US Employment Quality of Life Indicator in Context – a monthly analysis by Hazel Henderson
Update: August, 2013
In July, total non-farm jobs increased by 162,000 while June’s jobs were revised down to 188,000. May’s was revised from 195,000 to 176,000 This news from the private sector shows the recovery, even if weak, is still on track. While a paltry 1,000 additional government jobs were created in July, this is despite continued losses of government jobs with another 8,000 lost in June and the 11,000 cut in May. Over the past 3 months, federal jobs have decreased by 18,000. The official unemployment rate is at 7.4% with the civilian labor force at 63.4% with 988,000 discouraged workers in July. With the end of the payroll tax cut and these government job losses, the first effects of the sequester have started to cut demand. The some ten percent of Americans who gained from the stock markets rise were doing well with jobs in financial activities up by 15,000 in July. The rest who rely on jobs in the real economy for their income had their spending constrained. While hard to find in the BLS statistics, total government jobs in July was 21,852,000. Let us remember when looking at employment in the USA, that as of December 2011, 21,950,000 jobs were those in government at all levels. By January 2013, job cuts reduced this total to 21,858,000. Q1 of 2013 GDP-growth of 2.5% was better than the revised 0.4% for Q4 of 2012. Long-term unemployed was at 4.2 million. Cuts in government jobs (mostly in the Pentagon) should remind Congress of the consequences of budget cutting and the sequester – just as we have witnessed in Europe.