0:00 hello and welcome to people making money I'm your host Kevin bemel and we are here every Wednesday at 10: a.m. Pacific time which I found out earlier today at least this time of year is the same time as it is in uh Phoenix Arizona so or at least Scottsdale where where specifically I looked it up um and we talk about all things related to professional success and wealth building so today I'm starting something that I'm going to make a monthly uh feature of the show and that is talking about the
0:36 state of the economy so when we hear these um when we hear about things in the news um related to um inflation and unemployment and and all those kind of things um almost always they're reported on a national basis and that's all good and well um but as I pointed out in my shows earlier this week sort of you know priming for today none of us lives you know in the nation in the sense that we live sort of this average
1:12 life based on what happens in you know all 50 states rather we live in our locality whatever city or town we live in and the way inflation unemployment wage growth all those things work varies from from location to location so while people in Los Angeles may be experiencing um one set of economic factors um people in Omaha Nebraska very likely are experiencing different ones
1:49 especially um during times like now where where there's a fair amount of economic turmoil going on so what I'm going to be doing now each like I said each month it's going to be the um uh second Wednesday of each month I think let me let me double check on that so I'm not giving you bad information uh let's see yes the second Wednesday of of each month um it it will vary from that occasionally because there's a certain date um that economic data is released and so if the second Wednesday comes too early it'll end up
2:25 being the third Wednesday but in any event what I'm going to be doing each month is working through the data and showing you how experiences of different people in different parts of the country why they're varying uh how that may be impacting them now as you know I don't speak about politics on my shows um so this is not meant to be a political discourse um this is meant to be uh an informational opportunity for us to understand what's
3:00 going on in our economic lives and and and so um I'm not going to be making you know um political remarks about you know this this elected official or this appointed official um not in that sense um you know I may refer to so for example um in the in the Wall Street Journal um this morning one of the headlines was that the Federal Reserve is likely going to um hold off on lowering interest rates based on the Consumer Price Index uh data that was
3:36 released earlier this week so um that's not a political statement that's just a statement of fact um I I believe it was um the the chairman of the FED who released that um and um you know that's what he decided to do now his job of course is to provide um guidance on what the FED is likely to do going forward um although the other um members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System also make statements so you know from time to time we may talk about the statements they've made and
4:12 and how that might impact what's going to be happening in the future but again I'm not talking about those things from a political standpoint merely from an informational one so uh we're going to look at several economic indicators and the first one we're going to cover each uh each uh each month is um uh inflation so um I'm GNA go ahead and share my screen so the Consumer Price Index which is the the measure of inflation that's
4:48 most often used here in the United States is compiled and issued by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics um which is part of the US Department of labor okay so you can see here okay here's this here's a chart this is a summer a summary of what's gone on so 12month percentage changes okay in the Consumer Price Index for selected categories um as of last month okay and and and that's what happens when a month ends then they compile the data for that previous month
5:24 and they publish um this information so you can see that um for all items the uh Consumer Price Index all major categories was up three and a half% and that's what you heard um uh you know broadcast in the media now keep in mind this is in essence an average across the entire United States now food okay was up 2.2% year-over-year and energy was up
6:01 2.1% so if food and energy were up you know basically a little over 2% how is it that overall inflation was three and a half percent well that's because all all items except for food and energy went up 3.8% now why is why just looking at this and again this is National Data so uh it wouldn't necessarily mirror your experience but um right away you can see that um for example if you don't drive a
6:36 car okay and there's lots of people who don't drive a car my friend Michael hasn't driven a car in you know years and years and years okay so the um lowering effect of energy only going up 2.1% for someone who doesn't drive a car is doesn't impact the overall rate as much and so they were likely all other things being equal to have experienced what if what is a higher rate of inflation okay because you can you know
7:12 explain this again the fact that energy only went up by 2.1% whereas all other items went up by 3.8% so these somewhat average each other out now if you take this out of the category all together that means these other items have a bigger impact on your overall experience of inflation which means that it's it's your overall experience would would likely be higher than three and a half percent okay now um I'm gonna sh we're going to take a look at this here so CPI for all items
