About that July jobs report: most of those 528,000 jobs were part-time, net number of full-time jobs dropped by 71,000

who you gonna believe: your trusted government and its media lackeys, or your own lying eyes?

Now that the glowing headlines have done their job and dazzled the sheeple, a few people are actually digging into those Labor Department statistics and coming up with some inconvenient truths. CNBC admits that the hiring growth was mainly comprised of part-time jobs; full-time jobs actually dropped by 71,000. “Involuntary part-time workers” — those who sought full-time jobs but couldn’t find it — made up 303,000 of the total, and another 90,000 came from people who took on second jobs (because they were driven to by inflation? The report doesn’t say, but that’d be my guess).

Here’s another look from another source:

In Table A-8 in the CPS survey there’s a category that measures the number of part time jobs created the past month. It shows that no fewer than 800,000 part time jobs were filled during July—300,000 involuntarily (i.e. workers forced to work part time when they wanted full time work) and another 500,000 part time jobs created voluntarily (i.e. workers chose to work part time).

If 800,000 part time jobs were created, how does one get ‘only’ 528,000?

…..

But it could also be that the 528,000 is composed almost entirely of part time job creation. If so, the full time employment must have risen very little in July. But full time employment not only did not rise in July over June. It actually declined. CPS Table A-9, for example, shows 132,577 full time jobs in July down from 132,648 in June—a decline of 71,000. And the decline is even greater from May: 223,000 fewer full time jobs in July compared to last May.

So full time jobs are actually declining in recent months while part time jobs rose in July by 800,000. It’s therefore likely that the 528,000 CES survey rise in jobs in July is overwhelmingly composed of part time jobs.

And here’s a corroborating further statistic for this assumption in the CPS survey. It involves the number of jobs that are 2nd and even 3rd jobs. The category of ‘Multiple Job Holders’ in CPS Table A-9 shows a consistent sharp rise in multiple job holders in recent months and over the past year for that matter. Multiple jobs mean virtually all part time jobs (except perhaps for a full time job held over a weekend in addition to a M-F full time, but those numbers are low). Multiple jobs rose by 92,000 in July over June and by 331,000 since May. And from July 2021 to July 2022, the increase in multiple (2nd, 3rd) jobs was 549,000.

In other words, hundreds of thousands of the job gains in recent months do not represent formerly unemployed workers returning to the workforce and getting ‘new’ jobs. They represent workers already with jobs—and increasingly those with only part time jobs—taking on new, additional part time jobs. Many of the 800,000 part time jobs in July were thus workers taking on 2nd and 3rd jobs, at least 71,000 per Table A-9.