Latest news with #KatyFrank
Forbes
04-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
What Job And Labor Market Numbers Say About The Economy
FILE - Katy Frank, a former computer scientist at the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab, ... More who lost her job Thursday, protests outside the John D. Dingell Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Detroit, Friday, Feb. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File) On one hand, there were some unexpectedly good labor market numbers in June. However, there were other mixed results, raising questions of where the economy might be going overall. The Overall View The 147,000 net new jobs in June reported on Thursday were 33.6% higher than the Dow Jones median prediction of 110,000. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.1% — the expectation was 4.3%. Job openings were 7.8 million, 6.8% higher than the projected 7.3 million. Also, the initial jobless claims report came in at 233,000, about 3% lower than the projected 240,000. Then again, the ADP employment report showed a net cut of 33,000 jobs rather than the projected gain of 100,000. That left multiple economic and investment professionals wondering whether it was a sign of a coming bad report. Also wage growth slowed from 3.8% year-over-year in May and an expected 3.9% in June to 3.7%. According to ADP, private payrolls growth averaged 19,000 in the second quarter of 2025, down from 139,000 in the first quarter and 144,000 in all of 2024. 'June's job losses were concentrated in white collar industries,' Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank, wrote in an emailed note. 'Tariffs, other policy uncertainty, and the Israel-Iran war weighed on private hiring and pay growth last month. Details Are Telling The specifics of job changes add nuance to the overall numbers. Unemployment rates for adult women and whites, both at 3.6%, decreased. The rates for adult men (3.9%), teenagers (14.4%), Asians (3.5%), and Hispanics (4.8%) changed little or not at all from May to June. And yet, unemployment for blacks increased to 6.8%. The number of long-term unemployed, who have been jobless for at least 27 weeks), grew by 190,000 to 1.6 million. They were 23.3% of all unemployed people. Government employment was up by 73,000 in June, with state government employment up by 47,000 (40,000 of that being in education). Federal job losses were another 7,000, the total loss of jobs being 69,000 after a January peak. That seems likely to be a result of Trump administration strategies. Healthcare employment was up by 39,000 in June, even as other major industries, including mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; construction; manufacturing; wholesale trade; retail trade; transportation and warehousing; information; financial activities; professional and business services; leisure and hospitality; and other services were relatively flat. 'While signs of deceleration persist, today's report highlights a labor market that is proving more resilient than anticipated,' wrote ManpowerGroup President and Chief Strategy Officer Becky Frankiewicz in an emailed note. 'The top-line numbers look positive, but our real-time data reveals underlying shifts. June marked the weakest hiring month of the year, with new postings down 7% month-over-month and 2% year-over-year. Open postings fell 8% from May.' More Information The Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a table called 'Labor Market Outcomes of College Graduates by Major,' as I've previously written. It shows majors, unemployment rates, underemployment rates, median wages for both early career and mid-career, and share of college graduates who went on for a graduate degree. Some of the majors with the highest unemployment were in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, with 2023 data paired with a roughly 3.8% overall unemployment rate. Physics (7.8%), computer engineering (7.5%), computer science (6.1%), chemistry (6.1%), and information systems and management (5.6%) all saw higher unemployment rates. In May, Reuters reported that Microsoft was laying off thousands, and the cuts were not performance-related. The results of Q1 were $25.8 billion in net income, up 18% year-over-year, and strong demand for AI services. CEO Satya Nadella said that AI systems are writing 20% to 30% of Microsoft code, according to TechCrunch. In April, Microsoft chief technology officer Kevin Scott reportedly said in an earnings call that 95% of its code will be AI-generated by 2030, or five years from now. This isn't a prediction of disaster, and yet there is unsettling data, like portents of a coming storm. The next few months should start to make things clearer.
CTV News
03-07-2025
- Business
- CTV News
U.S. labour market surprises with 147,000 new jobs last month
Katy Frank, a former computer scientist at the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab, who lost her job Thursday, protests outside the John D. Dingell Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Detroit, Friday, Feb. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File) WASHINGTON — The U.S. labour market delivered another upside surprise last month, churning out a surprisingly strong 147,000 jobs. The unemployment rate ticked down unexpectedly, too. But the headline numbers masked some weaknesses as the U.S. economy contends with fallout from U.S. President Donald Trump's economic policies, especially his sweeping import taxes and the erratic way he rolls them out. Here are five key takeaways from the jobs report the U.S. Labor Department released on Thursday. The headline jobs numbers looked good June hiring was up modestly from May's 144,000 increase in payrolls and beat the 118,000 jobs economists had forecast for last month. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.1% from 4.2% in May as the ranks of the unemployed fell by 222,000. Forecasters had expected the jobless rate to inch up to 4.3%. Labor Department revisions added 16,000 jobs to April and May payrolls. Average hourly wages came in cooler than forecasters expected, rising 0.2% from May and 3.7% from a year earlier. The year-over-year number is inching closer to the 3.5% considered consistent with the Federal Reserve's 2% inflation target. Healthcare jobs increased by 39,000. State governments added 47,000 workers and local governments 33,000. A closer look reveals weakening in the job market 'On net, it was a good report,'' said Sarah House, senior economist with Wells Fargo, 'But when you dig underneath the surface, it was another jobs report that didn't look quite as good as first meets the eye.'' Private companies, for instance, hired just 74,000 workers last month, about half the 137,000 they hired in May. And it was the fewest hires since last October, when there were significant labor disruptions from hurricanes. State and local governments added nearly 64,000 education jobs last month – a total that may have been inflated by seasonal quirks around the end of the school year. The U.S. labor force — the count of those working and looking for work — fell by 130,000 last month on top of a 625,000 drop in May. Economists expect Trump's immigration deportations — and the fear of them — to push foreign workers out of the labor force. A falling labor force can keep the unemployment rate lower than it would be otherwise. That is because jobseekers need time to find employment and can show up as unemployed in the interim. A good job can be hard to find With unemployment low, most Americans enjoy job security. But as hiring has cooled over the past couple of years it's become harder for young people or those re-entering the workforce to find jobs, leading to longer job searches or longer spells of unemployment. The Labor Department said the number of discouraged workers, who believe no jobs are available for them, rose by 256,000 last month to 637,000. When he was laid off earlier this year from his job as a communications manager for a city government in the Seattle area, Derek Wing braced for the worst. 