The headline jobs number was much weaker than the consensus estimate of 180,000 and the unemployment rate rose 0.2 percentage points. 
Jobs vs Employment
From September 2020 through early 2022, nonfarm payroll job gains and full time employment changes tracked together.
Starting around March of 2022, a divergence between employment and jobs became very noticeable, and I have been discussing the divergence since then.
This month, employment rose by 67,000 vs payrolls up by 114,000.
Job Stats vs One Year Ago
- Nonfarm Payrolls: +2,512,000
- Employment: +57,000
- Full Time Employment: -508,000
Job Stats vs Two Years Ago
- Nonfarm Payrolls: +5,685,000
- Employment: +2,984,000
- Full Time Employment: +1,199,000
In the last year, nonfarm payrolls are up by 2.515 million while employment is only up by 57,000 and full-time employment is down by 508,000.
Jobs Overview vs Econoday Consensus
- Nonfarm payrolls rose by 114,000 vs the consensus 180,000. But the BLS revised June from 206,000 to 179,000. Ignoring revisions, jobs only rose by 87,000.
- Private payroll rose by 97,000 vs the consensus 155,000.
- Manufacturing payrolls rose by 1,000 vs the consensus -2,000 but a 1,000 negative revision effectively tool away the rise.
Job Report Details
- Nonfarm Payroll: +114,000 to 158,723,000 – Establishment Survey
- Civilian Non-institutional Population: +206,000 to 268,644,000
- Civilian Labor Force: +420,000 to 168,429,000 – Household Survey
- Participation Rate: +0.1 to 62.7% – Household Survey
- Employment: +67,000 to 161,266,000 – Household Survey
- Unemployment: +352,000 to 7,163,000- Household Survey
- Baseline Unemployment Rate: +0.2 to 4.3% – Household Survey
- Not in Labor Force: -214,000 to 100,215 – Household Survey
- U-6 unemployment: +0.4 to 7.8% – Household Survey
Nonfarm Payroll Change by Sector
Government and Health Services are related to the surge of illegal immigrants and the need to address them.
Monthly Change in Nonfarm Payrolls
Monthly Revisions
- The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised down by 2,000, from +218,000 to +216,000.
- The change for June was revised down by 27,000, from +206,000 to +179,000.
- With these revisions, employment in May and June combined is 29,000 lower than previously reported.
Nearly every month there are negative revisions.
Part-Time Jobs
- Involuntary Part-Time Work: +346,000 to 4,566,000
- Voluntary Part-Time Work: -305,000 to 22,036,000
- Total Full-Time Work: +448,000 to 133,684,000
- Total Part-Time Work: -325,000 to 27,729,000
The above numbers never total correctly due to the way the BLS makes seasonal adjustments. I list them as reported.
Hours and Wages
This data is frequently revised.
- Average weekly hours of all private employees fell 0.1 hour to 34.2 hours.
- Average weekly hours of all private service-providing employees was flat at 33.2 hours.
- Average weekly hours of manufacturers fell 0.2 hours to 39.9 hours.
An overall decline or rise of a tenth of an hour does not sound line much, but with employment over 160 million, it’s more significant than it appears at first glance.
Hourly Earnings
This data is also frequently revised. Here are the numbers as reported this month.
Average Hourly Earnings of All Nonfarm Workers rose $0.08 to $35.07. A year ago the average wage was $33.84. That’s a gain of 3.6%.
Average hourly earnings of Production and Nonsupervisory Workers rose $0.09 to $30.14. A year ago the average wage was $29.03. That’s a gain of 3.8%.
Year-over-year wages are keeping up with year-over-year inflation after underperforming for many months. However, year-over-year gains are falling fast.
Unemployment Rate
The unemployment rate hit a 50-year low in January and April of 2023 at 3.4 percent. It’s now 4.1 percent.
“The unemployment rate has bottomed this cycle and will generally head higher.”
I first made that comment many months ago. If there was any doubt, it’s now erased.
Alternative Measures of Unemployment
Table A-15 is where one can find a better approximation of what the unemployment rate really is.
- The official unemployment rate is 4.3 percent up from 4.1 percent last month.
- U-6 is much higher at 7.8 percent, up a sizable 0.4 percentage points from last month.
Both numbers would be way higher still, were it not for millions dropping out of the labor force over the past few years.
