One of the things that can make interpreting the monthly job creation report difficult is that net job creation is influenced by creation, destruction initiated by employers and destruction initiated by employees.
In March we had disappointing job net job creation number but total hires were near a cycle high and layoffs were near a cycle low. On the other quits, were surging.
What is one supposed to make of this?
By my lights the correct answer is – we don’t really know.
On the one hand a surge in quits looks like a labor market where employees feel better about their prospects. On the other the fact that hires didn’t surge with quits may show us that employers are still reluctant uncertain about final demand.
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Wednesday ~ May 9th, 2012 at 9:07 pm
Morgan Warstler
While both simple, yet counter-intuitive, I think the meaning of JOLTS data is that we should architect our economy to have 5M+ turnovers every month –
target creative destruction.
If we have less than 5M, there’s a good chance we lose jobs overall.
but when we get more than 5M, we tend add jobs overall.