Jobs Day

We are now at the point where many labor market utilization numbers—unemployment, employment, participation, full-time employment—are beyond pre-pandemic levels. We shouldn’t treat 2019 as a goal to return to; new highs are both possible and desirable.

What the data tell us to expect this Friday — softer nonfarm payroll growth, a higher unemployment rate and a potential for permanent job losers to rise.

This monitor is a reflection of how we update our assessments of economic growth in real-time as we get meaningful updates from macroeconomic data releases. It provides a more timely and meaningful gauge of economic activity growth than what GDP and similar summary indicators provide. Please see here for more

The data from the March labor market show continued labor market strength. As was true last month, almost all employment-based indicators show improvement from the previous month, even as the general trend of wage growth is downwards. The headline unemployment number fell from 3.6% to 3.5% (as we

What the data tell us to expect this Friday — softer nonfarm payroll growth, a lower unemployment rate and a wage print that will give us an ok first-read on Q1 wage growth ahead of the more robust Employment Cost Index release later this month.