(What’s Left of) Our Economy: U.S. Job Quality Takes a Turn for the Worse

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Employment, healthcare services, Jobs, private sector, public sector, recovery, subsidized private sector, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Here’s how bad America’s employment performance has been so far this year. Not only has job creation lagged quantitatively. But by one key measure that RealityChek has followed for years, job quality worsened, too. Specifically, after falling significantly during the first two years of the Trump administration as a share of total hiring, job creation in what I call the subsidized private sector of the economy is up sharply.

To review, the subsidized private sector – dominated by healthcare services – consists of those industries that are typically classified (including by federal government statisticians) as private sector industries, but whose levels of activity (including job creation) are determined largely by politicians’ decisions about levels of government support, not market forces.

This observation doesn’t imply any conclusion that subsidized private sector jobs are merit-less. But it does reflect the understandable and commonly held belief that the genuine private sector is the economy’s main source of productivity growth and innovation, and that therefore it should dominate job creation as well.

The main evidence comes in the form of the figures on the subsidized private sector’s share of total hiring in America, of hiring in the private sector as conventionally defined (which includes the subsidized numbers), and of hiring in the “real private sector” (the total resulting from subtracting the subsidized private sector from the conventionally defined private sector figures). And since we only have data for the first six months of this year (including those for June, which are still preliminary), the time frames compared here will consist of the first six months of each year since the June, 2009 beginning of the current economic recovery).

During the first six months on Mr. Trump’s watch, net new subsidized private sector job creation accounted for 22.29 percent of total job creation (“non-farm” hiring, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics – BLS – defines it), for 23.41 percent of such hiring in the conventionally defined private sector, and of 30.57 percent of the net new jobs in the “real private sector.”

During the first six months of 2018, these shares all declined – to 18.85 percent, 19.75 percent, and 24.61 percent, respectively. At least as important, they were among the lowest recorded during the current recovery. In particular, they were all lower than they were during the first six months of President Obama’s last year in office – when they reached 28.57 percent, 31.57 percent, and 46.13 percent. That is, from January through June of 2016, the increase in subsidized private sector payrolls was nearly half as large as all net new hiring in the rest of the private sector (the “real private sector”) – which is much larger.

But during the first six months of this year, the subsidized private sector made a tremendous comeback.

These industries’ share of total net new U.S. hiring jumped from 18.85 percent to 30.88 percent. Its share of conventionally defined private sector hiring rose from 19.75 percent to 33.06 percent. And net payroll increases in the subsidized private sector compared with “real private sector” payroll increases more than doubled – from 24.61 percent to 49.38 percent.

Even worse, all three results were the highest registered during the current recovery.

The only (mildly encouraging) news on the job quality front in this respect (accepting my assumption that relatively weak job creation in the “real private sector” is a troubling development): On a standstill basis (representing a snapshot, not measuring rate of change), the combined share of total hiring accounted for by the subsidized private sector and the public sector keeps falling. But that’s clearly because job creation in the public sector proper remains weak.

At the onset of the last recession – at the end of 2007 – these jobs amounted to 29.84 percent of all U.S. jobs tracked by the BLS. When the recovery began, this figure had increased to 32.20 percent. By last June, it has dipped to 30.94 percent. And as of this past June (again, preliminarily), it was down to 30.87 percent. That’s still higher than when the last recession began, so it’s possible to argue that the American labor market still hasn’t fully normalized. If the subsidized private sector’s recent job creation resurgence isn’t interrupted, such normalization will become an ever more distant goal.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A Turning Point for U.S. Job Quality?

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Employment, healthcare services, Jobs, private sector, public sector, recession, recovery, subsidized private sector, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Although the numbers are still preliminary, the release earlier this month of the January U.S. jobs report provides an unusually good reason to check in on one of RealityChek‘s favorite sets of statistics – the ones that permit calculating the importance of what I call the subsidized private sector (those parts of the economy, notably healthcare services, that are typically considered part of the private sector, but that rely heavily on government spending for its performance in employment and other areas) in the American jobs creation picture.

This distinction matters because most Americans (rightly) believe that private sector employment and its strength or weakness is a much better measure of the economy’s overall health than public sector employment – which largely reflects the decisions of politicians. So if the private sector is being over-counted – which is clear from the failure of most analysts to draw this distinction – that’s big news, and this over-count has been a major feature of most discussions of the current economic recovery.

