Employers are hiring like mad, but employees are working fewer hours in most job categories.
Weekly Hours Then and Now
- Manufacturing Production 41.5 Then, 40.6 Now
- Manufacturing 40.5 Then, 40.1 Now
- Construction 39.0 Then, 38.9 Now
- Total Private 34.4 Then, 34.3 Now
- Retail Trade 30.7 Then, 29.8 Now
- Leisure and Hospitality 25.8 Then, 25.3 Now
Peak Weekly Hours
Weekly hours generally peaked sometime early in 2021. Retail trade weekly hours peaked in November of 2021. Total private weekly hours peaked at 35.0 hours in January of 2021 and has been sliding ever since.
Seven-tenths of an hour multiplied by the current employment level of 161,262,000 is 112,883,400 hours. At the current average work week of 34.3, that’s the equivalent of 3.29 million employees!
Let that sink in. At the reduced work week compared to January of 2021, the economy needed to add 3.29 million employees just to break even on hours worked.
Employment did rise from 149,871,000 in January of 2021 to 161,262,000 in July of 2023. That’s a rise of 11.391 million so the index of total hours worked went up over that period.
The average work week and index of aggregate hours data only goes to March of 2006. Here is a long term chart.
Weekly Hours Since 2006
Index of Aggregate Hours
The index of aggregate hours was 115.1 in January of 2023. It was also 115.1 in July of 2023.
Employment rose from 160.19 million to 161.26 million, an increase of 1.07 million, just to work the same number of hours.
In that same time frame, nonfarm payrolls rose from 155.00 million jobs to 156.34 million jobs.
Hoot of the Day
It took an increase in employment of 1.07 million (1.34 million jobs) to work the same number of aggregate hours in July of 2023 as January of 2023.
Thus, strong jobs is really a function of the desire of employees to work fewer hours and/or employers fearful of any layoffs so they schedule a shorter work week for their employees.
In particular, Leisure and Hospitality hours are down from a peak of 26.7 hours to 25.3 hours. That’s a lot of part time employees.
For the Second Month, the Jobs Report Falls Short of Lofty Expectations
Four sectors lost jobs in July, Manufacturing, Transportation and warehousing, information, and professional and business services.
Gains in Leisure and Hospitality slowed to a crawl.
For discussion of today’s job report please see For the Second Month, the Jobs Report Falls Short of Lofty Expectations
Labor Productivity Jumps 3.7 Percent in 2023 Q2 as Hours Worked Declines
Yesterday, I reported Labor Productivity Jumps 3.7 Percent in 2023 Q2 as Hours Worked Declines
Actual hours worked fell in business, manufacturing, and nonfarm business.
What Do Federal Tax Receipts and Total Receipts Suggest About Recession?
In case you missed it, please see What Do Federal Tax Receipts and Total Receipts Suggest About Recession?
The above chart is through 2023 Q1. Tax data for the second quarter is not yet available. See the above link for details.
Final Thoughts
Gross Domestic Income (GDI) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are two measures of the same thing. They equal over time.
For discussion of GDI and GDP, please see Real GDP Beats Expectations, Rises 2.4 Percent in First Estimate for 2023 Q2
Once again, we see an enormous and rising discrepancy between jobs and employment, especially full time employment.
The weakness in full time employment also turns up in tax data, productivity, and GDP reports. Collectively, these data items suggest GDI, not GDP, is a better measure of the economy.
All the jobs growth over the past few years has been a rebound from Covid. And we’re still short of the trend prior to Covid. There is no job boom. Never was one. It’s just the US gov’t marketing their fake accomplishments.
One day the government will stop borrowing money to pay for deficits.
This will happen as soon as debt interest becomes untenable.
How? If 1/3 of the budget is borrowed then to balance it then spending has to go down 1/3, so no SS, Medicare, or Military industrial complex, and all the politicians get dis-elected, or they raise taxes 50%, and all the politicians get dis-elected.