Some of those dropping out of the labor force retired because they wanted to retire. Some dropped out over Covid fears and never returned. Still others took advantage of a strong stock market and retired early.
The rest is disability fraud, forced retirement (need for Social Security income), and discouraged workers.
Birth Death Model
Starting January 2014, I dropped the Birth/Death Model charts from this report.
The birth-death model pertains to the birth and death of corporations not individuals except by implication.
For those who follow the numbers, I retain this caution: Do not subtract the reported Birth-Death number from the reported headline number. That approach is statistically invalid.
Birth-Death Methodology Explained
I gave a detailed explanation of the model and why the hype is wrong in my June 8, 2024 post How Much Did the BLS Birth-Death Adjustment Pad the May Jobs Report?
I repeat, do not subtract the birth-death number from the headline number. That’s flawed.
However, it appears likely the BLS is too optimistic about the number of jobs they believe are being created that they don’t otherwise know about.
Household Survey vs. Payroll Survey
- The payroll survey (sometimes called the establishment survey) is the headline jobs number. It is based on employer reporting.
- The household survey is a phone survey conducted by the BLS. It measures employment, unemployment and other factors.
If you work one hour, you are employed. If you don’t have a job and fail to look for one, you are not considered unemployed, rather, you drop out of the labor force.
Looking for job openings on Jooble or Monster or in the want ads does not count as “looking for a job”. You need an actual interview or send out a resume.
These distortions artificially lower the unemployment rate, artificially boost full-time employment, and artificially increase the payroll jobs report every month.
Can the Jobs and Employment Numbers Both Be Reasonably Correct?
Theoretically, the answer is yes because they measure different things. A person working three part time jobs counts for three jobs but only a single person employed.
I have repeatedly asked ADP to account for duplicate social security numbers but they won’t. Amusingly, the BLS wants to, but the employees tell me they can’t because “they don’t have access to the data for security reasons.”
In practice, the answer is no. The BLS Birth-Death model has flaws. I now have a handle on how big those flaws are.
Expect the BLS to Revise Job Growth Down by 730,000 in 2023
On July 26, I commented Expect the BLS to Revise Job Growth Down by 730,000 in 2023, More This Year
At the heart of these revisions is a horribly flawed birth-death model used by the BLS. My calculation closely matches an estimate by Bloomberg’s chief economist.
The Payroll Surveys
- Nonfarm Payrolls are are from the Establishment Survey (CES). The sample survey was 666,000 individual worksites in 2023.
- QCEW (Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages) is a count of Unemployment Insurance (UI) administrative records submitted by 11.9 million establishments.
- BED (Business Employment Dynamics) is large subset (11.2 million) from QCEW. It provides a much better number than the flawed Birth-Death model.
On the basis of QCEW I estimate jobs are overstated by about 900,000.
Nonfarm Payrolls NSA Minus QCEW
The BLS does not revise the previously reported numbers in its annual benchmark adjustments making the historical charts, including my lead chart, wrong. Jobs are overstated on all the charts.
QCEW data is not in a friendly format to download. I manually plugged in the above quarterly numbers from a QCEW download into a better formatted CES download from the St. Louis Fed.
For discussion of the difference between QCEW and the monthly jobs report please see How Much Does the BLS Overstate Monthly Jobs?
In normal times, neither heading into or out of recessions, the differences seem to vary randomly in a tight range.
Recent Economic Data
July 8: Weak Data Says a Recession Has Already Started, Let’s Now Discuss When
I’ve seen enough. A recession has started. Let’s discuss starting with a very good indicator that has few false positives and no false negatives.
July 31: Small Business Employment Growth Is Now Negative (and What It Means)
ADP data shows year-over-year payroll growth is negative 88,000 for small corporations sized 20-49. Trends are negative in all but very large corporations.
August 1: Commercial Construction Spending Is Down 9 Consecutive Months
It’s not office related. And the Census Department has heavy negative revisions to spending. Let’s investigate.
Closing Thoughts
The rising trend in payrolls vs QCEW corresponds to the rising discrepancy between jobs and payrolls.
The BED report makes a mockery of the Birth-Death model.
It’s now August, but the most recent QCEW data is for 2023 Q4 a lag of 10 months vs the start of Q4 in October of 2023.