7:48 Rose 0.4% well how could that be well this is a month over Monon increase okay so from uh February of 2024 the consumer price index for all items went up 0.4% now if you annualize that you would come up with almost 5% for the year okay so um and this is one of the reasons probably that the Federal Reserve has come out and said well um we you know don't count on us rate lowering interest rates as soon as we might have been imp
8:25 uh indicating um earlier this year okay because five % is much too high 4.8 would be the actual annualized figure okay that would be much too high for the the Federal Reserve to justify lowering income rates uh um lowering interest rates I should say now one of the things I want to note here is this this CPI that's reported in the media is for all Urban consumers okay now um Urban consumers and I'm I'm going back into my body of
9:02 knowledge make up I think roughly 80% of Americans but if you live in rural areas okay your experience is not taken into account in the Consumer Price Index figure that is typically reported in the news okay so you may be you know in um rural Wyoming let's say okay and and and you may have felt like wow you know prices for me seem to have gone up much more than three and a half percent that
9:39 that could absolutely be the case because this is not reflective of your experience at all now I will say by the way it's it's hard to get inflation numbers for rural areas okay you don't see them um published as often they're not uh published by uh the Bureau of Labor Statistics at least not on a regular basis okay so all right so this is the national figure which is what's typically reported in the media now let's go to um the regional picture okay so um
10:17 you should be seeing and just to make sure let's go to oops okay let's yeah okay here we go I'm going to make sure okay so so you're now looking at the CPI information for the Los Angeles area for March of this year okay notice that area prices were up .7% over the past month versus 0 4% Nationwide okay and up 4% from a year
10:54 ago so if you're living in Los Angeles Long Beach and California which is the area covered by this particular version of the Consumer Price Index again it's all Urban consumers okay but it's now we're talking about a region that's basically the Los Angeles area where this is where I live we experienced inflation at a significantly higher rate than the nation as a whole in fact almost double right because the nation as a whole experienced 4% month
11:31 over month we experienced 7% month over month okay so um and you'll notice by the way um that it is similar all items less food and energy were higher than the all items index okay so um uh food and energy um here you go let's let's look at the details here okay so food prices actually declined 0.2% in the month of March
12:06 okay and prices for food away from home decreased .3% okay on the other hand energy here in um Los Angeles okay um went up .5% okay and the price for electricity Rose 2.1 % oh I'm sorry this is the price for National this is not for energy in total the the price of natural gas went at 0.5% in the period okay and the increase was the increase of
12:42 3.3% was due mainly to higher prices for gasoline that went up 4 and a half% okay from the prior year these are annual these are annual figures um I'm sorry uh no these are monthly figures okay so that's why um you know it it was so high okay so although um uh although um food prices went down a little bit Energy prices went up quite a bit especially gasoline and electricity and um and that's why um the
13:20 the CPI in Los Angeles went up much much higher okay now um here we can look at here's this gives us um the year-by-year uh Trends um you know that we've experienced since 2020 so and this is again just for the Los Angeles area so in 2020 prices went up 3.1% in 2021 only 0.9% but in 2022 they went up7 and a half perc now these are this is the um uh year-over-year figure
13:58 okay and 2023 5.8% and 2 and a half% these are all in January let's let's look at March and see how so as we said a moment ago prices went up year-over-year in March by by 4% last year 3.7% pretty similar 2022 in March prices went up8 and a half percent okay so the inflation rate here in La year-over-year for March has has more than haved okay but it's still significantly higher than it was in 2020 and 2022 when it was half of what it is
14:33 today okay so if you're if you're feel if you're live in in the LA area like me and you feel like wow I'm still facing higher prices um that probably shouldn't surprise you because although it's things you know inflation isn't going up as much as it did in 2022 um it's still going up faster than it has um historically over the last whatever period 2020 and and probably into the back into the teens okay and you'll notice something else starting
15:08 look let's look over here so um in in August of last year um the uh the rate was um the monthly rate was 7% then it dropped to .3 then um um prices actually dropped in October by a tenth of a percent and in November by by 410 of percent and they were essentially unchanged in December so the end of last year starting in um September here in La it seemed like inflation was really getting under control we were even
15:43 experiencing a little bit of deflation okay and then bang here we are in January prices went up a full percentage point just in January and that was followed by a half percentage point and then 7/10 of a percentage here in March so you can see it looks like um inflation is heating up here in Los Angeles okay so let's now let's look at um uh uh let's look at the CPI for um Omaha
16:18 Nebraska okay this is the Midwest information office okay and Consumer Price Index Midwest region okay so here's the same information for um for the Midwest region okay and let's see where I want to see if it shows us where which which states this covers um Mountain Plains Midwest region okay well it certainly covers uh Nebraska okay
