The real unemployment rate – May 2019
Bottom Line: There’s a lot more to the employment report than just a couple of headline numbers and what happened in April was historic. It’s a true testament to the American free-enterprise system and a reminder that we do better having more of our money in our pockets than the government does with it. Lower taxes, less regulation = booming economy.
From the onset this year I mentioned that the sky wasn’t falling and if anything, the economy was still improving. It’s important to tune out the noise and focus on reality. Here are the headline numbers from April’s reality.
- Headline unemployment rate 3.6%
- +263,000 jobs added in April
- Positive revisions from past months totaling +16,000 additional jobs for a net number of +279,000 jobs
- +212,000 job average for the past year
Top industries for hiring:
- #1 Professional & Business Services
- #2 Administration services
- #3 Construction
A few important takeaways:
- Lowest headline unemployment rate since 1969
- 212,000 jobs a month for the past year is phenomenal
- The economy is remarkably still gaining momentum
Now for the real unemployment rate once underemployed, long-term unemployed and marginally attached people are accounted for:
- Actual: 7.3% down from 7.8%yoy
Key takeaways:
1. The real-unemployment rate remains the lowest it’s been since March of 2001 & there remain only five months in recorded American history with a lower real unemployment rate than what we currently have.
2. Those unaccounted for in the base unemployment rate include 7.3 million Americans (1.2 million long-term unemployed, 4.7 million are underemployed & 1.4 million are marginally attached to the workforce)
3. The labor participation rate slipped a bit to 62.8%
It’s still not a perfect story but there are literally only a handful of months we can compare our current jobs economy to. This literally is about as good as it’s ever been in US history.