June 3, 2017

Job Creation Has Been on a Downward Slide For More Than Two Years

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For some reason I was prompted to create this chart yesterday:

There’s a ton of noise in this series, but nonetheless the fitted trendline is fairly clear. Net new job creation1 has been on a steady downward slide for more than two years, declining from a monthly average of 140,000 in 2015 to 100,000 in 2016 to 70,000 so far this year. I don’t know how meaningful this is, but it doesn’t really seem like a good thing, does it?

1We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth. Thus, net new job creation is the number of new jobs minus 90,000.

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Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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