Employment Up – Unemployment Also Up?

Unadjusted Employment rose from 153.197 million to 154.369
Labor Force Participation is Down from 62.3% to 62.2%
Adjusted U-3 was Up from 3.5% to 3.7%
Unadjusted U-3 was Up from 3.3% to 3.4%
Unadjusted U-6 was Down from 6.4% to 6.3%

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its employment / unemployment report for October on November 4^th.

According to the Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:

“Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 261,000 in October, and the unemployment rate rose to 3.7 percent. Notable job gains occurred in health care, professional and technical services, and manufacturing. Monthly job growth has averaged 407,000 thus
far in 2022, compared with 562,000 per month in 2021.”

You can read the full BLS report here.

As usual, they are talking about “Seasonally Adjusted Jobs” from the “Household Survey” rather than looking at the results reported by actual companies in the BLS “Establishment Survey”.

Looking at the Establishment Survey report, we see…
Originally the BLS reported employment of 153.073 million for September, which they adjusted up to 153.197 million. So, 124,000 additional jobs appeared for September.

October gained an additional 1,272,000 jobs bringing the total up to 154.369 million.

Initially, the market shot up under the news but as the day progressed the market lost most of its gains.

See November FED Announcement Rocks Stock Market for more market info.

ADP^® National Employment Report

According to ADP In collaboration with Stanford Digital Economy Lab

Private employers added 239,000 jobs in October

Employers created 239,000 jobs in October, up from a revised 192,000 in September as restaurants, retailers and the travel sector ramped up hiring in advance of the year-end holidays.

ADP also lists increases by “firm size”.

At some point, it may look like small-size firms (i.e. 1-19 employees) are increasing, while everything else is decreasing, but that could simply be the result of people starting companies because they can’t find any other jobs (although this isn’t currently the case). Last month, there were increases across the board. This month’s results were mixed.

Unemployment

Looking at the chart for unemployment, we see that despite the increase in the number of people employed unemployment still ticked upward slightly.

Employment –Establishment Survey

Looking at the chart for employment, we see that current employment (154.369 million) is now above the 2019 peak (153.095 million) although the civilian population is 5 million higher now.

See Current Employment for more info.

October 2022 Employment by Sector

The employment “bubble chart” is a quick and easy way to see how each sector performs on a seasonally adjusted basis. The Bubble’s Size tells us the total Employment for that industry (i.e., larger bubbles mean more people are employed in that sector).

The bubble’s location on the chart tells us that there has been a change in Employment Levels over the most recent month… A bubble further to the right indicates larger job growth. A bubble’s vertical location on the chart shows the average industry salary.

In October, Leisure and Hospitality, Education, Professional Services, and Manufacturing, were the big gainers.

Average Weekly Wages Rose

$1,124.01 in October , $1,119.87 in September, $1116.42 in August, $1,116.54 in July, $1,106.76, in June, $1,105.47 in May and $1,102.01 in April, and $1,086.46 in December 2021.

Click for a larger image.

Remember, these are Seasonally Adjusted Numbers, so they aren’t cumulative!

Note: Although the BLS says the Manufacturing, Professional, Education, and Financial sectors increased, ADP says they actually decreased. On the other hand ADP shows a much larger increase in Leisure than the BLS shows.

ADP Change by Sector

Employment and Average Weekly Earnings by Industry

October 2022, Seasonally Adjusted Employment

We’ve added another column to the table below that shows the employment levels that the BLS reported the previous month. Note that although they may claim that there was a “monthly increase”, there isn’t always a real increase, you can’t just subtract last month’s “employment level” from this month’s level. This is due to “seasonal adjusting”. We’ve marked strange instances with an asterisk *.

Industry	Monthly Increase	Average Weekly Earnings	Employment Level October	Employment Level September
Total Private Employment	233,000	$1,124.01	130,958,000	130,736,000
Mining and Logging	0	$1,689.07	634,000	633,000
Construction	1,000	$1,372.00	7,721,000	7,719,000
Manufacturing	32,000	$1,261.69	12,922,000	12,880,000
Wholesale trade	14,600	$1,378.18	5,923,100	5,909,200
Retail trade	7,200	$697.12	15,829,400	15,841,700*
Transportation and Warehousing	8,200	$1,097.40	6,526,400	6,528,700*
Utilities	1,100	$2,045.10	544,300	541,900
Information	4,000	$1,731.93	3,043,000	3,043,000*
Financial Activities	3,000	$1,579.13	8,971,000	8,957,000
Professional and Business Services	39,000	$1,437.54	22,493,000	22,473,000
Education and Health Services	79,000	$1,067.60	24,732,000	24,645,000
Leisure and Hospitality	35,000	$523.01	15,886,000	15,845,000
Other Services	9,000	$936.05	5,733,000	5,719,000

Source: BLS

Unemployment Still Historically Low

Unemployment levels are still in the historically low territory. After all, the FED did pump unprecedented TRILLIONS into the economy to get us to this place.

See: FED Actions for more info.

But we can see that Seasonally Adjusted U-3 is definitely in the “Green” territory.

Click for a larger Image