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An opening comment: it is an abomination that the US government treated its statistical agencies as doing expendible work. Thus, after over 85 years of continuity, there will never be an unemployment rate, nor a consumer inflation reading, for October. Which means we will never know what real retail sales or real earnings, among other measures, for that month will be, either.

The Founders understood the need for good data when they established the decennial census in the Constitution itself. And a “Statistical Abstract of the United States” was mandated by statute all the way back to the early 1800’s - until a partisan Congressional majority killed it about 10 years ago. The latest insult is simply part of the ongoing war against knowledge that has also been manifested in the onslaught against the higher education community as well as medical and scientific research by the current Administration.

A country that willfully blinds itself will deserve what follows.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the important datapoints from the very tardy September jobs report that was released on Friday.

Real wages for nonsupervisory workers declined slightly (less than 0.1%) for the second month in a row, meaning they are down -0.1% in total since July:
 

While this is a slight negative, as you can see from the above graph it is well within the range of noise.

On a more positive note, nominally aggregate nonsupervisory payrolls rose 0.6%. Since consumer inflation only rose 0.3%, real aggregate payrolls for nonsupervisory workers, an excellent fundamentals-based short leading indicators, rose 0.3% to tie its record high set in July (blue, right scale):
 

On a YoY% basis (red, left scale), growth has slowed to 1.7% in the last two months, but this is equivalent to or better than a number of readings in the past few years, so is not of concern yet. It mans that ordinary consumers have more money, in real terms, to spend on goods and services, which in the past has almost always negatived a short term recession.

The news is much less sanguine when it comes to the goods producing sector, as jobs in that sector in total have declined since April (blue). Manufacturing jobs (red) have continued to decline, and while they rebounded in September, residential construction jobs (gold) are still down from peak. Only total construction jobs (orange) made a new high:
 

Since jobs in this sector rolling over has historically been a leading indicator for recession, this is a continuing yellow flag at least.

Further, on a YoY basis, gains in total payrolls continued to decelerate, now down to just over 0.8%:
 

Historically growth rates this slow have almost always meant recession:
 

The only contrary readings since WW2 have been briefly during 1952 and again in 2002 during the worst of the “jobless recoveries.”

Because this might be a reflection of the very slow growth in the prime working age population, the below graph (blue) shows that payroll gains have been running significantly below the *estimated* growth of the prime age working population - with the very important caveat that this year’s jihad against Latin immigrants may mean that there has been no such population growth at all:
 

Still, fewer workers means fewer people contributing to gains in production, a/k/a GDP. Here’s a historical look at the recent past covering similar *lack* of growth:
 

Which is a reminder that the report of Q3 GDP has been delayed as well - more blindness.

My takeaway from this more detailed look at the September numbers is yet more confirmation that spending on AI related construction, and increased consumer spending in part from recent stock market gains, are likely the only two significant factors keeping the economy out of recession.

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