Labour Force – Page 17 – William Mitchell

Australian labour force data – labour underutilisation rate rises to 25.1 per cent

Whatever way you want to interpret it, the Australian labour market continued to deteriorate in May 2020. The latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics – Labour Force, Australia, May 2020 – released today (June 18, 2020) continues to tell a shocking tale. All the main aggregates moved in an adverse direction. Employment fell by 1.8 per cent (227,700). Unemployment rose by 86,700 thousand. But that is a gross understatement of the problem given that the participation rate fell by 0.7 points, which meant the labour force fell by 142 thousand. Without the fall in the participation rate in May 2020, the unemployment rate would have been 8.1 per cent rather than its current value of 7.1 per cent). But relative to August 2019 (peak participation), the unemployment rate would have been 11.7 per cent. The broad labour underutilisation rate is now at 20.2 per cent. There are now 2,639.1 thousand workers either unemployed or underemployed. That number swells to 3,286.5 (or 25.1 per cent) if we add the rise in hidden unemployment back into the ‘jobless’. Any government that oversees that sort of disaster has failed in their basic responsibilities to society. Its fiscal stimulus is totally inadequate.

Worst is over for Australian workers but a long tail of woe is likely due to policy failure

Today (June 16, 2020), the Australian Bureau of Statistics released their latest weekly employment data taken from Australian Tax Office data. They have slowed the release cycle on this data (for reasons they have not disclosed), so it is a month since I have analysed it. The latest edition came out today – Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages in Australia, Week ending 30 May 2020 – which covers the new data from May 2, 2020 to May 30, 2020. The monthly labour force data to be released on Thursday covers a period that ends around May 12, 2020, so today’s data provides a more recent snapshot of the state of affairs. At the beginning of May, the data was suggesting that the worst of the job losses were over. The severity of the lockdown has eased a little since then, although the pattern of easing has been quite different across the states and territories. So we might have expected some variations to arise from that. And today’s data shows just that. In the Accommodation and food services sector, where some easing has occurred, jobs are returning, albeit at a slow rate. But in the Arts and recreation services sector, where little change in lockdown restrictions has occurred to date, there has been very little employment growth. The question is how many businesses will go to the wall before we get a more usual scale of operation and interaction. My prediction is that many will disappear and so the recovery in employment will be protracted given how many jobs have been lost to date. A much larger fiscal intervention is required and it has to be directed at workers rather than firms and support direct job creation. The problem now is that the Government is starting to reassert its neoliberal ideology and withdrawing the inadequate stimulus far too early. The future is not looking good. We might be virus free but there will be massive unemployment remaining into the distant future.

US Labour Market – cheering but it is too early to break out the champagne

On June 5, 2020, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – May 2020 – which shows that the US labour market has responded to the relaxation of lockdown controls in a modest way. I cannot believe that in Donald Trump’s words the US is “largely through” the Pandemic and it remains to be seen whether lockdown rules will have to be reintroduced when the infections rise again. But, for the time being, the payroll numbers improved as you would expect when shops reopened and people went back to work. But I stress this was a modest improvement. The numbers filing for unemployment insurance continue to rise and now top 43.2 million since March 7, 2020. A further 1.9 million filed in the week ending May 30, 2020. There were also some discrepancies noted by the BLS in the survey responses this month which adds to the uncertainty. Overall, the US labour market is in crisis and it remains to be seen how many jobs have disappeared and how many will emerge once the lockdowns are ended. Some 2.6 points of ‘unemployment’ lie outside the labour force (workers giving up looking), and as employment growth increases, those workers will come back into the recorded labour force and be classified as unemployed rather than not in the labour force. So how deep this catastrophe is remains a but uncertain. But I do not see appropriate policy responses in place. The US government should have guaranteed all incomes and introduced large-scale job creation programs and a Job Guarantee as an on-going safety net.

