Monday, November 9, 2015

2015 US Employment trend almost identical to 2014

2014-21015 Employment Trend Comparison using non-seasonally adjusted data.  2014 data was normalized so 2014 and 2015 could be laid directly on top of each other to make any trend differences easier to see.

All year BLS has been reporting that employment gains have been slowing drastically.  Seasonally adjusted data clearly indicate this.  A recent MarketWatch article--link to follow--states "the US added an average of 206,000 jobs a month this year vs. a 15-year hig of 260,000 in 2014.  Well as you can easily see in the chart above using non-seasonally adjusted data, you can see 2015 trended almost exactly with 2014.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-reports-suggest-october-jobs-blowout-is-an-outlier-2015-11-09

Being a math guy I also like to crunch the numbers.  Using average monthly employment 2012 & 2013 showed a 1.7% gain, about 190k/month, 2014 showed a 1.9% gain, about 220k/month.  But if we compare the average monthly employment for the latest 12 month period vs the previous, the data shows a 2.1% gain, about 250k/month.  Comparing monthly using a year over year (YoY) comparison the same trend is seen with monthly gains around 240k-260k/month for the last year.  The YoY monthly comparisons shows a slight downtrend from 2.4% early in the year to 1.94% in the latest month.

The plots of the raw BLS data and mathematical comparison just does not support the claim that employment gains have slowed drastically in 2015 compared to 2014.

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