Nonfarm Payroll Employment Vs. Trend, Pre-COVID-19

Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin • Sep 22, 2020 at 5:52 AM EDT

Here are two graphs that are useful if you thought everything was hunky-dory employment-wise, even before the pandemic hit.

Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment (blue), deterministic trend estimated 2013M01-2017M01 (brown), both on log scale. Source: BLS and author’s calculations.

Figure 2: Nonfarm payroll employment (blue), stochastic trend estimated 2013M01-2017M01 (brown), both on log scale. Source: BLS and author’s calculations.

The above graphs are useful if you thought everything was hunky-dory employment-wise, even before the pandemic hit.

Disclosure:

None.