Jobs are much weaker than reported. More negative revisions are coming. A recession has started.
we’ve got stop light people
same person for nearly 2 months
easy money to pan handle I guess
always clean shaven with clean cloths
“But the BLS revised June from 206,000 to 179,000.”
How much revisions are needed to get more accurate employment numbers because the federal bureaucrats are grossly misreporting the economic stats like GDP, unemployment and inflation to benefit the Democrats going into the November election ?
They are lucky this has not started in January 2024.
The Democrats are just doing whatever it takes to get them to the finish line in November and keep the narrative on abortion and “Woke tolerance” and not the economy and immigration.
And their mainstream media partners are helping as much as they can especially with “remaking” Chameleon (or Kamala) Harris.
Real Unemployment is 15-25%!!!!
Looks like we’re close to puking jobs – http://www.edegrootinsights.com/2024/08/economy-stocks-review-birthdeath-model.html
Typo — that is 100 million persons not in labor force
That is best measured in % terms The labor force participation rate was unchanged.
How many of those are vaccine injured? (lots)
A tiny bit of hot air came out of the market this week with much more to come. That said, many companies reported blowout earnings with expectations of 10%+ growth.
Amazon got beat down hard today and was down about 10% for most of the day because it missed revenue by less than $500 million or less than 0.55% of total revenue.
Seems very oversold especially since it reported major improvement in segments like Amazon Web Services and advertising. Its investing more in AI and also healthcare.
Watch Amazon Prime go south.
It’s like they are ordering off of a Menu… What’s that? Revisions? You want Revisions, we got-’em! How do you like yours? We got Monthly, Bi-Weekly, weekly, yearly, by the day, by the hour, but those last 2 are dependent on if it’s Positive or not.
Don’t worry now, if you don’t like-’em. They change like the Weather, and we are just reporting the updates, er.. um, the facts, yeah them!
Non farm payrolls : most sectors are rising (blue), but below last year average (gray). Construction and transportation are rising faster than last year average. Info, finance, other services and mining are shrinking faster. Gov jobs are rising, though relative to total payrolls they are shrinking. If most of Intel layoffs will be overseas US payrolls might have a small dent, until demand for highly skill and semi skilled workers will rise.
2:30PM : QQQ [1W] close < Jul 1 low trading around Mar [1M] close.
Sigh. It’s just one month’s numbers. The sky is not falling. All these numbers will be revised.
This hair pulling all morning long across the media could easily be avoided by moving to 3 month averaging on government statistics.
IMO, the reason this isn’t done is that the government WANTS to increase uncertainty as it gives them plenty of room to manipulate markets whenever they deem it necessary.
Remember, wall street likes volatility as it leads to additional revenues.
I remember my stat prof in college said there are lies, damned lies and government statistics. This is most important learning tool that I learned from this class as it is repeated time and time again. However, the reaction to often worthless numbers is always the same.
This is the latest in a series of unemployment increases that began in April.
and were are still not even within breathing distance of historical norms, let alone a recession. wishful thinking
I do not agree on the recession front. We shall see. Of curse, the NBER declares recessions with a significant lag time, which I think Mish said a little while back ranges from 4 to 12 months, so we won’t have the official word until next year. By that point, it will have been obvious to everyone.
Good Lord!
Go to FRED. Take the Employment Level (Household survey) data series. Set frequency to quarterly (3-month average) vs. monthly. Set Units to Percent Change from Year Ago. See that employment change has fallen from its usual healthy ~2% growth rate and is now zero year-over-year…
Now note that this fall-to-zero has ONLY ever happened just prior to the recessions of 2007, 2001, 1958, 1956, or during the recessions of 2020, 2001, 1990, 1982, 1980, 1973, 1970 etc.
There are no outliers, no false signals.
This isn’t just one month’s numbers. It’s a year’s worth of weakness in employment.
In my book, there is no room for further excuses.
See for yourselves: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1rac8
There are important components of employment that do not show up in the establishment survey – sole proprietors, members of partnerships, and 1099 workers.
All three of these categories are being killed by the various “progressive” administrations around the country. On top of this minimum wage floors and rules are making it difficult for businesses to keep full time staff. More part time employees (even if is just a few hours) show up as establishment jobs.