I just don’t see that many suicidal politicians.
They missed their chance to refinance the debt into 100 year 2% bonds, that would have kicked the can way down the road.
To cut expenditure by 1/3rd won’t balance the budget because those getting the fat MIC contracts for example will end up with less profits to tax, and all the hundreds of thousands of employees and subcontractors will be paying less tax, and then all the people and retailers who depend on discretionary expenditure by those laid off MIC workers will also end up paying less tax. Do the same for all the other government departments and their hangers on that get cut or axed to make that 1/3rd cut then maybe a 2/3rd cut or more will get to a balanced budget. It needs doing but no politician will destroy his career by pushing for the FedGov to become a lean and mean sub trillion budget entity.
Also Social Security isn’t the problem but politicians like to conjoin it to healthcare to scare the voters.
Jack, this will happen when medicare blows up, with one in five dollars being spent on medicare, it won’t be long now 😔
As mentioned earlier, many employers keep people part time to avoid paying for health insurance, Also many of those with free Obamacare insurance would lose coverage if they were working full-time. Universal single payer healthcare would solve that problem. We have the highest per capita healthcare costs in the world, about double those with single payer systems, AND the worst health. Dead last. Something not adding up. Perhaps its b/c the insurance industry is another powerful lobby. Need to keep the pockets lined of our dear leaders. Best government money can buy. Meanwhile Rome burns.
That is nothing more than the medical insurance industry trying to keep up with the hospitals and pharmaceutical industry.
Hospitals aren’t doing so great, but Pfizer has a vaxx for everything!
The problem with health care is it costs way too much in the US. If we lowered costs to match the rest of the world, the issue of how to pay for it would be moot. Will never happen since both sides of the aisle take a lot of donations from the industry.
There is a one-for-one correspondence between demand and time deposits. As time deposits are depleted, demand deposits grow dollar-for-dollar. Yes, loans = deposits.
That’s what is propelling the economy, dis-savings, the conversion of time to demand deposits. I.e., the demand for money is falling, velocity rising.
TMS, Divisia Aggregates, etc. all show contractions. But AD, aggregate monetary purchasing power, is being driven by an increase in the transaction’s velocity of money.
see: https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2023/may/rise-and-fall-of-pandemic-excess-savings/#:~:text=Should%20the%20recent%20pace%20of%20drawdowns%20persist%E2%80%94for%20example%2C,at%20least%20into%20the%20fourth%20quarter%20of%202023.
Record government deficits => record government borrowing => record demand deposits.
Government deficits is driving the economy and Fed is trying to counter with rising interest rates.
Fed cannot keep up.
Economy will continue to heat up.
We were in a Supply Shock, lack of inventory and lack of production for multiple years. Inventories now catching up, workers have been hired, automation has happened, Digitization has happened. Economy will be fine…inflation will go down.
Education and health service = regular walks in the fresh air to the library.
“ Education and health service = regular walks in the fresh air to the library. ”
My local library has more books on-line than on shelf
“Employers are hiring like mad, but employees are working fewer hours in most job categories.”
More good news! Employees are hiring like mad. Nice to see that here.
Also, Oil up again this week. Oil stocks doing well. Though I continue to sell into strength and book some profits. Almost up to 15% cash now.
Where are all the folks who kept predicting the market to crash and $40 oil?
There is demand-side inflation and supply-side inflation. The FED can only fix the demand-side. So, stagflation, business stagnation accompanied by inflation will be the inevitable outcome.
Seems like a reasonable scenario. More details needed though. What is the timing, and how are you planning to profit from your prediction?
Personally I expect economic growth to average 1-2% per year on average this decade. Inflation 2-4%. Oil to average between $80 and $100. Oil company returns 15-30% per year. So I remain heavily invested in oils.
Truth be known, All the money being squandered on Ukraine is a big part of the inflation Americans are experiencing.
