in response to my 2022 wrap-up and the argument that the first half of 2022 is unlikely to be called a recessiongentlemen. steven corbett wrote:
So, for H1:
3. Civilian employment remained flat to decline
Well, it pays to look at the actual numbers before you get over yourselves.
figure 1: Civilian employment over age 16, FRED series CE16OV (bold blue), civilian employment adjusted for nonfarm employment concept (red), nonfarm employment, FRED series PAYEMS (tan), adjusted to reflect authors’ preliminary baseline revisions The nonfarm payrolls series (green), quarterly employment and total wage Census employment adjusted by the authors (orange) for Census X-13, all expressed relative to 2021M12 values, all seasonally adjusted. The lavender shading represents (by Mr. Steven Kopits) a hypothetical peak-to-trough recession in 2022H1. SOURCE: CE16OV, PAYEMS from BLS via FRED, authors’ preliminary benchmark series constructed using data from BLS, civilian employment adjusted for BLS’s concept of NFP, QCEW from BLS.
Since Mr. Kopits and I have been discussing this topic for the past five months, I thought he would at least get this right.But, for the record, let me reiterate that as of June (the end of the first half), the household survey recorded clerical employment 1.4% higher than in December 2021. Clerical employment, adjusted for the concept of nonfarm payrolls, was 2.0 percent higher than in December 2021.
As for his other points:
1. GDP decline
2. Rising inflation
3. Civilian employment remained flat to decline
4. Job growth
5. Productivity declines.
I will pay attention:
- GDP falls, GDP+ and GDP++ rise. GDO is 0.3% below the fourth quarter 2021 level.
- Inflation rises (but not used in NBER BCDC’s decision as it is not a measure of “economic activity”).
- Jobs did increase – see Figure 1 above.
- Productivity did drop (measured in output per hour). However, this was also not used for NBER BCDC determination.