16:53 so um notice that um the uh uh um although prices were up in March 7% also in the midr region which is the same as here in La year-over-year they are only up 2.8% versus four okay so the Midwest region um while it had a similar infl inflation rate this month over over the last year has um experienced Less in
17:28 inflation about a third less inflation than we have here in Los Angeles okay now food prices okay were Rel essentially the same okay they went up um I'm sorry um uh food away from home went up 0.1% food uh prices at home went down by 0.1% basically they were even okay um energy Prices rose 3.6% over the fall over the month similar to here okay look at this though gasoline went up almost
18:03 9% okay but electricity was essentially unchanged and prices for natural gas declined by o over five% so you can see a much different picture with respect to energy costs um than we had um here in Los Angeles so so this and this is why the reason I'm pointing this out is um it's you know people in different parts of the country experience inflation very differently so while the national number is all good and well you're well advised to look up what what
18:39 really happened where I'm located and you can just do a simple search just like I did CPI for the city or town you're living in and it'll give you at least the regional data which is going to be more specific to where you're living okay notice that um for the last four months of last year um inflation well you had deflation three of the months but I mean essentially prices were unchanged okay and then like in um Los Angeles they did bump up in January but only by0 three versus a full percent
19:14 okay and but but the trend again even you know in in Nebraska is there they've been increasing this year okay and that and again that's what I suspect is um saying to the um Federal Reserve we better hold off on interest rate increases okay so that that is inflation now let's look at real what are called real earnings okay this is the um essentially um wages okay so let's look at this chart now all
19:49 right uh so what you're seeing here again this is um real earnings averaged across the entire country okay so um in in March real earnings real average earnings per hour were $11.11 okay unchanged from February but look slightly down from January and more importantly perhaps up only seven cents from uh March of 2023 the year before
20:27 and you see that here in the percentage change right they're showing essentially well there's there's there's you know no change uh February to March 0% okay um there's a half a percentage change um in um between uh you know year-over-year okay so what does that mean well on the one hand inflation nationally went up by um what was the figure three and a half% um but wages overall only went up by a
21:02 half a percent. so it shouldn't be um any uh surprise that people feel like you know prices are going up they're feeling the the pinch from inflation okay let me give you a sort of a practical example I had a meeting yesterday with a fellow who is a he's both a cultivator and a dispenser of cannabis okay and U so here in California we have what amounts to legalized um growing and dispensing of of marijuana okay so his business he
21:38 told me has fallen off significantly whereas he was he would have perhaps 200 customers a day um um back in 2022 at this point he gets maybe 60 customers a day so less than a third of his former um uh number of customers so I so I asked him why why do you think your c number of customers has dropped so much and what he told me was people are really starting to feel the pinch of inflation so after sort of dealing with
22:15 it now for you know two two and a half years they're really starting and and something like you know smoking pot is I guess um you know a luxury I don't know never smoked it I know a lot of people don't believe me when I say that but I never have um so uh you know people just aren't buying it as much um and also there's been a huge um increase in the supply of marijuana so um what he can sell his cannabis for is lower and the
22:51 number of people who want to buy it is lower that all translates into less income for his business okay and so and and we can see here at least on a national basis why wages are up only nominally whereas inflation and and here's uh you's see I saw the CPI here where was it here it is okay so the Consumer Price Index was up three and a half percent we can see this right here okay so now let's um let's look
23:26 at uh state byst state information uh for um oops no I clicked the wrong thing hang on one sec here we go state byst state real earnings okay and we'll go back here we go okay so this is this is personal income by state okay this is this is also um released by the federal government okay so you see this this
24:01 chart here okay personal income just a I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and click on this I think it enlarges there you go okay great so let's look at this so um if you recall in California inflation at least in the LA area was 4% okay personal income Perc change year-over-year 3.4% so you know Californians if we're looking at the National Data may may think well
24:36 what's going on here how come we're still feeling the pinch well the reality is even though we had 3.4% growth in personal income inflation was much higher at 4% and so we're still losing ground okay now look at Nebraska even worse Nebraska had had a 1.7% increase in um personal income whereas they experienced inflation I don't remember the number now but much higher rate more more than double that
25:11 as I recall right so for people in the mid look at people in the Midwest and by the way you see this chart here the lighter the color the lower the increase in wages so um throughout the Midwest and in into the South okay and even in the Upper Midwest and into um the Mid-Atlantic area Okay in general okay um weight uh personal income increases state by state were lower in some cases significantly lower