Stagflation requires HIGH Unemployment.
Won’t have that for the foreseeable future. Too many people took retirements during CV years. Most won’t come back to workforce. Plenty of others have well paying side gigs now, so aren’t looking for crappy longer hours jobs.
Digitization and Automation removing some of the jobs that were able to be replaced.
Still millions too few workers. Millions too few houses / housing units. Millions of Boomers to Retire. Millions of Boomers’ Kids starting to inherit the former Boomers’ wealth.
It’s going to be a LONG time before there’s a loose Labor Market.
plague years had profound affect about work life. so much change. remote work. folks enjoying life without offices. just another episode in a long slog down in numbers of hours humans work for the past 200 years. the kids have the right idea. as a mature man, born in 1960, i decided in circa 1994, i’d try and work an hour or two per day 3 days per week and take 4 day weekends. it was actually quite easy to pull off. at this pace past 30 years, i could work until i drop dead.
People got boned by price gouging and essential workers got exploited by their companies. The mask is off: working hard just makes those corporate ghouls richer at the expense of your life force. Hard workers go under the bus with the rest when layoff time comes, as the people making the decisions have no idea which is which.
We have few dignified choices going forward: Start our own companies, or slack, or start a company while you slack. Dishonest? Maybe… but Bill and Donnie have shown us that the truth has little tangible value, and dishonesty will take you much further in life.
Truth and Manners have taken a sabbatical.
This winter will be a nightmare for the COVID vaxxed as most immune systems are compromised… any little bug could cause havoc to their health which could cause more problems for the economy…
The Covid fairy is coming to wreak vengeance! Any day now….
Will she leave a voucher under my pillow?
The turndown in tax receipts has been so fast that the rest of the economy has not yet much responded to whatever is causal here. Hours worked are drifting down. Consumer loan delinquencies have turned up which signals recession in short/medium term. The numbers are puzzling. But recessions can’t start until short rates start to fall. As long as yield curve is steepening – no recession. The curve reverse is like releasing a bow string – once it goes the arrow releases and the balloon is hit and recession can start but not until then. Quarter speed ahead for now.
Duh.
Short rates can’t fall until the recession takes hold for a while.
Education and health service : “relative strength” is high.
I wonder how much of this is tied to avoiding full time employees in some skill-sets. Part time employees tend to be much cheaper than full time employees (benefits and hourly) and both tend to be cheaper per hour than contractors.
Look at the charts. Change in payroll change of character : more red with minus
signs on the left.
One month relative to the last 12 months : construction and mfg “relative strength” are the best.
They are hiring high school kids and students. They are hiring in the retail trade,
leisure and hospitality and the health service. They are hired for less hours.
They compete with each other for slots. The good ones work for more
hours, the bad ones, and those who have more than one job, get less.
The part time workers are spare tires. They don’t run the show. They depend on the
boss. They don’t make enough to finish the month, averaging only 25/30 hours per week, the good and the bad.
Jobs data is skewed due to the sickness and increased death due to Warp speed.
Mish: I would love an article about the increased deaths (40% reported by CEOs of Insurance Companies) and vaccine injured not able to work and/or reduced hours. There are articles on Naturalnews.com about this. Other countries are reporting this that used the same vaccines in US. These figures play a large part in our economy now and in the future.
Ed Dowd on USA Watchdog last Saturday.
Dr. John Campbell video a couple of days ago. The stats for Canada are very bad and they are still pushing the vax. Perhaps Trudeau’s wife doesn’t want to wind up like Madam Mussolini.
Nah. There are plenty other reasons to leave that POS.
No! We must follow the narrative! I wonder if Trump is still bragging about bringing it to us? Don’t worry, the response of how to handle the vaxx making things worse was already addressed at the famous event 201. Basically, ignore as long as possible. Then, when it can’t be ignored anymore, tell them your country thanks you for your service. Just like the VA told me when I got out. You just can’t make this up! And the slaves never learn! Especially after they die! It’s all such a joke llmll))l)l)
Toot toot!
