I have been through the last US employment report and a few charts stood out from the rest:

The above shows that the long term growth in total private sector employment in the US has fallen off the edge of a cliff since the late 1990s.  The trend was already set in the post 2001 recovery and has continued to date.   Employment growth is particularly important for economic growth.   The above chart is astonishing in this respect.  I have summed rolling 5 year growth in employment and divided it by the employment level 5 years previously…the one adjustment I have made is to set 5 year previous employment figure as a high water mark input.

If we just look at the annual increase in employment, the current recovery while looking weaker than previous growth phases looks more durable than the post 2001 recession recovery in employment.  Just looking at this data, it would appear that we are in the midst of a stable though weak expansion:

The monthly rate of change supports the stable but weak growth assessment:

And in finer detail we see less extremes at the sector level:

But goods employment is still way below its prior peak:

And if we adjust for population growth, the labour growth dynamics are definitely weak:

And of course the employment recovery remains historically weak:

As is population growth, which feeds back into the first graph:

I am not so sure about the jobs data from the CPS survey: even then the multiple job holders seem to be on the rise:

And part time/full time is still distended as are key self employment figures:

Non farm employment growth has only just started to edge ahead of civilian non institutional population growth… and again we see some extreme data coming through from the CPS survey:

We still have too great a dependence on education and health:

Which has strengthened of late:

And earnings remain weak: