The BLS unemployment report shows total nonfarm payroll jobs gained were 195,000 for June 2013, with private payrolls adding 202,000 jobs.  Government jobs declined by 7,000.  May was revised up by 20,000 to show a 195,000 payroll gain and April was also revised up by 50,000 to 199,000 jobs added for that month.   While this is great news, unfortunately the types of jobs gained are mostly low paying ones.

 

 

The BLS employment report is actually two separate surveys and we overview the current population survey in this article.

The start of the great recession was declared by the NBER to be December 2007.  The United States is now down -2.14 million jobs from December 2007, five and a half years ago. The ongoing employment crisis is past the half decade anniversary.

 

 

The below graph is a running tally of how many official jobs are permanently lost from the establishment survey since December 2007.

 

 

We broke down the CES by industry to see what kind of percentage changes we have on the share of total number of payroll jobs from 2008 until now. Below is the percentage breakdown of jobs by industry for January 2008.

 

 

Below is the breakdown of jobs growth per industry sector for June 2013.  We expected to see construction jobs shrink relative to total payrolls and it did, by 1.1 percentage points.  The financial sector, only shrank 0.2 percentage points as it's share of payroll jobs, in spite of being the maelstrom behind the recession.   Manufacturing, of which the auto industry is a part, has contracted 1.1 percentage points as share of total jobs.   The manufacturing sector just continues to erode.   From these two pie charts we can see the job market has changed into more crappy, low paying service jobs of leisure and hospitality.  Health care has gained the most jobs, yet working in a nursing home and as attendants are also low paying jobs.  Comparing the two pie charts is also a reality check.  The press will tout Science & Technology jobs as well as manufacturing for growth areas.  We can see professional services, of which Science and Technology is a smaller part, has grown by 0.5 percentage points over five years, yet health and education has increased by 1.7 percentage points, with almost all of the job gains in health care.

 

 

Below is a bar chart showing the employer's payroll growth since January 2008.  We see health care jobs, part of education and health sector, is the only real growth sector, along with very low paying restaurant jobs.  Remember professional and business includes waste management and low paying administrative types of jobs.

 

 

For the year, from June 2012, the United States has gained 2.293 million payroll jobs.   In the year previous, the U.S. had gained 2.116 million jobs.  The revisions of the past two months finally put job growth higher than the previous year comparison, but not by much.   Jobs are still not growing not fast enough to employ the 11.8 million official unemployed, never mind the estimated 19-24 million Americans who really need a good job or any job.

Just to keep up with population growth, we need at least 100,000 jobs per month or 1.2 million a year and this estimate assumes the current artificially low labor participation rates.

Private Sector jobs, or jobs not in government gained 202 thousand this month.  The United States is still down -1.616 million private sector jobs from December 2007.  Goods producing jobs, which usually have higher paying ones, grew by only 8 thousand.  Services jobs, which includes our fast food and big box mart workers, increased by 194,000.  Below is a graph of just the private sector payroll losses since December 2007.

 

 

Below is a bar chart of the payroll gains by industry sector for the month.  We can see most of the job growth is in leisure and hospitality.  This sector includes dishwashers, restaurant workers and has the lowest wages as a sector.  Professional services includes foreign guest workers, so we do not know the percentage of unemployed Americans in these figures.  Before one thinks the 53,000 jobs gained are tech jobs, think again.  Administration and waste management is the growth engine, with 38.5 thousand jobs added this month within the Professional services sector.

 

 

This month manufacturing shred another -6,000 jobs, split evenly between durable and nondurable goods.  Generally speaking manufacturing just continues to be hammered.

 

 

This month the auto & parts manufacturing gained 5,100 jobs, the exception within manufacturing.  Since December 2007, the auto manufacturing industry is still down -150,600 jobs.  This is an industry sector which only employs 806,400 people in the United States.  Elsewhere, such as China, is another story.

