Tag Archives: Job Growth

News, Politics, Government

What the Affordable Care Act Really Means for Job Growth

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By ccorbisiero

Today, the White House released a new analysis of the relationship between the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and job growth on Tumblr in the form of an animated GIF.

Recent news stories have cited anecdotes that restaurants are cutting employees’ hours and refraining from hiring workers due to the ACA. In reality, however, restaurants have had the fastest job growth of any industry in the retail and food services sector since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. The GIF also shows that restaurants have had even faster job growth than what would have been predicted from their growth in sales. Furthermore, workers in the restaurant industry have seen their average weekly hours increase since the ACA was signed, contrary to the notion that there has been a widespread shift to part-time hours.

During the four years since the recession ended in June 2009, 87% of the increase in employment has been due to a rise in the number of workers in full-time jobs. And looking at the period since ACA was signed in March 2010, more than 90% of the rise in employment has been due to workers in full-time jobs. Moreover, the length of the average workweek for private sector production and nonsupervisory employees has returned to its level at the start of the Great Recession.

And while the number of involuntary part-time workers has declined roughly in line with previous recoveries, it spiked up 322,000 in June. However, nearly 30 percent of the June increase was due to federal employees. This suggests that furloughs contributed to the pickup in part-time employment.

These observations strongly suggest that the Affordable Care Act has not constrained growth in hiring or work hours. So what is the ACA doing? It’s slowing the growth rate of health care costs for consumers, creating new incentives for providers to raise the quality of care, and adding new transparency and accountability in the insurance marketplace—all steps that help the economy.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at The White House

News, Politics, Government

States That Lead and Lag in Job Growth and Competitiveness

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By Joshua Wright, Contributor

When a state expands its workforce from one year to the next, some of the spike might be related to the growth in an industry at the national level, like the continuing demand for health care. Some might stem from the overall growth of the national economy. Or some of the job growth might be explained by a third factor, what economists call the regional competitive effect. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

News, Politics, Government

The First Upward Revision to 2012: 2011 Payroll Series Benchmarking

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By Karl Smith, Contributor Lots of data and a busy day, so I may not get to update all of my series. However, the main story is in this graph: The Blue is the 12 month moving average of monthly payroll growth before Feb revisions. The Red Line is the same moving average after revisions. As expected the March 2012 Benchmark revisions caused the BLS’s estimate of Job Growth to shift upward. For months prior to March the effect was direct. The BLS now has a direct count of jobs in March 2012 and the payroll series is forced to reflect that. However, for months after March the increase is due to the fact that the Birth/Death model is updated by the new benchmark data. The Birth/Death model is itself basically a forecast of the what future benchmark revisions will show. Since, BLS was too low on relative to its last Benchmark the model has increased its estimate of what the new Benchmark will show. However, the model is still likely behind the curve. There are a number of reasons for this but the most easy to see is this: This is a graph of how much the revised data pushed up the 12 month moving average. It peaks in March of 2012. That is, the Birth/Death model is estimating that its worst performance of the entire 2011-2012 period was on the very month were it was hand checked against measurement data. This seems unlikely. More likely is that the dynamics of the 2011 – 2012 period are so unsual that even updated the model based on March 2012 data still leaves its best guess behind the curve. Like most models B/D is predicated on the notion that the future will be like the past only more so. That is, the the model assumes the future is dominated by a continuation of the strongest current trends. In turning points, however, that principle breaks down. Indeed, that’s what causes the data to turn.” The upshot is that we will likely have another upward revision with the next benchmark. And, somewhat indirectly, this data set is the one used to calculate the wages component of GDI, which suggests GDI will be revised up as well.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

News, Politics, Government

How Fast is US Job Growth?

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By Karl Smith, Contributor According to the official payroll statistics job growth has been stuck in neutral for going on two years now, average about 150K jobs per month. Nonetheless Americans seem to be growing more optimistic about the economy I’ve suggested before that the first of several rounds of upward revisions to Job Growth and likely GDP growth will begin next month. Despite their official nature the early stats we get are essentially forecasts. Technically, we term them estimates since they refer to events which have already happened. However, from the analysts point-of-view they might as well be forecasts since the actual measurement of those events in some cases has not even begun. The the direct count of workers covered under employment insurance in 2012 will not begin until March. Reporting documents for the 2012 Economic Census, which will constitute much of the final bedrock of the GDP estimates of 2007 – 2012 are not due in until Feb 12th of this year. Nonetheless, the estimates are usually pretty good. Major trouble only strikes at turning points – recall the large miss on the collapse of GDP in the final months of 2008. And, so it happens we have some reasonably stark divergences between current estimates Interestingly there has been a fair bit of swapping around. ADP went from the fastest growing to the slowest, and household from the slowest to the fastest. In theory the Quarterly Census is the “gold standard” as it is based off of unemployment insurance estimates. The payroll series is ultimately benchmarked to that same source data each March. So, we can feel reasonably confident that Payroll will be revised upwards to run closer to to Quarterly Census. However,  whether quarterly census continues to convergence on the very optimistic numbers from the household series remains to be seen. As a note, some bloggers have asked why we don’t see more construction jobs in the data. Its worth noting that ADP is estimating a stronger pick-up in construction employment than the payroll series, at least right now.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest