by Bill Sweet
The US economy added about 292,000 net new jobs in December, continuing a pretty stellar monthly employment streak going back five full years:
Here's a different perspective of the same data - instead of looking at month-to-month growth, notice looking at total jobs that there are more people employed today than at any point in US history. We've added about 4.9 million jobs since the pre-recession January 2008 peak (+3.5%):
Tough to find anything bad in the data - there were still more job openings than hires:
And the new jobs aren't part-time - quite the opposite, as more than 100% of the job growth in the past six years has been full time:
It's true that all of these data are looking backwards - and are also subject to numerous revisions over the next few months (the preliminary report can and is adjusted for the next few months as the surveys are analyzed).
One of the data points closer to real-time is the initial unemployment claims data that are reported weekly on a slight lag:
We can give a skeptic a small bit of solace on that minor up-tick. Keep in mind that these initial claims are still at all-time lows, especially when adjusted for the size of the US population.
I can't imagine how anyone could look at these data and think that the US employment situation is on the brink of collapse.
- Bill