The job losses continue in Australia but at a slower pace

One bit of good news yesterday was that the Supercars event that has been imposed on the City of Newcastle over the last 3 years will not go ahead this year. This is an event that has massive state subsidies, creates health hazards for local residents, lies about crowd numbers to justify further state subsidies and severely divides the local community. They claim they love Newcastle, but with only a few events possible this year, they are clearly going where the highest subsidies are likely. So that is a relief for the inner city community. But there is not much else that one can be happy about right now. Today (May 19, 2020), the Australian Bureau of Statistics released their latest weekly employment data taken from Australian Tax Office data, which they release and analyse on a two-week cycle. The latest edition came out today – Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages in Australia, Week ending 2 May 2020 – which covers the new data from April 18, 2020 to May 2, 2020. The data is suggesting that the worst of the job losses are now over, which doesn’t mean where we are at at present is nothing short of shocking. As the lockdown eases, we can now expect more jobs to come back. The question is how many businesses will go to the wall before we get a more usual scale of operation and interaction. My prediction is that many will disappear and so the recovery in employment will be protracted given how many jobs have been lost to date. A much larger fiscal intervention is required and it has to be directed at workers rather than firms and support direct job creation.

US labour market in peril as a result of political choices made by the US government

I went on a data excursion for part of today to update the flows data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. They published the latest JOLTs data last Friday (May 15, 2020) – Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary – which reveals data up to March 2020. So in a sense it is the calm before the storm. I also reconstructed some of the indicators I compile from that data set which give me a broader impression of what is happening in the US labour market. Clearly, things are going to get worse when the April data is released. We can see that by examining the Department of Labor’s weekly unemployment claimants data, which was updated last Thursday (May 9, 2020). I also updated my state table and map today. Things are looking very bleak. To me, the data tells me that the US is a failed state – incapable of using the capacity the government possesses to advance the well-being, or, in this case, protect the well-being of its people. I am also working on an extended piece on the way the Right and the Left are behaving in this crisis. As usual, the Right are organised and forward-looking putting assets into strategies that will take their agenda to another (pernicious) level. Under the smokescreen of the crisis, they are working to cement changes that will make it even harder for government to advance general prosperity. Meanwhile, the Left appear to be asleep as usual – tweeting their heads off about Biden or Sanders and have taken their eyes off the main game. We have been there before. Even though the US labour market has probably never been here before!

May 14, 2020
bill
Labour Force
20 Comments

Whatever way you want to interpret it, the Australian labour market fell off a very steep cliff in the four weeks from around March 12 to April 12. The latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics – Labour Force, Australia, April 2020 – released today (May 14, 2020) is shocking. Like all the data releases at the moment. All the main aggregates moved in extremely adverse directions. Employment fell by 4.6 per cent (594,300). Unemployment rose by 104,500 thousand. But that is a gross understatement of the problem given that the participation rate fell by 2.4 points, which meant the labour force fell by 489.8 thousand. Without the fall in the participation rate in April 2020, the unemployment rate would have been 9.7 per cent rather than its current value of 6.2 per cent). Monthly hours of work fell by 9.2 per cent. And the broad labour underutilisation rate is now at 19.9 per cent, after underemployment rose by 4.9 points to 13.7 per cent. There are now 2,639.4 thousand workers either unemployed or underemployed. That number swells to 3,142.6 (or 23.4 per cent) if we add the rise in hidden unemployment back into the ‘jobless’. Any government that oversees that sort of disaster has failed in their basic responsibilities to society. Its fiscal stimulus is totally inadequate.

US labour market data – we have never been here before!

Last month’s analysis of the US labour force data – Tip of the iceberg – the US labour market catastrophe now playing out (April 6, 2020) – presaged what was to come. We now know more about the size of the iceberg. It is unimaginably large. Words fail really. This is one of those all-time historical events that make the severe crises of the past (early 1980s, 1990s, GFC – look like blips). On May 8, 2020, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – April 2020 – which shows that the US labour market has collapsed into territory never before recorded. And, given that the data released was drawn from samples that went up to April 12 (establishment survey) and April 18 (household survey), and so doesn’t fully capture the extent of the unfolding catastrophe. More recent data released by the US Department of Labor (unemployment insurance claimant data) shows the situation worsened in the last two weeks of April. In the last two weeks of April 2020, more than 9 million extra workers registered unemployment insurance claims. All the aggregates are demonstrating dramatic shifts to the point that graphs are becoming rather binary – the rest of history and now. The employment-population rate plunged 8.7 points to 51.3 per cent, which is the largest monthly fall since the sample began in January 1948. The U6 measure of broad labour underutilisation increased by 14 points to 22.8 per cent. This is the largest monthly rise in this measure since it was first published in January 1994. The situation will get worse. Its already catastrophic and it demonstrates a massive policy failure from the Federal government. Instead of directing trillions into the top-end-of-town, the US government should have guaranteed all incomes and introduced large-scale job creation programs and a Job Guarantee as an on-going safety net. Instead it is watching over people dying and people’s material prosperity being destroyed.

