May Jobs Report: What To Expect
This Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release another report on the state of the U.S. labor market. Expectations on Main Street and Wall Street are high for another rosy report as the U.S. economy strives to shake off domestic and overseas challenges.
On Main Street, Americans feel confident that they can get a job as the economy returns to its normal path. According to a recent survey published by Gallup, the percentage of U.S. adults saying it is an excellent time to find a quality job stands at 70%, well above the 22% to 43% range seen in 2020 during the first year of the pandemic. That's just a few percentage points shy of the 21-year high of 74% recorded last October.
A record-high 25% of workers have said it was "very" or "fairly likely" that they would become unemployed in the coming year, but that reading dropped to 13% last year and is currently at 15%.
On Wall Street, economists and analysts see another strong report.
Dan North, senior economist North America at Allianz Trade, told International Business Times that he expects the U.S. economy to have added approximately 400,000 jobs in May. That's close to the 428,000 the U.S. economy created in April, but higher than the consensus number among analysts of 320,000.
Terry Kim, co-founder of NGT Academy, thinks employers are struggling to find qualified employees to fill jobs, thanks to the change in demand for labor in a digital economy.
"While this month's job report should look solid overall, we're still struggling to upskill, reskill and retrain the talent to meet the demands of our changing digital workforce,” he told IBT.
North expects the job gains to come in the leisure and hospitality sectors, which were surprisingly weak last month with lockdowns and mask mandates ending and the summer months approaching.
Scott Hamilton, global managing director of H.R. consulting at Gallagher, said, "Seasonal hiring is underway [restaurants, hospitality, theme parks, summer camps, etc.], but most still have core staff vacancies to fill, so job gains may not be materially larger this month.
"We are seeing reduced hiring/small layoffs in interest-rate [and gas-price] sensitive industries like high tech, housing and other industries affected by the interest-rate impact on consumer spending."
Wall Street and the Federal Reserve will be looking at additional data to determine whether the labor market is overheating or cooling off.
One of these numbers is the unemployment rate.
North expects it to stay around 3.6%. That would indicate that the economy is overheating, prompting the Federal Reserve to be more aggressive in taking liquidity out of the economy.
"Of course, this is a number the Fed would like to see going up," North said. "Right now, the economy is running too hot, with too much inflation and too little unemployment. The Fed needs to balance things out, bringing inflation down and unemployment up. To do so, the Fed is raising the policy rate and shrinking the balance sheet to slow the economy and increase unemployment."
Another number is labor force participation, the percentage of the active population participating in the labor market. North expects the May number to come in at 62.2%. If that turns out to be the case, it will signal that labor supply constraints continue, putting pressure on earnings.
North expects year-to-year wage growth to have peaked due to base effects, but it will still be way above the long-term average and it will still be a long time before it comes back down.
“And here again, the Fed would like to see this number go down," he added.
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