Non-Farm Payrolls - Then and Now

Amid all the recent talk about how financial markets in 2013 bear an eery resemblance to 2007 and in advance of tomorrow’s important monthly labor report, it seemed like it might be a good idea to see how the U.S. workforce has changed over that period and the unsurprising result is as shown below.

Of course the steady rise in health care services is the clear oddball in the group as it didn’t skip a beat in recent years despite all the turmoil in the economy.

Also, though government payrolls have declined (due largely to state and local government cutbacks), it’s still a bit disconcerting to see them second from the top, soon to be passed by employment in education and health services, a good portion of which are, effectively, government jobs.

Lastly, the employment rebound in the two categories that were the proximate cause of the recent financial crisis - financial activities and construction - have been modest at best. In fact, since their respective bottoms in 2009 and 2010, the mining and logging industry has added about as many new jobs as the financial activities and construction industries have.