Employers add 248,000 jobs in September

In September nearly 2 million Americans were working multiple part-time jobs, around more than 300,000 more than just 10 years ago.

That’s roughly 20 percent more than 10 years ago, in September 2004, when only around 1.3 million people were putting together multiple part-time jobs. One thing it points to is that unemployment (and employment) figures aren’t everything; these people are employed, but to many, their job situations — rushing from one job to the next — may not be optimal. And as driveswift tweeted today, women make up twice as many of these workers as men do. So while the job market is improving in terms of quantity, it’s not improving by quality.

Barack Obama loves manufacturing. On Thursday he issued a proclamation declaring that October 3 is is National Manufacturing Day (really). And then on National Manufacturing Day he announced the creation of some new Manufacturing Innovation Institutes. And in his speech about the New Foundation for the American economy, he bragged about manufacturing’s success in #ObamasAmerica:

The reality is that this narrative about manufacturing jobs does not withstand much scrutiny. Here is manufacturing employment since Obama took office:

It’s encouraging that the number of jobs in America is back in pre-crisis territory. But it’s upsetting just how many jobs the downturn robbed us of. As the economy keeps adding jobs, it also keeps adding people, as Alyssa Davis, researcher at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, tweeted on Friday. According to EPI calculations, there’s subsequently a gap of 6.4 million jobs in the economy.

That gap is the number of “missing workers” as calculated by EPI — those “missing workers” are the people who would be seeking out jobs if the economy were stronger. This question of how many people have left the labor force due to economic factors versus demographic factors is a big debate among labor economists right now, but it’s clear that there is a sizable hangover from the recession, and it means job growth hasn’t fallen far behind the growth in the number of potential workers.

The plight of the long-term unemployed has been a major storyline in this recession — the share of the unemployed who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more (or around half a year or longer) skyrocketed during the recession. But if you want some encouraging news on this front, here it is: it has fallen significantly over the last year.

Since September 2013, the share of unemployed who have been out of work 27 weeks or longer has fallen by 5 percentage points.

Courtesy of Dan Diamond:

The improving labor market continues to show absolutely no sign of sparking any kind of dangerous inflation. Average hourly earnings fell by one cent in September relative to August, and compared to a year ago average hourly earnings are up by just 2 percent. The overall rate of inflation has been even lower than that, so these meager wage gains do constitute some kind of increase in workers’ living standards. But since productivity is also rising, this means wages are exerting no pressure on economy-wide inflation and there’s zero reason for the Federal Reserve to be worried about it.

Back in August, I offered five charts that prove its time workers got a raise and everything from that stands true today. It’s not obvious that the government has a ton of policy levers to force most workers to get a raise (though minimum wage hikes can help some workers), but the central bank ought to be at least offering a clear signal that it has no intention of bringing down tighter money until it sees some wage gains.

The overall labor force participation rate shrank slightly in September, a strong piece of evidence that population aging and other demographic factors are likely to keep this anchored at a low level even if the labor market improves. But younger workers are working at a higher rate than before:

Nonfarm payrolls grew by 248,000 jobs in September, the Labor Department reported Friday. The unemployment rate also fell to 5.9 percent from its previous reading of 6.1 percent.

The reading comes in better than expected, as consensus estimates for payroll growth had been at 215,000, according to Bloomberg. It’s also an acceleration from August’s payroll growth, which has been revised up from 142,000 to 180,000.