This latest data bring the story up to the first month of the new year. They include a second (though still preliminary) look at the December numbers (and consequently the full-year 2017 numbers). And they incorporate some revisions going back to the early part of last year. The bottom line is similar to that of RealityChek‘s last update: after surging during the middle part of the recovery, subsidized private sector job creation slowed markedly during the first year of the Trump administration. But another significant development comes through loud and clear, too: During Year One of Trump, growth in payrolls in the public sector proper has ground to a near halt.

First, the new subsidized private sector number, expressed as a share of total job creation for the last few years:

2013: 11.34 percent

2014: 15.97 percent

2015: 23.67 percent

2016: 24.77 percent

2017: 21.49 percent

For good measure, the figure for last month (which will be revised at least twice more): 19.00 percent.

On a standstill basis, here’s how the subsidized private sector’s share of total employment has looked looks at the onset of the last recession (at the end of 2007), at the start of the current recovery, and at the end last year:

December, 2007: 13.22 percent

June, 2009: 14.97 percent

December, 2017: 15.85 percent

For comparison’s sake, in December, 2016, the subsidized private sector’s share of total payrolls was 15.76 percent.

And this is where the dramatic slowdown in government hiring comes in. Here’s how the actual number of government jobs (at all levels) in the U.S. economy has changed annually in recent years:

2013: -57,000

2014: +129,000

2015: +151,000

2016: +206,000

2017: +18,000

Because government jobs are included in the economy-wide job total, much of the reason that the subsidized private’s share in American employment overall kept growing between 2016 and 2017 (from 15.76 percent to 15.85 percent, as shown above), was because the government share fell from 15.34 percent to 15.12 percent.

Yet because the numbers are so big in absolute terms, even this government hiring slowdown has only bent down slightly the growth curve of the subsidized private sector’s importance over the last year, not stopped it, much less thrown it into reverse. That becomes evident upon examining the subsidized private sector’s share of total employment at the start of the recession, the start of the recovery, and for every December starting with 2013:

December, 2007: 13.22 percent

June, 2009: 14.97 percent

December, 2013: 15.43 percent

December, 2014: 15.44 percent

December, 2015: 15.60 percent

December, 2016: 15.76 percent

December, 2017: 15.85 percent

So the type of good news/bad news story that’s been characteristic of many economic trends during the current recovery holds for the prominence of subsidized private sector employment, too. It’s hard to imagine that growth will return to a sound footing until and unless the hiring trends turn decisively in favor of the real private sector.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A Key Sign of Better U.S. Job Quality

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Employment, healthcare services, Jobs, non-farm payrolls, private sector, public sector, real private sector, recession, recovery, subsidized private sector, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The U.S. government’s latest jobs report makes clear that the economy is well past the impact of the latest hurricane season, so it’s a great time to see if a new development in the makeup of American employment and hiring that began to appear this year. And last Friday’s non-farm payrolls figures (for November) confirm that it’s still in place: What I call the subsidized private sector is losing some noteworthy steam as a prime engine of the economy’s job creation during the current economic recovery, while the remaining “real private sector” is gaining momentum.

Not that the subsidized private sector – which consists of industries like healthcare, whose levels of output and therefore employment depend heavily on government subsidies – is a spent job-creation force. In fact, its share of total U.S. jobs on a standstill basis remains much higher than either at the start of the ongoing recovery and than at the onset of the last recession. But the growth curve has taken a significant bend down over the past year. And that’s good news if you believe – as you should – that the most sustainable type of job creation is that spawned by the part of the economy that’s shaped overwhelmingly by market forces.

First let’s look at the numbers over the last few years. For the first eleven months of 2017 (the new November figures are of course preliminary), the subsidized private sector accounted for 21.97 percent of all the economy’s net new hiring. That’s still considerably more than its share of employment last month (15.82 percent). But it’s significantly lower than the eleven-month share from last year – 24.12 percent.

In fact, this 2016-2017 decrease is the first such annual decline in several years. From 2013 to 2015, the number grew from 12.28 percent to 15.82 percent to 23.93 percent.

