Help Wanted
Why the unemployment rate is likely to fall
CALL IT THE PERFECT EMPLOYMENT REPORT. Or call it catnip in a time of bad-news reports on almost everything else.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that nonfarm payroll employment rose more than is usual in the month of May, at a seasonally adjusted 248,000 jobs.
Even better, with upward revisions to the March and April totals, seasonally adjusted employment gains over the recent three months averaged 316,000, or 313,000 for just the private sector.
The three-month increase in the private sector was widely distributed across industries, according to the bureau's Diffusion Index. Not since February '98 -- another period of strong employment gains -- has the Diffusion Index been this high. (I cite three-month changes because they compare much more favorably to the ultimate "benchmarked" figures than one-month changes, a point I have mentioned before.)
For the sixth month in a row, both the unemployed and the unemployment rate held steady, at 8.2 million and 5.6%, respectively. The high was 6.2% last summer.
Here's why a similar-sized decline in the unemployment rate, involving 900,000 folks, may well be baked in the economic cake already.
Monthly gains of 250,000 to 300,000 are church bells confirming two highly favorable trends in the labor market.
First, employers can no longer rely on gains in output per worker to meet rising demand. Further increases in output require more hands on deck. (Incidentally, the ordeal of having to explain to people that the jobless recovery makes sense because of rising productivity is finally over. Hopefully, productivity will no longer be the thing they love to hate. Besides, if you really think about it, the explanation never made sense anyway.)
Second, the economy is now so hungry for more workers, that payroll employment gains should be enough to reduce the ranks of the unemployed. That isn't as easy as it may sound. Before the unemployed can go back to work, employment must grow fast enough to absorb the constant increases in the labor force that are caused by the growing population.
During the past year, the labor force increased by a little more than 100,000 per month. As the job market improves, however, increases of 150,000 per month are quite likely. But employment gains of 250,000 to 300,000 per month can deal with that.
Perfectionists might insist on highlighting one blemish in the Perfect Employment Report. While the decline in manufacturing employment has ended, the turnaround has been unimpressive. Employment grew by only 28,000 per month from March to May, and Temporary Help, which heavily serves manufacturing, by only 29,000.
But manufacturing hours jumped to a cyclical high -- a leading indicator of faster employment growth.
Happily, the self-employed have shown solid decreases, declining by nearly a quarter of a million folks since January, to 9.3 million.
A hilarious article early this year in The Wall Street Journal hailed the increase in the self-employed since '02 as a sure sign that the entrepreneurial spirit had made a comeback.
But to paraphrase Calvin Coolidge, when people are out of work, self-employment results. Where I come from, a "freelance writer" is usually a person whose unemployment-insurance benefits are just about to run out. These budding entrepreneurs are flocking back to the paycheck employment they much prefer.
With average hourly earnings up by a brisk 0.3% in May, wages are probably rising at an annualized rate of at least 3%, consistent with a 5.6% unemployment rate. As the unemployment rate declines further, however, wage growth should accelerate.
The number of folks the Bureau Labor Statistics classifies as managers and professionals has been rising year after year. In April-May, they were 48.6 million strong, or about 33 percent of the labor force, both records for this time of year. These figures continue to give the lie to the idea that white-collar jobs are shrinking because of "outsourcing."
我们需要人手！
就业报告算得上非同凡响了。在坏消息充斥的世界里这无疑是一剂清新剂。
美国劳工统计局(Bureau of Labor Statistics)上周五公布的报告显示美国5月份非农就业人数增长格外迅猛，经季节性因素调整后净增了24.8万人。
更令人欣喜的是，3、4月份的新增非农就业人数都被向上修正。此外经季节性调整后，过去3个月的月度新增非农就业人数平均为31.6万人，其中仅私营领域就高达31.3万人。
劳工统计局编制的扩散指数(diffusion indexes)表明，私营领域就业人数在过去3个月的增长广泛分布在各行各业。当前的扩散指数创下了自1998年2月以来的新高。（以3个月的数据为例是因为它与最终公布的“基准“数据更接近，这一点我以前曾提到过。）
在过去6个月里，失业人数和失业率分别为820万人和5.6%，较为稳定。失业率曾在去年夏天创下6.2%的高点。
失业人数减少了约90万人，与新增就业人数相当，而以下事实也许证明那是经济发展的必然结果吧。
非农就业人数每个月新增25万至30万名显示了劳动力市场呈现出非常有利于经济发展的两大趋势。
首先，雇主无法再指望通过提高员工工作量来满足日益上升的需求。产量的进一步提高需要更多的人手。（顺便说一句，现在终于不用再痛苦地向人们解释失业率的上升也是有积极意义的，因为它表明生产率提高了。但愿生产率不再是令人爱恨交织的因素了。此外如果你仔细想想，这种解释实在没什么意义。）
其次，美国经济目前急需更多的劳动者，就业人数的增长幅度应当足以使失业人数下降。这可不像听上去那么容易。在失业者重新找到工作之前，工作岗位必须迅速增长才能吸收因人口增长而不断新增的劳动力。
在过去一年里，每个月新增的劳动力超过了10万人。而随著劳动生市场的好转，每个月新增的劳动力很可能达到15万人。但每个月的新增就业人数达到了25万至30万人，因此对付劳力增长是绰绰有余。
完美主义者也许抓住这份“理想的就业报告“的一个小辫子不放：虽然制造业的就业人数不再下滑，但并没有多少好转。在3月份到5月份之间，每个月的就业人数增幅仅为2.8万名，而主要分布在制造业的临时工的增幅也只有2.9万名。
但制造业的工作时数跃升至周期性高点──这是反映就业人数增长的主要指标。
令人高兴的是，曾一度大幅增长的自雇人士数量今年以来下降了近25万人，至930万人。
早先刊登在《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)上的一篇文章对自雇人士数量从2002年以来的一路上升欢呼雀跃，认为这是创业精神卷土重来的有力证明。
但用美国第三十任总统总统凯尔文?柯立芝(Calvin Coolidge)的话来说，当人们没有工作时，他们就成了自雇人士。在我看来，“自由撰稿人“通常是快领完失业保险金的人。这些初露头角的创业者们如今又纷纷回归为他们更乐于担当的打工族。
5月份的小时平均收入上升了0.3%，工资增幅按年率计算至少增长了3%，与5.6%的失业率比较协调。不过，如果失业率进一步下降，工资的增幅会提高。
被劳工统计局列为经理和专业人数的群体人数近年来持续上升。在4月份和5月份，此类人士的数量多达4,860万名，约占劳动生市场总人数的33%，数量和比率都创下了今年的新高。这些数据进一步证明白领工作机会因“外包“而流失是谎言。
