While it’s certainly great to see job growth in any given month, it’s also important to keep things in perspective. 100K new jobs at this point in an economic cycle is highly abnormal. In fact, the mere mention of recession this close to the last recession is highly unusual. Of course, readers know my take – this has been one long recession. Nonetheless, Chart of the Day offers some perspective on this job’s “recovery”:
“The latest jobs report came out today with the Labor Department reporting that nonfarm payrolls (jobs) increased by 103,000 in September. Today’s chart puts the latest data into perspective by comparing nonfarm payrolls following the end of the latest economic recession (i.e. the Great Recession — solid red line) to that of the prior recession (i.e. 2001 recession — dashed gold line) to that of the average post-recession from 1954-2000 (dashed blue line).
As today’s chart illustrates, the current jobs recovery is much weaker than the average jobs recovery that follows the end of a recession. Today’s chart also illustrates that the current jobs recovery has been slightly stronger than what occurred following the recession of 2001. However, the already modest upward trend has slowed significantly over the past five months.”
Mr. Roche is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Discipline Funds.Discipline Funds is a low fee financial advisory firm with a focus on helping people be more disciplined with their finances.
He is also the author of Pragmatic Capitalism: What Every Investor Needs to Understand About Money and Finance, Understanding the Modern Monetary System and Understanding Modern Portfolio Construction.
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