Time’s arrow marches forward and it’s once again Jobs Day this Friday. A few quick thoughts on the August employment report. 1/9

The jobs report is the first comprehensive government labor market data we’ll get after the lapse of extended unemployment insurance. I’m skeptical we’ll be able to see significant impacts given the data were measured in mid-August. 2/9

The expiration of benefits that were ~5% of household income is very likely to have a big impact. Just not sure we’ll definitely see evidence of the impact in the labor market quite yet. https://twitter.com/AE_Konkel/status/1299327739267346434 3/9

Like any jobs report, you shouldn’t read too much into one month of data. So here are three trends I’ll be keeping an eye on: 4/9

Will the pace of growth for private-sector payrolls continue to slow? Usually I’d look at the top line payrolls number, but August likely saw a jump in government employment due to temporary Census hiring. Nice @calculatedrisk post on this issue here https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2020/08/august-employment-report-comments-on.html 5/9

Will labor force participation drop again? The labor force participation rate dropped last month after increasing in May and June. If this rate continues to drop, any further decline in the unemployment rate won’t necessarily be a sign of more workers getting jobs. 6/9

Will the number of workers moving into employment continue to slow? EPOP has picked up, but the number of people getting a job or returning to work peaked in May and has declined. Job loss remains elevated, so robust hiring is the only way for net job growth to keep up. 7/9

There are other critical trends to watch — temporary vs. permanent u3, payroll growth composition, etc — but I think we need to really focus on the pace of actual job finding this month. 8/9

Either way, lots of uncertainty with this report as with the past few. Friday morning will be . . . interesting. 9/9