Today, we are honored to present the Pavel Skrzypchinski, Economist at the National Bank of Poland. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and should not be attributed to the National Bank of Poland.
We provide an update on the job-worker gap discussed in this article: http://econbrowser.com/archives/2022/09/guest-contribution-gauging-recessions-with-the-jobs-workers-gap.
The employment-worker gap fell to 2.5% in August from 3.4% in July, as job openings fell sharply. If we assume September job openings remain at August levels, and combine September household survey data, we get a September gap of 2.6%. However, our employment-worker gap-based business cycle indicator JWGBCI (calculated as the monthly change in the three-month moving average of the employment-worker gap relative to the maximum value of the previous twelve months) fell from -0.5 pp to September’s -0.6 pp. Recall that the recession trigger is -0.9 percentage points.
figure 1. Job-worker gap, %
image 3. Job-worker gap business cycle indicator, percentage points
in conclusion: Labor market conditions have eased and remain consistent with a soft landing scenario.
