Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
If you cannot fix the economy, fix the figures.
Dark side to jobs report: Big drop in hours worked
Commentary: Shorter work week equivalent to 500,000 jobs lost
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The April employment report exceeded expectations, with 165,000 jobs created and a welcome drop in the unemployment rate to 7.5%.
But there was a dark side to the report: Total hours worked fell sharply, and the total amount of money earned by U.S. workers actually declined from the month before.
“Aggregate weekly hours” is an obscure series of data in the jobs report, but it’s vital to understanding how strong the economy is performing. As the name implies, it measures the total number of hours worked, which is what matters for sizing up overall growth in the economy.
Usually, we focus just on the number of new jobs created and the unemployment rate, but the number of hours we work matters just as much, if not more, to our economic well-being.
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