Monthly NonFarm Job Gains (YoY)
Source: BLS
Total non farm 2016-6
The official seasonally adjusted job gains for May 2016 is 38k. Really? Look at the chart above created using the non-adjusted data set and comparing the YoY total employment by the month. It looks more like the actual gain was 197k. That said the chart clearly indicates the pace of hiring has slowed drastically since last year. In fact the data indicates the pace of hiring has slowed from 2.3% annual growth to 1.66% this past month. The data also shows this slowing pace is a trend that has been in place for 14 months.
If you want to see how the charts look when a legitimate 38k monthly gain occurs look at the chart below. You can see that when this happened in 2008, the 2008 and 2007 total employment lines were nearly on top of each other opposed to 2015/2016 which have a wide gap. You can also see that the 2008 line eventually crossed below the 2007 line.
Comparison to an especially strong hiring in early 2015 makes this data look a bit weaker than it is as well. January to May of 2015 featured a 2.15-2.29% growth rate in employment. What is clear is the growth rate has clearly fallen below 2%. The question really is, how the Fed can continue to justify holding rates near zero with almost 2% employment gains and housing prices shooting up 6%/year.
http://griztrading.blogspot.com/2016/05/is-housing-bubble-20-forming.html With comparable employment gains in 2005/2006 the Fed held the funds rate around 3-5.25% compared to about 0.5% now. Even with jobs gains in serious decline and nearing a 0.5% pace in January 2008 the Fed still held rates at almost 4%. The funny thing is Bush gets the blame for the economy blowing up, but Obama gets credit for an improving economy and markets while enjoying a totally unprecedented 6-7 year run of near zero funds rates.
Year Over Year Non Adjusted Total Employment Comparison
Source: BLS
Total non farm 2016-6
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