The July employment numbers point sustained relative strength in both demand and supply:
Nearly a quarter of a million jobs were added in July, exceeding new job entrants by about 20k. As a result the unemployment rate fell again, to 3.0%:
There’s possibly some seasonal factor involved here, but there’s just not enough data to figure it out properly. That will have to wait for next year, when we’ll have a full three year’s worth of data.
In the meantime, the choppiness in employment and labour force numbers aside, there’s no doubting two facts – labour force growth has been exceptionally strong, and labour demand has been more than sufficient to absorb it. Maybe the economy’s doing better than people think it is.
Technical Notes:
July 2011 Employment Report from the Department of Statistics (warning: pdf link)
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where i can get the graph from 1998 until 2011?
ReplyDeleteFor the monthly data, I'm afraid that's not possible - the data only goes back to 2009. Quarterly data is available online up from 2007 via DOS and annual data up to 2007 is available from EPU.
ReplyDeleteHas anybody put all of that together in one spot? I don't know, sorry.