Latest employment data for Australia exposes Federal government’s wilful neglect

I reported in this blog post – Policy failure – Australian unemployment rate probably already around 10.9 per cent (April, 2020) – that the The Australian Bureau of Statistics has started publishing weekly employment data on a two-week cycle. The data is drawn from a new series made available as a result of the Single Touch Payroll data provided by the Australian Tax Office and provides researchers like me with much more timely data than the monthly labour force survey. The latest edition came out today (May 5, 2020) – Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages in Australia, Week ending 18 April 2020 – which covers the new data from April 4, 2020. The results are shocking. The conclusion from my analysis of the latest available data is that some sectors in the Australian labour market have experienced a sudden and catastrophic contraction – like nothing we have ever seen in the data. Both employment losses and major wage losses are underway and the policy response is totally inadequate for the task. A much larger fiscal intervention is required and it has to be directed at workers rather than firms and support direct job creation.

April 30, 2020
bill
Coronavirus, Job Guarantee, Labour Force
18 Comments

When Kevin Rudd was faced with the threat posed by the unfolding GFC in late 2008 his government became very pragmatic and immediately ditched the narrative they had been pushing out throughout that year about inflation being a threat and the need for tighter fiscal policy and surpluses. They introduced, in two rounds, a fairly significant fiscal stimulus (around 4.2 per cent of GDP) which effectively saved the Australian economy from entering a recession. A significant part of that intervention was that it had various temporal properties – a cash handout in December 2008 designed to get spending power into the hands of consumers just before Xmas (the famous ‘flat screen’ payment – there were a lot of TVs purchased), which obviously was an immediate focus, and, a longer term component, which included their plan to put insulation into every home. This was aimed at job creation clearly, to address the cyclical needs, but, it was also intended to address the longer term climate crisis, that were beyond the GFC cycle. When appraising what government’s should be doing now – to deal with the socio-economic consequences of the medical crisis – that style of thinking is essential. The questions that need to be asked are: 1. What can be done now to avert an economic collapse? 2. What do we want to change about the pre-structure of the economy into the future? 3. How can we use the stimulus intervention to make those changes, while addressing Question 1. In this blog post, I go through some of that style of thinking. I also provide some specific estimates of the investment needed to introduce a Job Guarantee in Australia.

April 23, 2020
bill
Coronavirus, Labour costs, Labour Force, US economy
18 Comments

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has started publishing weekly employment data – Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages in Australia, Week ending 4 April 2020 – which is drawn from a new series made available as a result of the Single Touch Payroll data provided by the Australian Tax Office. For the first time, researchers like me can have up to date information as the economy cycles. Usually we get the labour force data some 5-6 weeks behind time and although a lot doesn’t necessarily happen in a month, this crisis is the exception – the whole box-and-dice is collapsing so quickly that we need weekly data, like is provided in the US through the Department of Employment’s unemployment claimants data to stay in touch with how things are tracking. But for now I estimate that the unemployment rate rose to around 10.9 per cent in the 3 weeks to April 4, 2020 (up from 5.2 per cent for the March data – which was surveyed in the early part of the month). In that time, unemployment has more than doubled and is around 1.5 million and rising. The conclusion from my analysis of the latest available data (released April 21, 2020) – is that some sectors in the Australian labour market have experienced a sudden and catastrophic contraction – like nothing we have ever seen in the data. Both employment losses and major wage cuts are underway and the policy response is totally inadequate for the task. A much larger fiscal intervention is required and it has to be directed at workers rather than firms. I will say more about those issues next week. But I am guessing that the Government’s response so far is less than half of what it should have been – it needs at least another $A200 billion.