25:47 look at Iowa only a 0.8% increase Arkansas 0.1% increase okay North Dakota 0.8% Kansas 2.2 significantly lower than certainly the national CPI and I bet if we looked at the um the regional CPI for these areas we would see much lower than the regional CPI as well so for if you're living in the midwest it shouldn't be any surprise if you're feeling like wow you know things are not as good this
26:23 year as as they were last year because you've lost a lot of ground um in terms of um real earnings versus prices now the flip side is for the the sort of um Mountain States okay where we see all these dark orange states that the the they're in the top quintile the top 20% of increases so the lowest one here is 4.9% Wyoming 5.5 Idaho 5.6 Nevada 6.7
26:58 Texas 5.2 Florida 5.6 okay Mississippi good for Mississippi right 5.5 um so for these states people living there okay may be feeling like why are people complaining about feeling so far behind um I feel pretty good about my finances well the reason would appear to be that their personal income has increased faster than inflation okay so for people in the middle uh
27:33 quintile the middle 20 you know 1 they're they're probably feeling like they're treading water for the for the two lower quintiles they're probably feeling they're losing ground and for the upper two quintile they're probably feeling like you know I'm I'm I'm not losing any ground and I may even be gaining okay PE people in Nevada unless INF inflation in Nevada is very very high um it would appear that people in Nevada are are doing quite well okay so that's what again this is what we need to look
28:08 at to really understand our own experience and to understand the experience of you know other people in the country so if you're you know if I'm talking to um a friend of mine you know in Florida and he's like I don't know things seem pretty good to me i' be like well yeah that makes sense because you know um the the Florida economy overall is doing much better than the California economy okay just just on the numbers okay and California is doing it appears a little bit better than New York depending on how the inflation numbers
28:44 okay fall out so these are the kind of things to look at um inflation is one side of the picture but wage growth is the other so if wages are growing faster than inflation then people are more than keeping up but if they're not like here in the Midwest especially the Upper Midwest then um people are falling behind and and they and they feel it okay next let's look at uh unemployment going to close these
29:19 [Music] out okay here we go civilian unemployment okay now just like we've been doing all along we're looking this is looking at the country as a whole okay and um we see here that the unemployment rate as of March is 3.8% okay 3.8% now that's higher well it's been around that same figure since around
29:55 August um July we're going back so as of March of last year it was 3.5% so the unemployment rate has come up a little bit since um since March however it's of course since say we'll say you know January 20122 it's about on par with January of 2022 about 4% so all in all employment has been relatively steady for the last you know two and a quarter years okay um you know employment unemployment you know
30:30 peaked um in at 14.8% in April of 2020 okay so four years ago we were at almost 15% unemployment obviously because of covid now right before covid by the way we were pretty much at the same level we are now okay and you can see that employment was trending down since um 2009 that was the last Peak um at 10% and overall this time down down down down down then we had this big spike because of covid okay and then um by um
31:06 you know let's see yeah by say November December of 2021 it was back down to about 4% okay so this was a a you know temporary phenomenon really it was a what one two at most a two-year phenomenon and and the super high was you know really just a one-year phenomenon okay now um that's for the entire population now let's look at this is the rate for men okay so the rate for men um over typic oops typically is a
31:43 little bit lower than the overall rate okay looking at women okay so let's let's take men off so we can see it more easily okay for women as well that's that's interesting for women as well um the overall employment rate unemployment rate is a little bit um this is for women 20 years and and and over um the rate is a little bit lower than the rate for the the total rate okay now let's look let's look at teenagers okay the rate for teenagers is much much higher
32:21 than it is overall um so teenage unemployment has has been very very high and this is why we can see that for people 20 years and over it's actually a little bit lower than the total okay now look look at the unemployment rate for for whites okay for whites it's a little bit below um the total okay and for blacks okay much higher um than the total okay and then let's look at Asians okay Asians much well not much lower but
32:56 significantly lower lower than the total okay and finally for Hispanics or Latinos okay um a little bit a little bit higher okay so by by racial group that's that's the data now again this is for the country as a whole now let's look at the uh state by state unemployment rate okay uh we'll go back here and unemployment rates for the states okay so what do we have so the lowest
33:32 unemployment in the country is North Dakota at 0. 2% this is for February okay we evidently the March figures haven't been um posted yet and the highest is California at 5.3% okay now if you recall um unemployment was uh 3.8% okay so um starting around uh um let's see Michigan and down 3.9% okay that's you know still pretty much in there okay not till you get
