70% Of Jobs Added In January 2016 Were Minimum Wage Waiters And Retail Workers

Zero Hedge ^ | 02/05/2016 | Tyler Durden

[SeekAndFind]

For those curious where the big jump in earnings came from, the answer appears rather simple: the reason, according to the BLS' breakdown of jobs added in January (per the Establishment survey), of the 151,000 jobs added in the past month, retail trade added 58,000 jobs in January, while employment in food services and drinking places, aka waiters and bartenders, rose by 47,000 in January.

In other words, 70% of the job gains in January went to minimum wage workers.

So how does one explain the snap higher in January wages?

Simple: state regulations demanding higher wages for minimum wage workers starting January 1, which as discussed previously will promptly lead to employers passing on wage hikes costs to consumers in the form of 10% higher food prices starting in NYC and soon everywhere else.

This is the full breakdown of January job gains:

• Retail Trade: +58K
• Leisure and Hospitality, which includes food workers: +44K
• Professional and business service workers, excluding temp workers: +34K
• Manufacturing workers posted a curious rebound, rising by +29K. We are confident this number will be revised promptly lower.
• Construction +18K
• Wholesale Trade: +9K
• Education and Health saw a big and unexplained drop from 54K to 6K
• Information services added just 1K workers
• As for sectors losing workers included Temp Help workers, Transportation and Warehousing (courtesy of the truck and train recession), Mining and Logging, and Government workers.

Bottom line: the big sequential bounce in wages was driven entirely by the January minimum wage increase, and the low December base effect. Expect this sequential increase to renormalize in February when the base now reflect higher minimum wages.

[A CA Guy]

The ones in California had to be mostly all Hispanics because if you were born here and don’t speak Spanish often you can not get work.
Places like Boston don’t get this because they don’t yet have an invasion from the south operating there yet.

[oh8eleven]

70% Of Jobs Added...Retail Workers
Adding more retail workers the month after Christmas? I don't think so.

[Gen.Blather]

Retail work will be disappearing as technology advances. There are more self-checkouts and technology is being tested that will let you pick up items and walk out without checking out and they will be billed to your credit card. (I presume if you do not have a card you will be stopped from leaving.) As for food service, more of that will be self serve also. These trends are being driven by government meddling to force companies to pay low wage earners more. There are also onerous fees (taxes) for hiring people and those occur at all levels of government, including city and county.

[sagar]

It is not really “minimum” if you get paid $15/hr.

[5thGenTexan]

And I bet the vast majority of those jobs are convienently just below the Obamacare full time designation threshold.

[Springman]

Read this, thought the same thing.

[PIF]

Shades of “Snowcrash” where the major employers in the US are fast food chains and the choice jobs go to delivery drivers and messengers.

[griswold3]

Explains the rise of 4.5% in employment costs and the decrease of 3% in productivity.

[oh8eleven]

I managed in retail many moons ago and the malls in January and February were ghost towns. Still are.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: I managed in retail many moons ago and the malls in January and February were ghost towns. Still are.

What cities are these?

[rdcbn]

“I hope Americans learn to love their new Third World wages.”

George Soros circa 2009

[JBW1949]

If the economy continues to improve as it has been noted by the liberals, the waiters and retail sales people will be out of work because nobody will have the money to eat out or buy any goods....

[D_Idaho]

Wow! So much for those high-paying STEM jobs everyone’s touting.

[oh8eleven]

I assume national.

[Buckeye McFrog]

In our Alice in Wonderland political environment, that is only going to generate louder calls for a $15 minimum wage.

[aimhigh]

The unemployment rate is easy to manipulate. The rate is determined by government surveys.

Reagan brought it down by including the military in the 'employed' number for the first time. Clinton brought the unemployment rate down by excluding inner city populations from the surveys. Then just before the end of his term, he had the inner cities re-included to make Bush look bad.

[Enlightened1]

Or is it -665,000?

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/what-jobs-bls-says-665000-job-losses/article/2582535

[aquila48]

That’s bad enough, but when you consider that most of those jobs were probably filled by illegals, than it’s a real disaster for citizens.

[SeekAndFind]

SOURCE: http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3393271/posts

Don’t Show Trump This Chart: All U.S. Job Gains Since Dec. 2007 Have Gone To Foreign-Born Workers