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Monday, August 11, 2014

Tuesday: Job Openings

by Calculated Risk on 8/11/2014 08:01:00 PM

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) is a key monthly report used by the Federal Reserve. The June survey results will be released tomorrow.

The Atlanta Fed has a great graphic on the labor market that uses three parameters from JOLTS (See: Labor Market Spider Chart©).

Dave Altig includes the spider chart in a post at the Atlanta Fed's Macroblog: Getting There?

Regarding labor markets, here is our favorite type of snapshot, courtesy of the Atlanta Fed’s Labor Market Spider Chart:

Atlanta Fed’s Labor Market Spider ChartThere is a lot to like in that picture. Leading indicators, payroll employment, vacancies posted by employers, and small business confidence are fully recovered relative to their levels at the end of the Great Recession.

On the less positive side, the numbers of people who are marginally attached or who are working part-time while desiring full-time hours remain elevated, and the overall job-finding rate is still well below prerecession levels. Even so, these indicators are noticeably better than they were at this time last year.

That year-over-year improvement is an important observation: the period from mid-2012 to mid-2013 showed little progress in the broader measures of labor-market performance that we place in the resource “utilization” category. During the past year, these broad measures have improved at the same relative pace as the standard unemployment statistic.
See this link Labor Market Spider Chart© for a larger interactive version of the spider chart. Note that Job Vacancies, Hires and Quits are all from JOLTS - and we will get an update Tuesday.

And a post from John Robertson at Macroblog: Are We There Yet?

Tuesday:
• At 7:30 AM ET, the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index for July.

• At 10:00 AM, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for June from the BLS. In May, the number of job openings (yellow) were up 19% year-over-year compared to May 2013, and Quits were up 15% year-over-year.

• At 2:00 PM, the Monthly Treasury Budget Statement for July. Note: The CBO's estimate is the deficit through July in fiscal 2014 was $462 billion, compared to $607 billion for the same period in fiscal 2013.