34:08 to um sort of you know Oregon West Virginia do we see that it's about a half a percentage point above um the national average okay now in the uh Mountain States and in the midwest okay um the unemployment rate is significantly lower um than it is for the country as a whole in indeed in some cases it's it's half okay Alabama Virginia uh Wisconsin Florida all in the 3% range okay so um you can see though
34:46 that because California is so big um well let's look at it this way so you'll notice that only one two three four five six seven 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 so only about a third of the states um have uh an an unemployment rate that's significantly higher than the national rate the issue is that big States like New York and California have high unemployment rates and so that raises the overall unemployment rate for
35:24 the country higher than what most individual ual states are experiencing okay so again this is an important thing to understand um if you're living in um one of these uh higher um unemployment areas and you can see Washington State um Illinois New Jersey District Columbia Nevada California these are all and Alaska these are all in the almost almost five to over five% range okay you're experiencing seeing unemployment
35:59 differently okay than the country as a whole the flip side is the job market remains very tight in the dtas and some of these other states okay now unemployment rates cannot be looked at separately from what are called Workforce participation rates so um Workforce participation rates um when we calculated unemployment rate um what we're calculating is the number of
36:34 people um who are not employed versus the number of people who are um participating in the labor force so and there's a specific definition for that but the reality is is some people get discouraged and they drop out of the labor force so when someone drops out of the labor force that can make it look like unemployment is going down even though the number of people working hasn't changed okay and the reason is is because um unemployment is factored as a
37:10 percentage of the number of people who are in the labor force okay now here's an interesting thing notice back here 20 years ago the workforce the the civilian labor force participation rate was 66% okay now here we are March of this year and the civilian labor force participation rate is under 63% okay so um we are not anything close to the labor force participation rate
37:45 that we were back 20 years ago um and um you know and and and while we are up from so you can see that at the depths of um covid the labor force participation rate was down to 60% so we have bounced back from there somewhat okay right before that it was at 63.3% so we're still not actually back nor have we ever actually been back to the labor force participation rate that we had um prior to covid which tends to
38:22 indicate that that as a result of covid okay some people have left the labor force and they're not coming back that would tend that that would be the conclusion I would draw okay so now let's look at again some of these segments okay so men 20 years and old older should be no surprise their labor force participation rate is much higher than the total okay and as shouldn't surprise us women is lower because women stay homes raise children Etc okay all right let's
38:57 take these out now let's look at teenagers okay teenagers is also significantly lower and that's part of the result of having a high unemployment rate is a lot of teenagers um either give up or or they just they don't want to have a job because they're focusing on school Etc okay now we can look at um racial groups so whites pretty much tracking okay blacks um have been lower prior to covid since Co they've been bouncing back and forth below and above okay interesting Trend Asians typically
39:33 higher okay shouldn't surise and then finally um Hispanics or Latinos significantly higher okay isn't that interesting so but still you'll notice even for a a group who's who's got a higher labor participation rate um they were at uh 67% just prior to co okay well I guess yeah they're just about back they're just oh no I'm I'm looking at the wrong thing they were at about 68% um prior to covid and then um you
40:09 know they're they're still still below the prior to covid numbers okay now just like we did with unemployment this is National but we really need to look at more Regional numbers so the labor force participation rate regionally okay here we go so this is this is an interesting map and um want want to make sure you can see this okay so this is a county by county um map of Labor Force
40:47 participation okay um and you can see the lighter the color the lower the participation rate so there are some areas let me see if I can get this to no okay I want to see if I can get this bigger oh yeah here we wait yeah there we go okay um so you can see there are some areas where the participation rate is you know up upwards of 95% in these really dark blue areas so sherton County Nebraska 85% for women okay um oh oh I
41:22 see the group let's look at total let's flip that over okay we're g to look at total first okay so um let's see let's pick a thing here okay powder County Powder River County Montana labor force participation rate 86% okay as opposed to Lassen County California where the rate is 40% okay less than half all right let's let's um and you notice in the Upper Midwest okay that's where you see the most dark blue and therefore the the the highest
41:57 percentage of people regionally um participating in in the labor force whereas if when you start getting into the Southwest you see overall it's much lighter okay here's um uh Katherine County New Mexico 45% um what is this this is Lincoln County Colorado 37% Fremont County Colorado 46.6 bent County Colorado 35.8 let's let's go over to here to some other ones uh let's see if we can find Telfer
