U.S. economy added 339,000 jobs in May: Labor market remains strong despite volatile household survey
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould shares her insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 339,000 jobs added in May. Read the full Twitter thread here.
The job report for May shows notable employment gains in education and health services, professional and business services, government, and leisure and hospitality in May. pic.twitter.com/c36lnWkCNR
— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) June 2, 2023
While the boost in govt jobs is welcome news, state and local employment is still down 1.4% since Feb 2020. Private-sector jobs fell further and came back stronger due to largescale policy investments. Lagging public sector jobs is concerning for the vital services they provide. pic.twitter.com/1s2QgFu2Zc
— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) June 2, 2023
The household survey is a bit mixed but has more volatility so I don’t think represents a general cooling off, especially in light of the strong payroll numbers for May. The drop in employment seems to be isolated within self-employment but wage and salary jobs rose in May.
— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) June 2, 2023
After hitting 80.8% in April, the share of workers 25-54 years old with a job edged down but remains higher than pre-pandemic levels, second highest level in over 20 years (since 2001). pic.twitter.com/NNkTPJPSDi
— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) June 2, 2023
Iowa governor signs one of the most dangerous rollbacks of child labor laws in the country: 14 states have now introduced bills putting children at risk
In a March 14 report, we documented how states across the country are attempting to weaken child labor protections, just as violations of these standards are on the rise. The trend reflects a coordinated multi-industry push to expand employer access to low-wage labor and weaken state child labor laws in ways that contradict federal protections. And the recent uptick in state legislative activity is linked to longer-term industry-backed goals to rewrite federal child labor laws and other worker protections for the whole country.
Last Friday, this concerted attack on child labor safeguards further expanded. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed an expansive bill enacting numerous changes to the state’s child labor laws, including:
- allowing employers to hire teens as young as 14 for previously prohibited hazardous jobs in industrial laundries or as young as 15 in light assembly work;
- allowing state agencies to waive restrictions on hazardous work for 16–17-year-olds in a long list of dangerous occupations, including demolition, roofing, excavation, and power-driven machine operation;
- extending hours to allow teens as young as 14 to work six-hour nightly shifts during the school year;
- allowing restaurants to have teens as young as 16 serve alcohol; and
- limiting state agencies’ ability to impose penalties for future employer violations.
Job openings ticked up slightly in April as layoffs fell: Labor market remains steady and does not show signs of rapid cooling
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her initial insights on today’s release of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for April. Read the full Twitter thread here.
Broad child poverty data for the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander population don’t tell the whole economic story
Broad poverty data understate the extent of deprivation among Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) children. At first glance, poverty appears to just disproportionately affect Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander children, as Asian American children seem to be nearly as likely as white children to be poor (see Figure A). However, wide economic disparities between AANHPI families and children of different backgrounds hide under these broad statistics.
Class of 2023: Young workers have experienced strong wage growth since 2020
In part one of this blog post series, we found that the Class of 2023 is graduating into an exceptionally strong labor market, with the lowest unemployment rate for young adults in 70 years. In part two, we found that young adults are more likely to have predictable work hours, work full time, and have only one job now than in 2019. In the third and final part of our series, we analyze how young workers’ wages have changed over the pandemic and differ across demographic groups.
We find:
- Workers of all ages have experienced stronger-than-usual wage growth in the pandemic business cycle (February 2020 to March 2023)—even after accounting for high inflation—but young workers were not left behind like they have been in previous business cycles.
- Entry-level high school graduates (ages 17–20) saw real wage growth three times as fast as entry-level college graduates (ages 21–24) in the pandemic business cycle.
- Gender and racial wage gaps already exist among entry-level high school graduates. Women are paid 14% less than men on average, while white workers earn slightly more on average than their Black and Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) counterparts.
- Among entry-level college graduates, women and Hispanic and Black workers fall even further behind. Women are paid 16% less than men on average, while Hispanic and Black workers are paid 6% and 11% less, respectively, than their white counterparts on average.