Put it all together and it makes sense that actual employment is falling while payrolls are still rising.
fact check: California fast food workers under the new scheme have not been shed at a massive rate as commenters on this website seem to believe. A closing here and there eating up the PR from the cooperate press release does not mean a thing.
But fast food hours across the board are reported to be cut in response, so workers are not making any more than they were previously when their hourly rate was the same as everyone else’s, around $16-$17 in CA. In response the fast food union is petitioning government to raise their special $20/hr rate by 3.5% in 2025 and 2026. [lol]
I still fail to understand what is special about fast food workers as opposed to other lower wage workers. Must be something to do with UNIONS because healthcare workers (and that includes EVERYONE who works in a healthcare facility, even janitors) were scheduled to get a minimum hourly wage of $25 on July 1. This had to be pushed back due to the CA budget deficit and is now scheduled for Jan 1. Healthcare workers have a strong union in CA.
yes i agree. unions in the private sector are good and logical. For public unions like cops and teachers i lean towards mish, they are not good for the public interest. Because who are they negotiating against? Politicians who have no concern because there are no “profits” to fight over and its just a matter of raising taxes which is easier than a big fight with unions. Taxpayers always loose.
Job losses continue to accumulate especially in the information technology area. Intel announced 15,000 reductions yesterday. Many substantial employment reductions have been announced in the last 2 years. Many terminated jobs were high paying so the pain is deep especially in CA. CA is headed for a full scale Democrat meltdown.
And yet there is still an insatiable demand for candidates to fill job openings in the tech industry. man you’ve lost the plot
And where will the majority of those candidates be coming from? Hint, not from this country.
anything that can be outsourced has been. outsourcing has been a huge consultant class objective going back decades. your theory that an experienced engineer that works closely with teams can be easily replaced by an Indian working remotely or AI is just out of touch with reality. sorry.
You should have a look at the H-1b numbers. Companies know how to short technical staff by hiring people making $75k for a job that would go to a US worker at over $100k.
I don’t know a single H1B that makes below 100k. They too have figured out what going wages are and know the companies aren’t allowed to pay below market rate
I know lots under 100k. “companies aren’t allowed to pay below market rate”. lol, you have no idea what you’re talking about.
So you don’t know any fruit pickers or seasonal resort workers, then.
i worked with a company where at least 1/2 our field service engineers to service medical imaging equipment were H1B. I spoke with many of them reqularly they were all dancing on a string, if the job was lost, they had a short window to find another USA employment or they had to leave the country. The company knew this and worked them hard, I spent 13 years there and none of H1B’s were there when I left, they had all been fired/quit and replaced with another horde of H1Bs. They were from africa,south africa,India,Middle East, no europeans, but 2 russians. 1 chinese PHD..
All were underpaid, and made to work significant overtime with out compensation.
that was my experience with the world of H1B employment. Thankfully i was able to step out that Company and into a whole new thing.
If you believe “insatiable demand” and “openings” you are more than a bit delusional.
mish i dont know what to tell you. if you are an engineer with intel on your resume there are many companies that will snatch you up. true getting laid wont help you but generally speaking you can expect an offer over 100k very quickly. worse case scenario you settle for slightly less pay but these workers laid off will be more than fine. not a bellwether of recession
Lots of phantom job openings. The real advantage for entry level are OPT hires. No payroll taxes for employee or employer. 3 year window thanks to Democrats.
The job losses have impacted Indian enrollments in information technology programs. My university has experienced sharply declining enrollments since 2023 – 2024. The boom times are over for international IT students.
It costs nothing these days to advertise a job opening, hence no incentive to withdraw the notice.
its often “window dressing” to make the company look more succesful. “hey look, there hiring even more people”
My employer, a family owned business, had the father of president/ceo, in a nice office, all he did was interview people and put their appliations on file. It was a revolving door, many people leaving, many being replaced. It was chaos where people were worked until they quit from bad managment,bad pay, and overwork.
Yeah they were constantly hiring, because the had to, to keep the doors open.
Advertising for job opening can be a red flag. They can’t keep their employees because they can’t run the business without quasi slave labor.
Yes but jobs went up in leisure & travel, healthcare and construction. Only tech counts?
Apparently Onlyfans is the go to place for attractive female college grads… set up a channel… strip down … and watch the $$$ flow in
until the simps run out of cash or the wife finds out…
And the Democrats still think Newsom is the answer… He would get wrecked for his CA. record Nationally.
