The April Labour Force Survey numbers weren't all that good

Last Friday, the LFS release for April showed an increase in employment, which was a bit of a surprise. If you add that to the increasingly good news out of the US, then you might be tempted to think that we got out of this one pretty easily:

If March 2009 turns out to be the trough, then we will have been very lucky, indeed. But there's another number that came out Friday that wasn't part of the press release: hours worked. This series is more closely related to economic activity than is employment, and the news here isn't so good:

This is a very noisy series (the LFS asks for hours worked in a reference week), so it's easy to see why it's not a part of the main release. But it should be noted that hours worked declined by 1.4% in April: the steepest fall we've seen so far in this recession.

I'm inclined to be optimistic about the prospects for a turning point in the next couple of months or so. But I don't think it happened in April.

Comments

[Nick Rowe]

I had forgotten how bad the 81 recession was, till I saw your graph. My guess is that foreclosures, mortgage defaults, bankruptcies etc., were also worse in 81 than we have so far seen, and are likely to see, unless we are unlucky. And probably over half the population can't even really remember the 81 recession.

[Stephen Gordon]

I can! I finished my BA in 1984, and as a member of the 1961 birth cohort - the largest in Canada - job prospects were pretty grim then. Hence the decision to go to grad school. Unhappily for me, that meant looking for an academic job during the 1990-94 recession. I count myself very, very lucky to be where I am now.

OTOH, at least I didn't have to worry about 20% mortgage rates. Yikes!

[Mike Moffatt]

My experiences were a bit different, because I was only 5 at the time. But I do remember more than a few friends of my parents losing their jobs. My first realization that adults had things to worry about too.

I wonder how much our early experiences have to do with choosing economics as a profession. I was in highschool during the 1990-94 recession when I was first thinking about 'what I want to do when I grow up'. Had we been in a boom I probably never would have developed an interest in the subject!