LAST WEEK

News & Commentary Weekly Highlights:

• Wall Street Journal: Economists Trim Estimates for Growth, Jobs After Early-2016 Turmoil (Thursday)
• Wall Street Journal: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments (Thursday)
• Bloomberg: Fed’s Cautious Approach on April Rate Hike Raises Stakes for June (Wednesday)
• Market Watch: What’s Choking Global Growth? Overly Regulated Industries, Says IMF (Wednesday)
• E21: Long-Term Unemployed Still Recovering from Recession (Monday)

 

Top Economic Indicator Highlights:

Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (February)

• Job openings: 5.445 million
• Hires:  5.422 million
• Separations (quits, layoffs, discharges): 5.050 million
• Noteworthy: Job openings remained little changed from January. However, hires climbed to the highest level since before the recession. Layoffs continue to decline as a share of total separations, as voluntary quits grow. Among separations, there were 2.950 million quits and 1.715 million layoffs and discharges. JOLTS data for February are scheduled for release at 10am on May 10.

JEC Releases:

• Countdown to Tax Day – Day 8 (Sunday)
• Countdown to Tax Day – Day 9 (Saturday)
• Countdown to Tax Day – Day 10 (Friday)
• Labor Review: Context for the March Labor Report (Monday)

 

THIS WEEK

Upcoming Economic Reports & Releases:

Major Indicators

• Treasury Budget (2pm, Tuesday)
• Retail Sales (8:30am, Wednesday)
• Producer Price Index for Final Demand (8:30am, Wednesday)
• Business Inventories (10am, Wednesday)
• Consumer Price Index (8:30am, Thursday)
• Industrial Production (9:15am, Friday)

 Reports & Releases

• Beige Book (2pm, Wednesday)

Chart of the Week:

The chart above pieces together pre-1948 Census Bureau data with the current Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data series which began in 1948. Prior to 1948, only limited annual data could be found from Census estimates, which included civilians age 14 and older in the labor force. Prior to 1940, only the decennial census was available to determine labor force data. Data before 1948 lacks the same statistical basis and rigor of modern measurements from the Census Bureau and BLS. As shown above, despite deficient apples-to-apples comparison, the labor force participation rates for both men and women were on the rise, particularly after the Great Depression, and briefly spiked during World War II. After the war, men’s participation rates began to fall, while women’s began to rise rapidly. The increase in the overall participation rate began to decelerate in the 1990s, and started to decline in the 2000s, as participation rates for both men and women declined, in part due to the predicted aging of the workforce, among other factors. However, during and since the recent recession, the overall labor force participation rate has declined at a pace that virtually no statistical institution could have predicted.