforce and became discouraged workers (a la haven't searched for work in the past 4 weeks).

> the unemployment rate dropped because more people left the workforce and became discouraged workers

For the last monthly downtick, if you look at all the alternative measures [0], that's not the case. Actually, what you see is that the headline unemployment rate dropped, but the difference is mostly a shift from unemployed to working part time for economic reasons; discouraged workers have stayed about the same.

> (a la haven't searched for work in the past 4 weeks).

Discouraged workers are not "haven't searched for work in the past 4 weeks" its that subset of the marginally attached ("those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months") who "have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work." [0, again]

[0] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

Re: Hiring dropped sharply in May, the weakest in 6 years

#22

Post by cylinder »

hourislate wrote: post #15
waspleg wrote: post #13

Got laid off yesterday. Hooray.

Work is over rated. Just look at it as early retirement and consider yourself lucky.

Someone should go tell all those sweatshop workers and coal miners that work is "overrated" and that they should all just retire early!

Re: Hiring dropped sharply in May, the weakest in 6 years

#23

Post by blazespin »

dforrestwilson1 wrote: post #5

The unemployment rate is not a good metric. The labor force participation rate is more inclusive, and declined for the 2nd month in a row. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/business/economy/jobs-repo... Furthermore the quality of available jobs appears to have declined.

The reason we don't use LFP is because it doesn't impact prices that much. The UE rate does as it controls salaries which controls inflation/prices.

LFP and UE are both useful metrics, but they're used for different things. I am a big fan of labor force participation as I find the shift in our culture from a working one to one that doesn't interesting.

However, from the point of view of inflation (a driver of the funds rate and our economy in general), you really need to look at the unemployment rate.

Another way to look at it.. Changes in LFP rarely impact currency values much. Changes in UE rates do. And trust me, currency traders are very very apolitical. They care very little for conspiracy schemes. They just look at the relevant numbers and fight with their wallet.

Re: Hiring dropped sharply in May, the weakest in 6 years

#25

Post by pessimizer »

baron816 wrote: post #8
dforrestwilson1 wrote: post #5

The unemployment rate is not a good metric. The labor force participation rate is more inclusive, and declined for the 2nd month in a row. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/business/economy/jobs-repo... Furthermore the quality of available jobs appears to have declined.

> The unemployment rate is not a good metric. The labor force participation rate is more inclusive LFP rate is not better than the unemployment rate. There are a lot of factors that go into labor force participation, and demographics is probably the biggest. It peaked in the late 90s and has pretty much followed the same downward trend since: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-pa...

That's why you use the prime age (25-54) employment rate: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300060 which has only clawed about halfway back since the property bubble burst (and which has been stagnant this year to date.)

Re: Hiring dropped sharply in May, the weakest in 6 years

#26

Post by ianai »

blazespin wrote: post #23
dforrestwilson1 wrote: post #5

The unemployment rate is not a good metric. The labor force participation rate is more inclusive, and declined for the 2nd month in a row. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/business/economy/jobs-repo... Furthermore the quality of available jobs appears to have declined.

The reason we don't use LFP is because it doesn't impact prices that much. The UE rate does as it controls salaries which controls inflation/prices. LFP and UE are both useful metrics, but they're used for different things. I am a big fan of labor force participation as I find the shift in our culture from a working one to one that doesn't interesting. However, from the point of view of inflation (a driver of the fun…

Again, the numbers you pay attention to really depend on what you're trying to understand. A currency trader isn't exactly looking at them the same way I am.

Re: Hiring dropped sharply in May, the weakest in 6 years

#27

Post by rayiner »

dforrestwilson1 wrote: post #5

The unemployment rate is not a good metric. The labor force participation rate is more inclusive, and declined for the 2nd month in a row. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/business/economy/jobs-repo... Furthermore the quality of available jobs appears to have declined.

Labor force participation rate is not a good metric either. It counts more people going to school as a negative and fails to account for changing ratios of working to retired people.

Re: Hiring dropped sharply in May, the weakest in 6 years

#28

Post by jwatte »

cylinder wrote: post #22
hourislate wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work is over rated. Just look at it as early retirement and consider yourself lucky.

Someone should go tell all those sweatshop workers and coal miners that work is "overrated" and that they should all just retire early!

Aren't the robots already doing that, and that's what the number tens are telling us?

Re: Hiring dropped sharply in May, the weakest in 6 years

#29

Post by eloff »

kevenwang0531 wrote: post #16

News media ought to pay more attention to the confidence intervals associated with these metrics. Uncertainty is always present in statistics and the revisions to these numbers rarely get reported (it was reported in this case to fit the tone of the story). News articles like these have a powerful psychological effect on the public, so shouldn't the media do a more responsible job by saying "oh by the way, it's 38,00…

Probably they figure they have to dumb it down for people to understand it. Which is hugely patronizing, and underestimates people I think. I wish the media would take their jobs more seriously in general, because, while there are scattered exceptions, by and large they distort facts, twist things, and misrepresent things to the point where it's nearly impossible to get an accurate view of the reality. Which is a complete shame, because they really have a powerful effect on people's views and those people go on to vote for idiot politicians and just plain wrong policies. I know in politics everyone has an opinion, but that doesn't mean all opinions are equally valid. More often than not the popular opinions are so off base with reality that it's sad, or scary, or both.

And if you think it's bad in the US - look at Venezuela - a prime example of an ignorant and poor populace supporting bone-headed policies and politics until the country is reduced to a shambles. Democracy can only be as good as the voters, unfortunately - and the media bears a heavy responsibility there.

Re: Hiring dropped sharply in May, the weakest in 6 years

#30

Post by joobus »

kevenwang0531 wrote: post #16

News media ought to pay more attention to the confidence intervals associated with these metrics. Uncertainty is always present in statistics and the revisions to these numbers rarely get reported (it was reported in this case to fit the tone of the story). News articles like these have a powerful psychological effect on the public, so shouldn't the media do a more responsible job by saying "oh by the way, it's 38,00…

> For example, the confidence interval for the monthly change in total nonfarm employment from the establishment survey is on the order of plus or minus 115,000.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm

So 38,000 +- 115,000. In other words, they don't really know if employment went up or down.

Post reply on HN