The Jobs Report September 1 2023

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

You can read the full report here.

While the federal government and media will trumpet 187000 new jobs created, they may not mention the downward revision of last month’s numbers by 30,000 from the already low numbers.

More important, for those of you on LinkedIn, here’s where jobs are being created:

Health care added 71,000 jobs. Do you work in health care? No? We’re down to 116000 jobs.

Leisure and hospitality continued to trend up in August (+40,000). That was down from the 61000 per month over the previous 12 months. Do you work in leisure and hospitality? No? We’re down to 76000 jobs.

Social assistance increased by 26,000. If you don’t work in this field, we’re down to 50,000 jobs.

Construction employment continued to trend up, +22,000. If you don’t work construction, we’re down to 28000 jobs

Professional and business services were up 19000. That brings us to 9000 rando jobs.

If you work in IT, the count is -15000.

Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs increased by 294,000 to 2.9 million in August.

In normal years, temp work increases beginning in the third quarter because people take vacations, projects are falling behind and companies throw money at the issue so work can get done.

This is not a normal year. Consulting and temp assignments are almost invisible on LinkedIn and, if the government is to be believed, assignments are concluding instead of running until the end of the year.

If you are on LinkedIn, most of you are not seeing jobs for you and when you do, hiring has slowed tremendously. I was channel surfing and don’t remember where I heard it said that the time to hire for most jobs has increased to 44 days from 21 days. In skilled fields like IT, it can be up to 88 days. It doesn’t matter if they hire someone and if they do, they know they have choices and are taking their time.

While the political class is talking about an economy that is growing, if you are college-educated and doing work suitable for someone college-educated, be…