May, 05 2023, 12:08pm EDT
Economy Adds 253,000 Jobs, Black Unemployment Hits New Record Low of 4.7 Percent
An analysis by economist Dean Baker
This was a generally solid jobs report, with the economy adding 253,000 jobs in April. However, there were sharp downward revisions to both the February and March jobs numbers, of 78,000 and 71,000, respectively. Taken together, the April figure is just 104,000 higher than the number previously reported for March.
The household survey also showed a very positive picture, with the overall unemployment rate edging down to 3.4 percent, a half-century low. The unemployment rate for Black workers fell to 4.7 percent, a new record low. The unemployment rate for Black men over age 20 also hit a record low of 4.5 percent. The previous low, before this recovery, for overall Black unemployment was 5.3 percent and for Black men it was 5.1 percent. The unemployment rate for Black teens fell to 12.9 percent, tying the record low hit in September.
Falling Hours Partially Offset Rising Employment
The average workweek was unchanged from March, but it is down from January and February. As a result, the index of aggregate hours has actually fallen at an annual rate of 0.7 percent since January. The January data were likely anomalous, but the index of aggregate hours has risen at less than a 0.9 percent annual rate since October; this is certainly a sustainable pace in the growth of labor demand.
Wage Growth Accelerates in April
There was a big jump in the average hourly earnings in April, which brought the annualized rate of growth over the last three months to 4.2 percent. This is still considerably slower than the 6.4 percent rate seen at the start of 2022, but likely somewhat faster than is consistent with the Fed’s 2.0 percent. This is somewhat faster growth than had been reported in March, but the prior months’ data has been revised upward.
It is worth noting that the wage growth being reported in the Average Hourly Earning (AHE) series is somewhat slower than the 4.8 percent rate reported in the Employment Cost Index. This gap could be the result of error in the data, but, if it is real, it would imply that the change in composition is reducing average wage growth. (The gap is still there if we do an apples to apples comparison looking at ECI for private sector wages.) That would mean we are seeing less employment in higher paying industries and occupations, and more employment in lower paying ones.
If that is the case and this shift is persisting, as opposed to being a peculiar development associated with reopening from the pandemic, as was the case in 2021, we would likely be more interested in the AHE data. This would indicate the increase in average hourly wages in the economy as a whole. Insofar as workers are moving into lower paying positions, these are presumably also lower productivity positions. If we are trying to determine the impact of wage growth on inflation, we want to see how wages increase relative to productivity. Since the latter is affected by changes in composition, we want a wage measure that is also affected by changes in composition.
Share of Unemployment Due to Voluntary Quits Fall Again
The share of unemployment due to voluntary quits falls to 13.8 percent, well below 2019 peaks and only slightly higher than 13.6 percent average for the year. By this measure, the labor market is still strong, but very much within the normal range. It had peaked at 15.8 percent in September.
Share of Short-Term Unemployed Falls Sharply
After rising in February and March, the share of the unemployed who have been out of work less than five weeks fell sharply in April, from 38.9 percent to 33.2 percent. While having more long-term unemployed would ordinarily be bad news, if we are seeing a recession coming on, there has to be an increase in short-term unemployment before there can be an increase in long-term unemployment. We are not seeing any evidence of this to date.
Wage Growth Continues to be Fastest for Lower Paid Workers
Throughout the recovery, lower paid workers have higher than average wage growth. That trend is continuing. The average hourly wage for production and non-supervisory workers overall, as well as in the low-paying leisure and hospitality sector, increased at a 4.7 percent annual rate over the last three months.
Employment to Population Ratio for Prime Age Workers Rise to Post Pandemic Highs
The overall prime age (25 to 54) employment to population ratio rose by 0.1 pp in April to 80.8 percent, 0.2 pp above pre-pandemic peak. For women, there was a 0.2 pp increase in April to 75.1 percent. This is 0.4 pp above its pre-pandemic peak. The rate for men fell by 0.1 pp to 86.4 percent, 0.4 pp below its pre-pandemic peak.
Professional and Technical Services and Health Care Lead Job Growth
The professional and technical services category added 45,000 jobs in April, while health care added 39,600 jobs. Job growth in restaurants slowed, with the sector adding just 24,800 jobs in the month. Hotels added just 200 jobs. Restaurant employment is still 0.7 percent below its pre-pandemic level. Hotel employment is down by 11.9 percent.
Manufacturing and Construction Add Jobs, After Small Losses in March
Construction (including residential construction) and manufacturing both added jobs in April, after small losses in March. Construction added 15,000 jobs, with residential construction adding 14,200. Manufacturing added 11,000. This is noteworthy, since these sectors are historically the most cyclical. The jobs numbers show no evidence of a recession, although the index of aggregate hours in both sectors is down from January.
Nursing Homes and Child Care Both Add Jobs
As low-paying sectors with difficult work, employment in both nursing homes and child care has lagged in the recovery. Nursing homes added 2,600 jobs in April, while child care facilities added 2,400. Employment in the two sectors is now down by 11.9 and 5.1 percent, respectively.
Labor Market Remains Solid, but Sustainable
The overall picture in the April employment report is incredibly positive. Unemployment is at a half-century low and Black unemployment is the lowest on record. We are still adding jobs, but the demand for labor as measured by the growth rate in hours worked is very much at a sustainable pace.
Wage growth may still be somewhat more rapid than is consistent with the Fed’s 2.0 percent target, but it is only modestly higher than what we saw in 2019, when inflation was at roughly 2.0 percent. If the Fed’s rate hikes don’t due too much damage going forward, and we don’t see serious fallout from the banking crisis, the labor market looks great.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) was established in 1999 to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. In order for citizens to effectively exercise their voices in a democracy, they should be informed about the problems and choices that they face. CEPR is committed to presenting issues in an accurate and understandable manner, so that the public is better prepared to choose among the various policy options.
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US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
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Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
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"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
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"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
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Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
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"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
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Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
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Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
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NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
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Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
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Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
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Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
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Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
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In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
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