Saturday, December 8, 2007

Is the Employment Train Going Off the Track?

The Big Picture correctly describes the BLS emloyment release on Friday as continuing evidence of a slow motion slowdown. That conclusion isn't all that clear from the accompanying graphs, but looking at the rolling average 12 month employment change does make it clear:

More worrisome is putting this trend in a long term historical context:Once this average starts going down it rarely stops...