September 3rd, 2022 | Unemployment / Job Openings, JOLTS, Wall Street, September, Reserves, Labor / Job Security, Investments, Growing Jobs, FAST ACT Bill & Russia Oil Revenue

<p>Unemployment / Job Openings</p> <p>The jobs report today showed the labor market strength is slowing, but overall, it still remains in a very healthy spot. The headline number saw payrolls increase 315,000, which was essentially in line with the estimate of 318,000. While this was the slowest growth since April 2021, it is still a good growth rate and people need to realize the blockbuster job gains we saw from job recoupment are now in the past. One negative note for job growth was the previous two months were revised lower by a net 107,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate rose 0.2% to 3.7%, but I view this as positive as it was driven by an increase in the labor participation rate of 0.3% to 62.4%. The labor force participation rate still remains 1.0% below the February 2020 level. The gains in employment were broad based with every category seeing growth, but business and professional services continued to lead the way with an addition of 68,000 jobs and healthcare and retail trade were close behind with additions of 48,200 jobs and 44,000 jobs respectively. Leisure and hospitality has seen some of the strongest growth but saw an increase of just 31,000 jobs in the month of August, which was substantially lower than the 91,000 job increase in the month of July. This sector continues to remain beaten down compared to pre-pandemic levels as the total number of payrolls is still 1.2 million jobs below where we were in February 2020. One area of the report I found interesting was the number of people that were counted as long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more). It currently stands at 1.1 million and accounts for 18.8% of all unemployed persons. I hate to say it, but with job openings nearly 2x higher than the total number of unemployed persons how have they not been able to find a job?</p> <p>JOLTS</p> <p>The JOLTs report continues to show strength as job openings in the month of July saw results of 11.24 million openings, easily top the estimate of 10.3 million. This was a slight increase