Below, EPI President Heidi Schierholz offers its initial findings on a jobs report released this morning that showed 372,000 jobs were added in June as wage growth continues to slow. Read the full Twitter thread here.
Wage growth is also clearly slowing down, which has huge implications for Fed policy. Quarterly wage growth slowed in June and has fallen substantially in recent months. It is now close to the pre-COVID range. 2 / pic.twitter.com/USlGjDBdLO
– Heidi Schierholz (@hshierholz) July 8, 2022
In other words, the slowdown in nominal wage growth, even in the face of continued inflation, is further evidence that the Fed can keep labor markets tight right now without fueling inflation. four /
– Heidi Schierholz (@hshierholz) July 8, 2022
One big problem with the number of jobs: there is still a giant gap in jobs in state and local governments – they have fallen by 656,000 since February 20, with almost half of them, 306,000, in education. It is imperative that state and local governments use their ARPA funds to raise wages and fill those jobs. 6 /
– Heidi Schierholz (@hshierholz) July 8, 2022
Although, mind you, in the private sector we haven’t reached “mission accomplished” either. Depending on how you measure counterfeiting, the total labor market gap is now around 3 million jobs, of which about 2 million are in the private sector. eight /
– Heidi Schierholz (@hshierholz) July 8, 2022
But all groups are seeing a much faster recovery* than after the Great Recession*. Since the start of the Great Recession, it took 11.5 years for black unemployment to drop to 5.8%, but this time it took 2 years and 4 months. ten /
– Heidi Schierholz (@hshierholz) July 8, 2022
And no, these aid and recovery packages are not to blame for inflation. 12 / https://t.co/a3qAcf1vN5
– Heidi Schierholz (@hshierholz) July 8, 2022
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