Net Job Creation by Industry through January 2016

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on Friday in their analysis of non-farm employment that 151,000 jobs were added in January, down from 262,000 in December. According to the Wall Street Breakfast, “consensus had called for 190,000 jobs to be added, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 5 percent. Traders in interest rate markets have essentially priced out the chance of a rate hike in 2016 and the 10-year Treasury yield has fallen all the way to 1.85 percent, so a strong jobs number could make things interesting in fixed-income.” This didn’t happen.

December was revised down by 30,000 and November up by 28,000. Employment growth was revised way back this month. We took our numbers back to January 2008 and revisions still continued further back in time. We figured that for our purposes our 2008 revision was sufficient. For 2015 as a whole total nonfarm employment was revised up by 85,000. The three month moving (3MMA) of gains through January was 231,000. The unemployment rate, U3, calculated from a different survey, declined to 4.9 percent from 5.0 percent in December. Monthly job gains have averaged 207,000 per month in the thirteen months since and including January 2015 (Figure 1).