Fresh off his interview with NY Fed President John Williams, WSJ Fedwatcher Nick Timiraos is back at it today, writing about the jobs market.
It's a good reminder that service sector employment is an enormous part of the US economy. He writes that healthcare, education, leisure and hospitality and other services such as dry cleaning and automotive repair account for about 36% of all private-sector payrolls in the country. That compares to 2% of workers in information technology. The headlines in the past few months have been about job cuts in the tech industry; so while Google, Microsoft and Apple remain a big part of our lives, they're a tiny part of the economy.
Notably, Timiraos writes this:
Now, with the effects of the pandemic diminishing, many executives and business owners in services industries say they are finding it easier to recruit and fill jobs.
He relies on anecdotal information afterwards but they're good anecdotes. The days of the towering signs of fast food restaurants calling for workers appear to have passed.
He noted that women are flowing back into the labor force with the prime-age women's participation rate back to pre-pandemic levels.
So while non-farm payrolls beat estimates, the jobs market is slowly returning to balance.