'The word I would use is: 'terrifying''' to describe the experience, he said. Lots of big local employers like Microsoft continue to cut jobs. And he'd heard horror stories of people applying for jobs and then – crickets. 'I had a couple of experiences where I would apply for a job and just feel like it was going out into the ether and never hearing back,'' he said. But Wing's fortunes turned quickly. He applied for an opening with Gesa Credit Union. Six weeks later – 'superfast in this economy'' -- he had a job as a communications strategist for Gesa. The Fed is likely to stay put The upside surprise in June payrolls likely will encourage the Fed to continue its wait-and-see policy of leaving rates unchanged until it has a better idea of how Trump's tariffs and other policies will affect inflation and the job market. The Fed raised its benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023 to combat an outburst of inflation. As price pressures eased last year, the Fed reversed course and cut rates three times in 2024. More cuts were expected. But the central bank has turned cautious this year. 'Today's results are more than positive enough to reduce expectations for Fed rate cuts in the wake of tariffs and policy chaos, at least for now,″ Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a commentary. After the jobs data was released Thursday, yields on U.S. Treasurys spiked immediately. Traders in the futures market now see less than a 7% chance that the Fed could cut its main interest rate at its next meeting later this month. That's down sharply from the nearly 24% chance they saw just a day earlier, according to data from CME Group. The outlook is cloudy Employers are now contending with fallout from Trump's policies, especially his aggressive use of import taxes – tariffs. Mainstream economists say that tariffs raise prices for businesses and consumers alike and make the economy less efficient by reducing competition. They also invite retaliatory tariffs from other countries, hurting U.S. exporters. Trump has increased the anxiety by imposing tariffs in an unpredictable way — announcing and then suspending them, then coming up with new ones. The uncertainty has left businesses bewildered and hesitant to make decisions about hiring and investment. House at Wells Fargo expects monthly job growth to fall below 100,000 in the second half of the year. 'We're bracing for a much lower pace of job growth,″ she said. 'There's still a lot of policy uncertainty.″ By Paul Wiseman
CTV News
03-07-2025
- Business
- CTV News
Closely watched U.S. jobs report likely to show hiring slowed in June
Katy Frank, a former computer scientist at the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab, who lost her job Thursday, protests outside the John D. Dingell Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Detroit, Friday, Feb. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File) The steady slowdown in U.S. hiring likely continued in June as U.S. President Donald Trump's trade wars, federal hiring freeze and immigration crackdown weighed on the American job market. When the Labour Department on Thursday releases job numbers for last month, they're expected to show that businesses, government agencies and nonprofits added 117,500 jobs in June, down from 139,000 in May, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet. The unemployment rate is expected to have ticked up to 4.3 per cent, which would be the highest since October 2021 but still low enough to suggest that most American workers continue to enjoy job security. The U.S. job market has cooled considerably from red-hot days of 2021-2023 when the economy bounced back with unexpected strength from COVID-19 lockdowns and companies were desperate for workers. So far this year employers have added an average 124,000 jobs a month, down from 168,000 in 2024 and an average 400,000 from 2021 through 2023. Hiring decelerated after the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023. But the economy did not collapse, defying widespread predictions that the higher borrowing costs would cause a recession. Companies kept hiring, just at a more modest pace. But the job market increasingly looks under strain. A survey released Wednesday by the payroll processor ADP found that private companies cut 33,000 jobs last month. 'Though layoffs continue to be rare, a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers led to job losses last month,' said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson. (The ADP numbers frequently differ from the Labor Department's official job count.) Employers are now contending with fallout from Trump's policies, especially his aggressive use of import taxes – tariffs. Mainstream economists say that tariffs raise prices for businesses and consumers alike and make the economy less efficient by reducing competition. They also invite retaliatory tariffs from other countries, hurting U.S. exporters. The erratic way that Trump has rolled out his tariffs, announcing and then suspending them, then coming up with new ones,has left businesses bewildered. Manufacturers responding to a survey released this week by the Institute for Supply Management complained that they and their customers were reluctant to make decisions until they understood where Trump's tariffs would end up. 'That whiplash has to stop and it has to stay stopped,' said Susan Spence, chair of the ISM's manufacturing survey committee. Trump's assault on the federal bureaucracy could also show up in June's job report. Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, expects federal jobs dropped by 20,000 last month, 'reflecting a hiring freeze, voluntary quits and retirements.'' For now, she wrote in a commentary Wednesday, court rulings 'have put massive federal layoffs on hold.'' The president's deportations — and the threat of them — also are likely to start having an impact on the job market by driving immigrants out of the job market. In May, the U.S. labor force — those working and looking for work — fell by 625,000, the biggest drop in a year and a half. Paul Wiseman, The Associated Press
