November Employment blurb

I'll take a fraction of a non-paying job off this month's numbers as I am outsourcing my blogging analysis on the November initial non-farm payrolls report to Barry Ritzholtz:

This was the fifth sub-100k NFP report over the past 6 months.

Yesterday, we extensively discussed the birth/death model. As we noted, the birth/death model contribution continues to rise as a total percentage of new hires. It was 51k jobs this month, versus 36k back in November '06. It also measured Construction hires as flat, and Financial hires rising 12k. Those two points confirm our view that the B/D model is continuing to overestimate hiring.

Revisions in September and October figures brought job growth for those two months to 214,000, or 48,000 fewer than the government had estimated a month ago.

Remember, depending on your assumptions, the economy needs to generate between 120,000 and 150,000 new jobs per month to keep up with normal working age population growth. Anything less than 120,000 is not a good month, and 120,000 to 150,000 new jobs is mediocre. 5 months out of the past six with less than 100,000 is not a good trend, especially as there seems to be honest methodological problems that are inflating the headline number.