Stu, I don’t mean to belittle your powers of observation, but have you seen the effort to polish the turd that is Kammila? The dems have a vast network of media and government in their pockets.
The truth is manufactured and massaged everyday by this network, when its Newsom’s time or when his unique talents are needed he will be dropped into his new “slot” and the machine will began polishing him into a flawless diamond, the new hope of the people’s party.
mish i got to hand it to you, you never miss a chance to copy paste your explainer for the birth death model going back decades. But a recession is a tall order. Companies are still not shedding jobs and pulling back on investment in a way that we would expect in a real downturn. And beside, don’t we WANT unemployment to rise over 5%? wouldnt that crush inflation? Stocks, housing, it all comes down in a downturn in the business cycle and flushes out all the hair-brained mal-investment. Isnt that something you want?
Let’s not kill the angst by introducing logic into the discussion.
Logic has little to do with recessions, economics is a motley mix, of human desire, profit making/taking schemes, global politics, the weather and its asociated factors like plant diseases, insects, power failures and MARKETING, always MARKETING building desire for the useless and the pointless.
Anyone who has lived through a couple recessions will know they appear from nowhere and dissapear much more slowly than they appeared. After they appear, “experts” will tell us all through the media, the exact cause and why. They are voodoo doctors, putting a spell of “Logic and Reason” over the unexplainable to keep the horses from getting spooked, they need the horses reined to the chariots of stability serving the masters dragging the economy forward.
We are the horses in this metaphor, staying in our barns as long as the hay appears in the stalls on payday.
His prior post just mentioned Intel is shedding 15K jobs!
It’s possible Intel in the canary in the coal mine. Lots of jobs may suddenly be shed in the next few months as it becomes more and more obvious that things are dramatically slowing down.
Intel is not the canary, any more than facebook or google or microsoft were when they shed negligible jobs. Your thoughts are just wishful thinking
Intel’s cut is 15% of workforce, that’s not “negligible”.
I don’t wish for a recession. Not sure any sane person wants that besides people who are shorting the market.
Yep. I’ve heard those that know Fed members say they are fine with 5-6% unemployment. But I suspect they may cut just to keep the economy going. I think what has really happen is people’s expectations to not work are out of whack.
Can someone factor in the vaccine injuries — https://expose-news.com/2024/01/03/financial-analyst-ed-dowd-says-disability-claims-among-women-shot-up-55-after-rollout-of-covid-vaccines/
You cannot use a variable that cannot be given a range of values, or a definite value, in any useful equation. Vaccine injuries are an unknown variable, the time window is too short to evaluate the types and amounts of damage.
It’s like asking to include the eye colours of the unborn generations, a number yet to be determined.
Very depressing overall. Hopefully the silver lining is that it all helps prevent harris from staying in the White House.
it wont
I’m afraid thats up to the CIA, not the FED.
Harris will be toast. Here’s why:
There have been 19 presidential elections since WW2. In all but one of them (1956), the incumbent party’s candidate lost the popular vote if the unemployment rate did anything but decline in the spring of the election year.
The 1956 exception (Eisenhower’s re-election) happened because the UE increase between March and June of that year was slight and isolated, and the economy was otherwise very strong. This year, UE rose by 0.1% each spring month, and in July the increase accelerated to a 0.2% rise. UE was 3.8% in March, and in July it was 4.3%, with the rise starting to accelerate.
A long list of other indicators has been showing a weakening economy all year. We probably entered a recession in June. This increase in the rate of increase is typical of the start of a recession. I will have a better handle on it when the August UE data are published in another month, but from what I have seen so far, I will not be surprised if UE hits 5% by election day.
The only hopes for Ds are that the NYC judge sentences Trump to prison, or for a successful second assassination attempt, which so many social media liberals wish for or would at east cheer. If the election proceeds with neither of those interventions, Trump will win. By the way, I have been a “double hater” write-in voter since 2016, and thus am not talking my book here.
“It’s the economy, stupid.”
– James Carville, 1992
For the true nerds here (raising hand), there was another semi- exception in 2012 when UE was flat that spring but Obama was re-elected anyway. That was a statistical fluke caused by a change in the seasonal adjustment methodology that made the fall of 2011 look stronger than it was and the spring of ’12 look weaker than it was.