The CDC’s own death safety signal for the Covid shots, triggered within a month or so of release to the public. The CDC hid that from the public for 2 years. The V-Safe data showed a 7.7% rate of serious reaction to the Covid shots. The CDC hid that from the public, until ordered by a court. The FDA is hiding autopsy data they have of some people who died, post Covax. It’s properly called a cover-up.
“Jobs data is skewed due to the sickness and increased death due to Warp speed”
Sickness increased simply because people stopped going to hospitals to get diagnosed.
Around here, most of the fewer hours worked are because the workers can’t get the employer to schedule them an honest full-time workweek. Employers seem to prefer they only work around 30 hours for full-time. I haven’t had employees to deal with for a long time. Because I don’t want to. It’s not really the employees that bother me, the state just makes it so that it’s not cost-effective enough for me to bother. I also know they haven’t made it any better since I last had one. Don’t forget! Much of this that we’re seeing unfold is the result of so many slaves that believe they are powerless because they can’t possibly disobey the lunatic ramblings of an 80 something year old grifter with dementia. Oh no! What can we do?! You slaves just crack me up!
We have many more sick days than before but also, people don’t want to work as much. We used to have people that wanted overtime. Now it’s difficult to get people to work 40 hours.
They got lives to live, and no faith in the future. If you want ’em motivated to work, they need to starve a little… otherwise they’re just gonna muddle along until their robot replacement arrives.
It’s different on the way down than it was on the way up. The incentives have changed.
In the old days employers invested in their staff and workers invested via pensions. In the 80s that agreement changed as Corp Raiders attacked pensions, ran companies into the dirt to get the pension cash. Now we have a 100% mercenary workforce. The jobs are pretty bad. Computers have taken a lot of the work and the upper management and boards heist ALL the money. The quality of CEO and leadership also sucks
According to the BLS in June alone 857,000 (!!!!) people have been enlisted on disability benefits in the US. Let that sink in. Those people will not work full time if at all and they will not appear on any jobless claims number nor do they count as unemployed. Of course employers panic and try to hire as many people as possible. You never know who is going to die or be sick next. The effect of those “vaccines” from 2021 onward explain most of the labor market numbers we’re seeing today.
Don’t forget that when the vaxx cripples them and they apply for disability, mish will call the disabled frauds andwill never blame the entities responsible. For some reason, he’s perfectly okay with the truly fraudulent behavior of the system that created their disabilities, he just hates the disabled. Just like the socialists.
Toot toot!
Mish has never attacked the disabled.
To Ron J: every time he says disability he adds the word fraud. Every time. Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension. It’s the real measure of literacy.
Plenty of people here who would love some overtime.. The pay here is kept low through good government.
My reading comprehension is fine. Disability and fraud are two separate subjects. Mish has referred to the tendency of some people during recent bad times, who have run out of unemployment insurance, to claim disability, when they are not disabled. It has been a repeat issue.
Remember when Obamacare put in new rules regarding providing health insurance to full-time employees? And now that claims are on a rocket higher, and since rates are based on claims experience, companies have more incentive to keep hours under 30/wk to avoid those insurance costs.
Tying healthcare to employment is the one of the dumbest things our government has ever done.
Check your history, the government didn’t tie health care to employment, industry added healthcare as a fringe benefit to attract employees while wages were capped during WW2.
The government did nothing to discourage that, that is true. Then every company had to follow suit to get workers, and here we are.
Rather than grousing about climate change, this is more what I’m looking for. This is interesting. What at first is a bit of a headscratcher makes sense in the context of a long-predicted but slow to appear recession – some degree of labor hoarding makes sense in an environment where having to hire back laid of workers could be hard. You might like to have some layoffs based on current conditions, but the cost to your business of being wrong and actually getting that soft landing (not likely, but….) & needing to rehire is high.