Employment Update: June 2013

The new employment numbers for June arrived this year on the fifth of July (see BLS release). Decent results, actually. Job gains in June were 195,000. April and May results were also updated, for a combined additional gain in those months of 120,000 jobs. This caused April results to come in at 199,000, May results at 195,000. The resulting monthly chart follows.

If we look at these results on an annualized basis, thus January-June results extended to the rest of the year, the economy continues to perform better than it did in 2010, 2011, and 2012. The graphic showing that comes next.

If we look at this on a monthly basis, we get the following. In 2010 we gained on average 85,200 jobs a month, in 2011 175,300, in 2012 182,800, and in 2013, to date, an average of 201,800.

During the Great Recession we lost 8.578 million jobs; in the three-and-a-half years since then we gained back 6.506 million. This means that we’ve now recovered in that much longer period 75.8 percent of job. Its going slowly, but we are gaining.

Recovering jobs lost in the Great Recession is not the same as adding jobs to accommodate the growth in our workforce. An earlier posting (here), shows that we need to add 87,300 jobs to the workforce every month just to accommodate our growing population. So long as we are just recovering lost jobs, we are not creating jobs for the young. Since the Great Recession ended, we have therefore accumulated a demand for 3.7 million new jobs (42 months times 87,300). It’s only after we have regained all losses that job gains will count against that growing deficit. 

Looking at sectors, some sectors were still posting losses. In June these were Manufacturing (down 3,000), Transportation and Warehousing (down 5,100), Information (down 5,000), Miscellaneous Services (down 4,000), and Government (down 7,000). The continuing loss in government employment is a marvel—what with our legislators all clamoring about creating jobs.