The converse has also been true: The real private sector’s share of total net new job creation has rebounded this year after falling since 2013: Here are those January-November numbers:

2013: 89.58 percent

2014: 80.09 percent

2015: 70.81 percent

2016: 66.47 percent

2017: 75.84 percent

Nonetheless, the subsidized private sector has built up such powerful employment momentum that its share of total non-farm payrolls (NFP) and of real private sector (RPS) jobs keeps growing. Here’s where it’s stood on some key recent dates.

December, 2007 (recession onset): 13.22 percent of NFP, 18.72 percent of RPS

June, 2009 (recovery start): 14.97 percent of NFP, 22.08 percent of RPS

November, 2017 (latest): 15.82 percent of NFP, 22.92 percent of RPS

Yet the momentum has waned a bit more recently, as the data from the last few Novembers shows:

November, 2014: 15.44 percent of NFP, 22.40 percent of RPS

November, 2015: 15.59 percent of NFP, 22.60 percent of RPS

November, 2016: 15.72 percent of NFP, 22.80 percent of RPS

November, 2017: 15.82 percent of NFP, 22.92 percent of RPS

In other words, between November, 2014 and November, 2015, the subsidized private sector’s share of NFP increased by 0.97 percent and of RPS by 0.89 percent.

Between the following Novembers, these growth rates had slowed to 0.83 percent and 0.88 percent, respectively. But they slowed much more significantly over the subsequent year (through last month) – to 0.64 percent and 0.53 percent, respectively.

This slowdown, moreover, could speed up if major changes are made in the nation’s healthcare system, as still seems distinctly possible. In turn, these developments look like a big economic wild card going forward. For now, though, better quality job creation has joined slightly better quality economic growth as two hallmarks of President Trump’s first year in office. Whether he’s had anything to do with them or not, they’re pieces of good economic news that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Following Up: Government is Back as a Significant U.S. Growth Engine

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bubbles, Following Up, GDP, government spending, Great Depression, Great Recession, gross domestic product, inflation-adjusted growth, inventories, public sector, recovery

If the U.S. economy was really healthy, the closer you looked at the data, the more signs of real vigor you’d see. What a drag, then, to report that evidence of continued, and even increased bubble-ization keeps abounding under the hood.

Last week, I posted on how the details of the latest government report on the gross domestic product (GDP) and its makeup makes clear that the nation’s expansion today is nearly as dependent on the dangerous combination of personal spending and housing as it was during the previous bubble decade – which of course came to an end with the terrifying financial crisis of 2007-2008. Today the trend I’ll highlight is the economy’s growing reliance on government spending, rather than private sector economic activity, for desperately needed growth.

As we saw last week, the Commerce Department’s first (of several) estimates of inflation-adjusted growth in the third quarter of this year came in at a dreary 1.50 percent at an annualized rate. And as a result, the economy remained excessively dominated by that toxic spending-housing combination that helped trigger the crisis. But government spending also showed up as a major growth engine. In fact, it was responsible for more of the quarterly increase in economic activity than at any time since the current recovery was in its earliest stages, and government stimulus was still playing an outsized role propping up the economy.

According to the Commerce Department, government spending generated 0.30 percentage points of that 1.50 percent growth – or 20 percent. In other words, had government spending levels simply remained the same, third quarter real annualized growth would have been a mere 1.20 percent. The last time the public sector played such a prominent role was the third quarter of 2009, just after the official end of the last recession. Then, government spending was responsible for 0.48 percentage points of that period’s real annualized 1.30 percent GDP increase – or 36.92 percent. So this spending kept growth from falling under the one percent mark (to 0.82 percent).

In fact, the public sector has now been a net contributor to growth for four of the last six quarters, which hasn’t been the case since the nation was mired in the last, historically painful, recession. To some extent, government’s renewed growth prominence looks like a reversion to an historic mean. For nearly all of the current recovery, reductions in after-inflation government spending had been subtracting from growth.

At the same time, the current expansion is now more than six years old. That is, the economy is more than six years from the days when it arguably needed artificial life support. So even accounting for a return to normal government spending patterns – or at least a halt in spending cuts – you’d think (and hope!) that growth not only would pick up, but that the private sector would be shouldering more of the load. It seems the reverse scenario is unfolding.

