More Employment

The data for October 2012 – the last “big” data release before the election — are now available on the Bureau of Labor Statistics web page and on a select basis as graphs on the St Louis Fed FRED database. I do look at unemployment and other metrics, but here want to highlight the employment to population data, which avoids “noise” that comes from people dropping in and out of the labor force — that is, I look at employment/population not employment/labor force. This measure also has the advantage that it automatically adjusts to population growth (unlike overall employment measures) and, when is disaggregated, is neutral to changes in the age composition of the population (such as the aging of the baby boom cohorts).

The data show a steady improvement in the economy. All data below are as a percent of population (or change in percentage points in the comparative rows). As with all employment data, there is some noise from month to month. In addition, these data aren’t seasonally adjusted. But it’s one more picture of our slowly improving economy, a process that whoever is president for the next four years can little to improve but that will by 2016 have brought us close to “normalcy”.