August 6th, 2022 | Jobs Report, Job Openings, Credit Card Increases, Asset Under Management, Secondary Market, Recession, Inflation & Earning Season

<p>Jobs Report Friday’s job report was a good surprise showing non-farm payroll increased by 528,000 jobs, this caused the unemployment rate to fall to 3.5%. We have now recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic returning to levels not seen since February 2020. Average hourly earnings were up 5.2% over last year but it appears that wage growth could be slowing. In a separate survey from Greenhouse a recruitment software company said that 70% of workers are optimistic about the job market. 66% of people surveyed said if their wages were cut, they would look for a new job. There are still about 5.9 million people in the labor force who want a job, based on the latest JOLT’s report there is still nearly two jobs for each person looking for a job. The biggest gains in jobs were found in the Leisure and Hospitality, 96,000. These are not low paying jobs any longer, the nationwide average is $20.22/hr which is 26% higher than four years ago. Remember this is a national average, wages will be higher in California then in Arkansas. Job growth was also seen in Professional and Business services up 89,000, Healthcare up 70, 000, Government climbed 57,000, lastly construction jobs increased 32,000. The good news scared the markets and pushed the ten-year treasury to 2.84% with concerns of sharply higher and longer rate increases. Job Openings The JOLTS report came out this week and while the headline numbers may look concerning it is important to point out the levels, we have been seeing were extremely elevated and not sustainable. Total job openings of 10.7 million at the end of June missed the estimate of 11.14 million. This was a decline of 605,000 or 5.4% compared to the month of May and was well off the recent all-time high in March of 11.86 million. The level of job openings is well above the level of available workers as the difference is still 4.8 million. This means there were still 1.8 open jobs per available worker! Also, to give you an idea of where we were at pre pandemic, in December 2019 total job open