One cautionary note needs to be raised. The third quarter’s growth performance was also held back by a big liquidation of business inventories – the biggest in absolute and relative terms since the fourth quarter of 2012. Then, inventory liquidation subtracted a huge 1.54 percentage points from the quarter’s barely detectable 0.10 percent annualized growth. In the third quarter of this year, it subtracted 1.44 percentage points from the final 1.30 percent growth figure, meaning that had inventories simply stayed the same, the economy would have expanded by a much better 2.74 percent annual rate after inflation.

Nonetheless, 2.74 percent growth – after a Great Recession that was the nation’s worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s – isn’t exactly killing it. Moreover, several previous big inventory draw-downs haven’t presaged faster growth during the recovery. That’s because it’s hard to know beforehand whether these decisions are being taken because businesses want to restock their shelves with newer, better goods in anticipation of stronger demand going forward, or because businesses fear that their customers aren’t likely to spend enough to justify inventory levels they have built up.

So far, the continued slow pace of growth signals that the latter explanation has been the most accurate. That’s no guarantee that the recovery isn’t on the verge of picking up (although an especially on-target group of forecasters don’t see that happening in the current fourth quarter). But it does make clear that the heaviest burden of proof is on those who still insist that the economy is getting stronger and sounder – or even that it’s bound to one of these days.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Signs of Renewed Jobs Strength – in Government

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Employment, government jobs, Jobs, private sector, public sector, recovery, {What's Left of) Our Economy

When I first saw in yesterday’s August jobs report how many government positions the U.S. economy created last month, I knew it was an exceptional number. What I didn’t realize – until crunching the data today – is that it’s both exceptional and possibly a not-so-encouraging sign of things to come for the current American recovery. Especially when coupled with the strength of employment gains in the subsidized private sector that I described yesterday, it’s more evidence that the U.S. private sector’s job-creation power is weakening.

According to the report, 33,000 of the 173,000 total net new jobs generated last month came in government at all levels. (Both numbers, and all the rest, will be revised twice more in the next two months alone.) In absolute terms, that’s the biggest monthly advance in government job numbers since two Augusts ago (43,000). But what’s even more stunning is the relative government job-creation strength it shows. These new positions accounted for more than 19.08 percent of last month’s total employment improvement. That high a ratio hasn’t been seen since October, 2010, when the recovery was barely out of its first year.

Moreover, of the 30 months during the recovery when both public sector and total jobs grew, government jobs have accounted for ten percent or more of total net new job creation in only six. And here’s where matters get unusually interesting. Of those six, three occurred from the recovery’s beginning (in mid-2009) through August, 2012, along with one month when it hit 9.29 percent (October, 2011). August, 2013 registered a 16.80 percent figure (indicating that there’s some seasonality going on here), but two of the remaining three have come in the last three months.

Here are some more statistics suggesting that public sector job creation is gathering momentum. Of the six months of recovery in 2009, three saw increases in government job creation. The following year, government created net new jobs in five of twelve months (a period that included massive temporary hiring for Census taking). Over the next three years, however, government only added more jobs than its lost for two, three, and four months, respectively. But then in 2014, the number jumped to ten, and this year so far, it’s five out of eight.

Comparing January-August periods provides yet more evidence – and reduces the impact of seasonality.

For the the first eight months of 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 the American public sector lost jobs on net. The following year, however, came a 37,000 improvement – which represented only 1.95 percent of all the jobs created by the economy. In the first eight months of this year, however, the 93,000 government jobs increase has represented 5.48 percent of total the U.S. employnent increase – not a huge share, but much higher.

Government payrolls have taken such a hit during the recovery so far that their share of total American employment is not only still well below its level before the last recession began. They’re still (slightly) below the share they accounted for last August. But their increased importance in total job growth over the last year in particular is unmistakable.

As I wrote yesterday, more government jobs may or may not be exactly what the nation needs right now. But economically speaking, the renewed strength of government hiring looks like a sign of mounting trouble in the private sector, and all of its historic innovation and productivity prowess. And this seems especially true not only because public sector hiring showed new signs of life, but because private sector hiring has tailed off notably from its (admittedly strong pace) from earlier this year.