Part 1 - The real unemployment rate – October
Bottom Line: It's always that case that there's a lot more to a monthly employment picture than the jobs added or lost and base reported unemployment rate. There were all kinds of goodies to unpack from Friday's report. Here are some keys in the report from September...
- Headline unemployment rate down to 3.7% - lowest since 1969!
- 134,000 jobs added in September
- Massive upward revisions totaling an additional 87,000 jobs occurred resulting in a net number of 221,000 jobs (nearly mirroring the ADP Report once again)
Top industries for hiring:
- #1 Professional and business services
- #2 Healthcare
- #3 Transportation and warehousing
Now for the real unemployment rate once underemployed and long-term unemployed people are accounted for:
Actual: 7.5% down from 8.3% yoy - lowest in about 17 years
Other key takeaways:
1. When the long-term unemployed & marginally employed are factored in - the real unemployment is more than double the base rate
2. The forgotten folks include 1.4 million are long-term unemployed, 4.6 million are underemployed & 1.6 million are marginally attached to the workforce. 400,000 net improvement during the month!
3. The labor participation rate was steady at 62.7%
Lowest base unemployment rate in 49 years and lowest real unemployment rate in about 17 years. Pretty great & we’re just getting started. In part two we'll look at the demographics of the unemployed...