As it has every month since January, according to the latest estimates
from the state of California, San Diego’s regional employment grew in
May.
But what (as I imagine some of the more bearish readers are thinking,
and, perhaps, readying to inform me via electronic nastygram) of the
effect of temporary hiring for the US Census? It’s a fair
question. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated
that
short-lived census jobs accounted for a over 95 percent of nationwide
hiring in May. Isn’t the same thing going on here?
No, as it turns out.
continue reading at voiceofsandiego.org
Riddle me this:
If the icons
Riddle me this:
If the icons on the 1st chart represent months (which I assume, since there are 12 of them), why do the December levels not connect to the levels of the following?
For example:
December of 2008 is around 1,290,000 and January of 2009 is around 1,250,000.
Is it the case that our county lost 40,000 in 30 days (and similar amounts every year-end)?
Howdy Dan, haven’t heard much
Howdy Dan, haven’t heard much from you in a while…. welcome back.
Yes, the answer is that the county (and every other county) loses a huge amount of jobs every January as seasonal holiday workers are let go.
A similar but lesser thing happens in July. That’s why month to month comparisons are tricky, and it’s why I did that graph that way (so you can see what typically happens in a given month).
Rich
Nice article, Rich.
Nice article, Rich. Comparatively, we do better than many other regions. San Diego has a lot going for it.
How do economists flatten the seasonal anomalies out? Is there some standard practice — moving averages, retail excluded, etc.? Do they just scrap the EOY for trend purposes? Essentially same type of problem as correcting for census workers. Wonder if there’s a standard practice.
Also, I like the articles, figures and research on this topic. Employment drives housing long-term. I don’t see how we get back to a normal market with normal ratios without job and wage growth. The big bogus bailout keeps things afloat things for now. But mostly, it just looks like a long, slow, ugly unwinding. Your take too?
Any Piggs care to weigh in?
Thanks Gandalf. There are two
Thanks Gandalf. There are two typical ways to deal with seasonality. One is to just look at year-over-year changes, which makes them irrelevant because you are looking at the same month last year. The problem there is that you could miss shorter term inflection points by comparing a whole year’s change.
The second is to “seasonally adjust” the numbers — I’ve never looked into this much but presumably you figure out the typical seasonal effect for a month by looking at lots of past data, and you try to back out that seasonal effect. (EG if jobs typically fall 1% in Jan, but you only fell .5%, you are up on a seasonally adjusted basis). I could probably do this but I’m far too lazy and anyway, seasonal adjustments can add their own distortions too.
I agree that this is an important topic. My take on job growth has, for a while, been less bearish than what I perceive as the pigg mainstream. All that stimulus (massive govt borrowing, money creation, low rates) can have a big effect. I think we will pay a terrible price for it later, but between now and then, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a cyclical stimulus-driven boom. Of course, I wouldn’t depend on that possibility either. So I am kind of agnostic on the job growth front. FWIW the data says that jobs are in an uptrend for now; I’m just going to keep watching and charting.
Rich
Definitely, the stimulus is a
Definitely, the stimulus is a BIG DEAL. I’m certain that’s what we’re seeing in the economy right now, the effects of stimulus efforts starting with Bush and continuing on through Obama.
Last time I tried to estimate it, I think the total monetary / fiscal stimulus (most of it originating from the Fed through various mechanisms), lump sum amount was somewhere around 10T-14T dollars — the equivalent of an entire year of United States GDP.
Granted most of that funny money went to prop up the fraud, to bring various accounts into balance, and I suspect quite a bit went overseas, but still, that is a LOT of goddamn money, pulled out of thin air, or piled onto our already obscene national debt.
I wish I could say I’m an optimist but I’m not. I’m bearish, and I’m calling a double-dip post-election (I hope I’m wrong). We haven’t fixed the root causes of the downturn, which center around FRAUD in the FIRE sector. And I don’t think the stimulus is a sustainable economic policy.
What’s the good news? Stimulus seems to be working for now and things are beginning to unwind. I think that’s the least dangerous outcome given the circumstances. The other decision trees (e.g. let it fail) seem to involve quite a bit of downside risks — system breakdowns, huge unemployment, social upheaval, geo-political conflicts, etc.