UE actually declined that spring, which is why Obama was re-elected. All the campaigns do is affect the victory margin, but not the end result.
A good example would be 2016, when UE declined. She won the popular vote by 2%, but lost the electoral college because of her late decision to campaign in AZ rather than WI and MI.
The indicator worked. And it worked in the unusual covid election of 2020, when UE rocketed up that spring and Trump lost the popular vote by 4.5%.
To check the monthly UE rates back to 1948, go here:
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000?years_option=all_years
yes but these are not normal times…. normally an inverted curve signals recession. not true anymore. this is an odd economy. and sure unemployment is going up, but from an economist perspective that’s a good thing. It slackens the labor market and reduces inflation… and people are still grumbling over inflation. The way you speak in declaratives with such certainly doesnt give you credibility.
I have lived long enough to see “this time is different” in many and sundry formuations. Invariably, this time isn’t different, even if some details vary. There are always differences, but are they material? I see no evidence of it this time.
the inverted curve not leading to recession really IS different. the causes and the aftermath are up for debate, but this economy is behaving differently than in past times. How can you deny this?
I can only suspect (as opposed to asserting) that the difference you cite is related to the snapback from covid.
it absolutely is covid. logistics turned on head, stimulus checks, its hard to say for sure but this economy is odd. I feel like nobody knows what form the next recession will take, not even goldman sachs
You’re writing as if you think what you currently observe is an accurate and complete reflection of what really is. That is unwise.
The inverted curve may have already led to the recession that has already started, but is not yet visible to you.
See my post above about employment levels.
sure jan, the invisible recession that is obvious and yet noone can see. it’s like an ancient zen koan.
I write in an active voice, as I was taught to do more than 50 years ago. Kill me now. LOL
You must have one heck of a great staff as this daily intake is really professional and well presented. THank you.
Thanks Raptor, my staff is just me!
give your staff a pay raise then!!!
If the unemployment rate had fallen they’d tout that. With unemployment up, they’ll tout “Mortgage Rates Plummet!”
You called it Mish, congrats, we are in a recession
Thanks!
Mish, I am critical of your stuff in some respects (call it genuine critical thinking, if you will), but your blog is far and away better than anything in the media when it comes to the presentation and analysis of econometric data, which is much more informative than the vast majority of economists.
No one is right about everything, but you have nailed the weakness of the economy all year, and very probably the timing of the recession’s onset. That is no small achievement. Kudos to you! Keep up the great work. This blog is my go-to source for useful and accurate econometric data and analysis. You leave the “news” media sputtering in the dust, that’s for goddamned certain.
You have every reason to take a victory lap, but don’t let it go to your head. From painful experience in money management, the minute you start thinking you’re a genius, the markets will show you exactly and expensively just how stupid you can be. But for now, congratulations!
Mish is the first and only source I read each month when this comes out. Excellent analysis!
Ditto on the Mish props! Mish is better than the rest I read, no BS, just facts, followed by expert opinion from Mish! Much appreciated Mish!
Same here!
Based on what ?
Try an ouncer of common sense.
If that fails – try reading my reports
Every village needs an idiot. Casual Observer is yours.
This village has more than one. How about Engel?!
Engel is just still pining for karl marx, his partner in crime and economics…
Keep trying. I’ve been a reader of Mish since the late 1990s. All of these reports are basic copy pastes of other posts for the last 25 years. In effect the economy will do what it does. Recessions are normal events. They should not be prevented from happening. Somewhere along the way TPTB started thinking all recessions were bad events that should be prevented at all costs.
The definition of a recession started changing and I am not sure why. You’ll see a positive GDP print for the summer. That is not a recession. The Fed can do what it wants but their mandate is screwed up. They should not be concerned with employment as much as they are.
Apparently based on various empirical observations since truth or logic no longer functions in Kumelot. In Kumelot where the Peter Principle reigns on the plains of Spain and Maine to every one’s pain and the Sadomasochist’s pleasure. Have a nice Kumelot casuality day. . .
Peter, is slang for penis, which I would offer is the real principle involved in Kammila’s rise in politics and while Cleopatra proved the power of femminine wiles and political power, Kammila seems to have neither of these traits.