Debt ceiling deal ‘work requirements’ would hurt low-wage workers, fuel corporate greed
Republicans are weaponizing the debt ceiling to force “work requirements” for Medicaid and assistance programs like SNAP and TANF. Below, EPI offers insights on the risk of including “work requirements” in a deal to raise the debt ceiling.
Class of 2023: Young people see better job opportunities
We began this blog post series discussing the promising employment prospects for young people ages 16–24 as they graduate from high school and college this spring. As of the latest data, the unemployment rate for young people is the lowest in 70 years. In part two of our series, we delve into young people’s working hours and employment by industry, compared with 2019 before the pandemic recession.
On key measures of job quality, young people face a better labor market today than in 2019. This represents an extraordinarily strong job market recovery for young workers—especially compared with previous recessions. In particular, we find:
- Young workers are more likely to have predictable work hours and work full time than in 2019.
- All workers, but particularly young workers, are more likely to work only one job in 2023 than in 2019.
- Young people are most likely to work in leisure and hospitality, retail trade, and education and health services, both now and pre-pandemic. Due largely to this industry concentration of employment, they suffered the greatest job losses during the pandemic recession in food services and drinking places and educational services.
- Young people gained the most employment in construction and transportation, particularly in jobs as couriers and messengers as well as warehousing and storage.
Lessons from a successful fight for affordable housing in the heart of Silicon Valley: Menlo Park’s “No on V” victory is a model for the nation
The affluent town of Menlo Park—where Google was founded, Meta (formerly Facebook) has its headquarters, and the median home price is $2 million—is a test case for how communities can win when it comes to creating affordable housing for workers and righting the wrongs of segregation.
Some Menlo Park residents pushed back against proposed housing for teachers and support staff who couldn’t afford to live in or near the towns where they teach, introducing Measure V. The measure, defeated in 2022, would have blocked the teacher housing and made it more difficult to build homes, including affordable apartments, in their communities.
This win—in one of the richest suburbs in the country—is a story of unyielding grassroots activism, years of preplanning, and constant reinforcement of the “No on V” coalition’s vision of a racially, ethnically, and economically diverse town.
Weaponizing the debt limit should not be normalized: President Biden should do “whatever it takes” to avoid an economic catastrophe
Recent reports indicate that the debt limit “X-date” could come as early as June 1. On this X-date, the U.S. Treasury will no longer have enough cash in its accounts at the Federal Reserve to meet all the legal spending obligations legislated by Congress. These obligations include paying holders of U.S. Treasury debt, Social Security checks, and reimbursements to doctors treating patients covered by Medicare and Medicaid. The normal way of dealing with such a cash shortfall—selling new debt issues and depositing the proceeds into the Treasury’s account—is exactly what the debt limit will make impossible on that date.
If the X-date comes and nothing is done except the federal government fails to fulfill its spending obligations, economic calamity will ensue: People who depend on programs like Social Security and food stamps will suffer, and the spillover effects on the larger economy would certainly cause a recession—and a truly horrible one if the stalemate lasted for any significant amount of time.
The factor forcing this terrible outcome would not be any implacable economic reality, it would simply be Congressional Republicans weaponizing the absurd political institution that is a statutory debt limit that can only be adjusted through acts of Congress. With a responsible Congress, the debt limit would be a silly inconvenience to policymaking. But twice in the past 12 years, Republican-led efforts in Congress have brought the nation to a near-crisis—and the current near-crisis could still graduate into a real crisis in coming weeks.
In 2011 (the last instance of protracted debt limit brinkmanship), the GOP demands for large spending cuts did mammoth damage to the living standards of U.S. families by sabotaging the economic recovery from the Great Recession and financial crisis of 2008–09. This time around, the GOP demands are not just for recovery-damaging spending cuts, but also for a complete do-over on already passed legislation; Speaker McCarthy’s recently released list of demands includes rolling back student debt relief as well as the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) climate provisions and enhanced enforcement against the nation’s rich tax cheats.
April jobs report: The labor market is strong, but it’s not ‘too hot’
Below, EPI economists offer their initial insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 253,000 jobs added in April.