 

 

Government overall lost -7,000 jobs for the month with -5,000 job losses at the Federal level.  State governments shed -20,000 jobs, with -9,000 of those lost jobs being in education.  Local governments added 13,000 jobs and again it wasn't teachers, local governments shed another -1,400 education jobs.

 

 

The construction housing bubble collapse jobs slaughter is clearly over.   This month construction gained 13,000 jobs.  Construction work is notorious to be temporary and hires illegal labor, although these jobs are usually better than restaurant work in pay.  The construction job gains were in industrial, heavy construction with 5,600 jobs added.  Specialty construction trades gained 7.2 thousand jobs.  In other words, the gains in construction were the higher paying, good jobs.

 

 

This month the financial sector gained 17,000 jobs overall with insurance carriers adding 6,000.  The Fed did their part as Central banking activities added 100 jobs sic.

 

 

Retail trade are the retail sales outlets like big box marts, direct mailing and anything retailing merchandise.  For the month retail trade added 37.1 thousand jobs this month.   These were mainly low paying jobs, across the board  We can see booming auto sales effects as auto & parts dealers added 8,300 jobs.

 

 

Education and health services has consistently been increasing and this month added 13 thousand jobs total.  This number includes the -10.6 thousand jobs lost in education for the month.  Of those jobs, 19.8 thousand were in health care while 3.7 thousand were social assistance.  A total of 2,108,000 jobs have been gained since December 2007 and this large sector represents 20,662,000 jobs, or 15.2% of all payrolls.

 

 

That said, when one breaks down the Education and Health Services job figures, it becomes clear the growth is only in health care jobs.  Graphed below is health care jobs, on the left (maroon) against education jobs, on the right (blue).  We can see education has been shedding jobs recently, while health care jobs continues to rise.  Health care payrolls have increased by 1.43 million since January 2008, whereas Education jobs have added 371 thousand to their payrolls over the same time period.  Health care jobs represent 10.7% of all payroll jobs.

 

 

Professional & Business services contains management, career professionals, science & technical, administrative and support and finally waste services and this month gained 53 thousand jobs.  While this sounds great, 9,500 of those jobs are temporary positions and employment services, i.e. managing and including these low paid W2 temp workers, generated 18,600 jobs in total.  It is not advertised that tech workers are often paid via these services with no benefits.  Yes, the great worker shortage pays STEM with no benefits whatsoever as temporary workers on W2 status quite often.

 

 

Wholesale trade gained 11,300 jobs from last month and information, which includes the newspaper industry, lost -5,000 jobs.  Transportation and warehousing lost -5,100 jobs this month and below is the graph for this industry sector's payrolls.

 

 

Let's talk Leisure & Hospitality.  This sector has the lowest paying jobs of them all.  This month the sector gained 75,000 jobs with 51,700 of those jobs being in food services and drinking places.  Food service can even pay below minimum wage and from December 2007 this subsector has gained 666,800 jobs.  For the year, the United States has created 400,900 crappy jobs in restaurants and bars.  This is 17.5% of all jobs gained in the past year.  These low paying jobs tally 10,339,800, a whopping 9.1% of all of the private sector jobs in this country.  Jobs which require one to say do you want fries with that is not the kind employment growth needed to support a family and a production economy.

 

 

Bottom line, the employment crisis casts a long shadow for America's workforce and just continues unabated.  While with revisions the payrolls report shows much better news, when digging into the details, we find low paying service sector jobs, not the kind which support a healthy middle class.  Congress is busy trying to flood the U.S. labor market with more foreign workers via comprehensive immigration reform, more bad trade treaties and draconian budget cuts which will cause more Americans to lose their jobs.  For over half a decade this Congress has focused on the wrong things when America is clearly suffering from a lack of good jobs.  It is positively despicable to see millions of Americans slip into poverty because they cannot get a decent job and with no policy changes, the terrible conditions for the American worker will continue.

Here is our overview of the unemployment statistics, which also illustrates our terrible employment tale with graphs and figures.