AUG#: +130,000 jobs.

Unemployment up at 3.7%...AUG jobs under Trump HERE

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Weekly Unemployment Claims: Week Ending September 2, 2017

Claims for Unemployment Benefits Jump

Thanks to Hurricane Harvey, initial claims for unemployment benefits increased by about 61,000 in seasonally adjusted numbers, 53,000 in unadjusted "real" numbers.

Notice the big hockey stick increase in the right at this graph from the Department of Labor:

From the Department of Labor
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Wednesday, September 6, 2017

How Many Jobs Has Trump Created or Lost? (August 2017 update)

How many NET jobs have been created or lost under Trump as of August 2017? How many private sector jobs have been lost or added during Trump's presidency?

*See below
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August 2017 numbers were released 
Friday morning, September 1st.  
All AUGUST reports and info are listed  HERE.
September # will be released Friday, October 6.

  • Obama's final jobs numbers HERE.
  • Trump's million jobs:  Good or bad? HERE

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How many new jobs in the last 7 months since Trump was inaugurated?  
How many Americans were working or employed when Trump took office... compared to now?  How many of those people are working full-time vs. part-time?
*See below

Notice that the trajectory of job growth has not changed under Trump (green line at upper right).  We continue to add private sector jobs at about the same pace as we added private sector jobs under Obama.

Friday, September 1, 2017

August 2017 Unemployment Rate, Jobs

The August 2017 Jobs Report was released by the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning, Friday, September 1. This was a surprisingly mediocre report, showing only 156,000 new jobs, and it did not meet the pundits' estimates of 180,000 to 200,000 new jobs.   The unemployment rate inched up to 4.4%, in the same range that it has been in since April.


Hurricane Harvey influence?



Some suggest that the jobs numbers may represent a turn-around from a strong Obama economy to a weaker Trump economy, but we won't know that for a few months.

Jobs numbers are compiled as of the week containing the 12th day of the month, so this report was not impacted by Hurricane Harvey, but the next 1-2 reports may well be.  Jobs numbers did not go down after Hurricane Katrina back in 2005, but they did seem to stall.
The economy has been adding jobs consistently for 7 1/2 years now.  In fact, in 45 of the 83 months between early 2010 and the end of the Obama Presidency, 200,000 or more jobs were added.


Despite this month's slow down and minor increase in the unemployment rate, job reports under Trump (since February) seem to continue the trend of consistent addition of jobs and slow but generally consistent decline in the unemployment rate. 

August 2017 Job Report Highlights: 

  • The economy added 156,000 jobs, a below average number of new jobs, and the unemployment rate increased slightly by 0.1% to 4.4% due to people entering the labor force but not immediately finding jobs.