{"id":437651,"date":"2024-01-05T16:59:06","date_gmt":"2024-01-05T21:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housingwire.com\/?p=437651"},"modified":"2024-01-05T21:30:53","modified_gmt":"2024-01-06T02:30:53","slug":"job-growth-is-slowing-down-right-on-cue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housingwire.com\/articles\/job-growth-is-slowing-down-right-on-cue\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we seeing cracks in the labor market?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Slowing job growth doesn\u2019t mean a recession, but today’s jobs report<\/a> tells me that the significant job gains we were accustomed to in the early part of the COVID-19 recovery period are ending, which ties nicely to how I thought labor would recover after COVID. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though the headline number on the report today beat estimates, we are entering a new phase of the economic cycle, which means you need to know where to look to get clues for a recession. The BLS jobs report data isn\u2019t the best recession<\/a> indicator, which we can all see since the recession of 2023 \u2014 forecast by so many \u2014 didn\u2019t occur. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are my three key points on the labor market recovery since I retired my COVID-19 recovery model<\/a> on Dec. 9, 2020:

1. Job openings should get to 10 million. <\/strong>(We eventually got to 12 million<\/a><\/strong>) We’re now down to 8.8 million.<\/strong>
2. We should get back all the jobs lost to COVID-19 by September of 2022. That checked off roughly on schedule, see here<\/a>.
And the third is the most important one at this stage of the cycle:
3. If we didn\u2019t have COVID-19, the total employment in America would have been between 157 million-159 million today. We are there now, and since population growth is slowing down, we shouldn\u2019t have big labor reports going out, which will be perfectly normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s take a look at today\u2019s jobs report.

From BLS<\/a><\/strong>:Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 216,000 in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment continued growing in government, health care, social assistance, and construction, while transportation and warehousing lost jobs.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are the jobs that were created and lost in the previous month:<\/p>\n\n\n\n