What makes the great running backs – the elite ones, the greatest ones – so good? They didn’t rely on one skill or one move in their repertoire – power, speed, quickness, straight-ahead, faking, sweeping, reversing – to gain the yards. They could do them all at any time – and they did.
Jim Brown, The Greatest of All Time
Since 84% percent of those reading this article are too young to have seen Jim Brown play – and I saw him for his whole career – there’s no interfering with my privilege of calling him the greatest of all time. Very possibly, he’s in consideration for the greatest athlete of all time, but that’s a bit off topic. Brown’s recent passing in May brings him to mind as an apt analogy to discuss the performance over the last three years of the greatest job market of all time: our current one.
Job creation when it was needed, keeping those now.
While pumping out huge monthly job gains for the past two and a half years – just what it should have done – our job market is now cementing those gains. But to see it, we must look at it the right way. Brown used his brute power to run right over you when he needed to, and his flexible, almost dainty dance steps to run past you. In the end, he is still the only player to run for 100+ yards per game for an entire career.
How is the American job market like Jim Brown?
August job gains came in at 187,000 – a far cry from the gaudy numbers of 2021, 2022, and the first half of this year – and the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.8%. Put those two together and it’s easy to see why critics are tripping all over themselves to declare that the job market is weak.
It is not weak at all. It’s just doing what we need it to do now. Meteoric growth like what we’ve seen is not sustainable and dangerous, as it would, sooner or later, require strong and frequent action from the Fed. The less of that, the better (although welcome when necessary). But what we needed then was job growth – and we got it. Plenty of it. Power.
So how’s the job market remaining strong while job creation is at a slower pace? The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Situation Summary, further than most critics use when blasting or celebrating the job market’s performance, takes a deep dive below the surface. For instance, when is an uptick in the ranks of the unemployed not a bad thing? When the civilian labor force, the total of those who are working plus those who are looking for work, adds 736,000 while the ranks of the employed grew by 222,000. That difference of 514,0000 is extreme, and shows up from time to time, but is clearly attributable to strong confidence. Many of those people will find work soon. For the moment, though, they’re unemployed but optimistic.
There are still 8.8 million open jobs.
Where will they find the work they’re so confident about? The BLS issues their Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS). In it we see a dramatic fall in open jobs, from 12 million in March 2021 to 8.8 million in its most recent reading. There are, in other words, 1.4 open jobs for every job seeker. That ratio had reached 2-1, and the drop is the answer to where those new re-entrants to the market have found and will continue to find work. This is a very healthy, harmonious situation.
More from ‘Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey’
To augment this scenario, the hires rate is still strong at 3.7%, but below the 4.5% during the robust job creation period. At the same time, the layoffs rate remains historically low at 1%, indicating that employers are as heavily committed to retention as they are to recruitment. With hires still high, open jobs being filled, and layoffs suppressed, this job market is doing exactly what we need: securing its position as the leader of the economic turnaround. Usually, you might be aware, the job market is subject to the forces of the economy. Since the pandemic, it’s been the other way around.
Here’s another thing. Wages are still rising, although at a slower rate than in the last comore people are working, making more money at their jobs, and there is still an abundance of jobs for those who are still looking.
Today’s Job Market Just Like Jim Brown
I’ve seen this coming since 2023 began and have written regularly about it. And I’ve been thinking about Brown since he began his career 66 years ago, and the American job market since it began its unprecedented recovery 32 month ago.
What they both have in common is all the tools to earn the G.O.A.T. label – and to keep it.
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