The Jobs Picture Is Not Rosy
Ignore the financial media spin
The unadjusted jobs number for January declined 1.7% sequentially from December’s figure (Table B-1). I prefer unadjusted jobs numbers to seasonally adjusted as I am not a fan of Government manipulated data.
January’s labor participation rate (chart below) was flat with December’s rate at 62.5%, which is below November's 62.8% figure and below the 63.3% figure from February 2020 – the last pre-COVID reading.
The sequential jobs decline and the muted labor participation rate combined with the tens of thousands of employee layoffs over the past month do not paint a rosy jobs picture.
