June 3, 2022
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly report on the Employment Situation for May today. The report shows that the labor market is now in a steady pattern of slow growth, with little change from previous months. The headline numbers of the report show that the economy added 390,000 new jobs, slightly higher […]
May 6, 2022
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released two reports this week showing that the labor market continues to be extremely strong. First, on Tuesday, they released data from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from March 2022. The survey showed that job openings in the economy are at an all-time high of 11.5 […]
April 1, 2022
Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the employment situation for March 2022. In March, the labor market continued to grow rapidly, adding 431,000 new jobs. In addition, revisions to the previous two months’ reports increased estimated job gains by 95,000 additional jobs. Together, the economy added 562,000 jobs per month over the last […]
March 29, 2022
As the labor market continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, many firms have had trouble finding and retaining workers. This is a sign of a strong labor market where firms need to compete to find the workers they need. One way to understand this issue is to look at the trend of labor market […]
March 4, 2022
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their monthly report on the employment situation in February today. The report highlighted a substantial increase in payroll employment of 678,000 new jobs and a reduction of the unemployment rate to 3.8 percent. These numbers highlight a continued strengthening of the labor market in February. This followed strong […]
February 22, 2022
The employment page of the Clemson Economic Trends website has an updated link to graphs of unemployment in each county in South Carolina compared with the state unemployment rate. The plots are useful to understand how the strength of the labor market varies across the state. Among the largest three counties in the state, Greenville […]
February 4, 2022
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the employment situation for January 2022, showing that payroll employment increased by 467,000 jobs in January and that the unemployment rate remained nearly constant at 4.0 percent. This strong growth in jobs occurred despite the survey being conducted at the peak of the spike in Omicron cases during […]
January 7, 2022
This week the BLS released the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for November and the Employment Situation for December this week. Together, these reports provide an updated look at the status of the labor market. Given that the reports reflect data from the end of November and the week containing December 12th, respectively, […]
December 10, 2021
Here are a few notes from the economic news this week: The BLS reported that consumer prices continued to rise at a rapid pace in November. The inflation rate rose to 6.8 percent over the previous 12 month period, the highest rate since 1982. Energy and new automobiles are the categories with the largest increases, […]
December 3, 2021
Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the employment situation report for November. The data showed that the US economy added 210,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate declined to 4.2 percent from 4.6 percent in October. While the number of new jobs was below expectations of another month of over 500,000, the report shows […]