42:34 County Georgia 45% some of these are are probably fairly rural so let's let's look at this now on a state byst state basis that's going to give us a little bit bigger picture okay so you can see Minnesota has the highest labor force participation rate of any state at 81% let's go back to total okay actually the Upper Midwest has the highest of um uh of the country okay you'll notice that New Mexico and the um and and the sort of Western South if you will um have the lowest labor
43:10 force participation rates okay and most of the country is is kind of in in the middle okay so Florida is at 75.6 California 76.4 okay pretty much the same New York 77.3 Nevada 77 .5 okay so a lot of these are in the you know sort of mid to high 70% rates okay now let's look at the difference for men okay now you notice you'll notice the map gets significantly darker for men because men tend to participate in the labor force at a much higher
43:46 percentage and interestingly for men Nebraska has the highest labor force participation rate at 88.1% okay and except for the the South and Michigan and and West Virginia okay most of the country is in the low 80s and above in terms of the male participation rate now for women okay you see that the the map is much lighter because again as we saw before women tend to participate less for various reasons okay in Texas less
44:22 than 70% um in Minnesota this is the highest 81% okay um and then okay so you can see that um uh because of the difference in labor participation that can have an impact on what the unemployment rate is so for California let's go back to total okay so California where the labor force participation rate is 76.4% nonetheless California has a 5.3% unemployment employment rate okay that's
44:59 oops that was weird um that's significantly higher than South Dakota that not only has an 82.6% labor participation rate but only a [Music] 2% um unemployment rate so the labor market in South Dakota is much much tighter than it is in California when we look at these two factors together which is what we need to do so the likelihood of wage gains in South Dakota would seem to be higher because of the tightness of the market versus a place like
45:36 California okay now let's let's go on to look at a couple of other things all right we're going to look at uh job openings here we go okay so where um where has employment changed I'm not I'm sorry we're not doing job openings we're doing um employment by industry where did we see job growth uh last month this is
46:12 important too so you'll see that um this is number of jobs 20,000 40 60 80 100 okay where did the most job growth come in in basically four areas one is government okay um the second well the largest job growth came in private education and health the second largest came in government the third largest came in Leisure and hospitality and the fourth in construction okay so construction had an increase of 39,000 jobs um Leisure
46:50 and Hospitality 16,900 about 177,000 now what that reflects is even though it had um wait let me look at this again for a second I'm sorry um there was not 39,000 I'm sorry there was 8,000 new jobs in construction okay um there was about 177,000 in um the Leisure and Hospitality there was uh over 23,000 in government and there was about over 26,000 in private education Healthcare now um notice that um
47:27 a lot of the growth in fact um well yeah almost all the growth is in Services okay and a lot of the growth are in services that aren't particularly productive so government doesn't produce anything okay and really U private education and health care services don't either okay so although there were big job gains um in in March um nonetheless in productive areas like Mining and logging manufacturing wholesale trade retail trade um Financial activities
48:04 professional business services and um in those areas there was almost no job growth or there was well there was negative in utilities there were losses but in manufacturing um there was uh zero job growth it's saying here okay um and in uh wholesale trade um there was uh 8500 jobs uh grew okay so um okay so
48:39 you can see that while there were there were large there was large job growth um 50,000 of it was health care and government okay now we can look at a three-month period and we see pretty much the same Trend okay over three months still um oh you know I've been reporting this wrong I just realized okay so um there was an 88,000 job gain in uh education and Healthcare and there was a 71,000 gain in government so 150 almost 160,000 jobs
49:17 between the two of them okay now um in the last three months there's been 270,000 jobs gained gained in uh private education and healthare services and there's been almost 200,000 jobs gained in government so the real job growth um and looking at the six months same thing 12 months okay the real job growth the the real things that have been pushing job growth for the last 12 months a million jobs gained in education and PRI private education Healthcare and 664
49:54 th000 in government okay so you can see where job growth by industry is is coming there's been um very little growth in manufacturing 24,000 over a year despite all of the um you know information we've been seeing about wanting to reshore manufacturing and all that wholesale trade also um not a whole lot a 1% change um retail trade a half a percent change okay Financial activities less than a 1% change professional and business services also
50:30 less than a 1% change versus um private education and Health Care over a 4% change and government which has had almost a 3% increase okay and then Hospitality Leisure also about 3% and construction 3.4% okay so this shows you where what industries are growing in terms of employment now let's uh uh let's look now at the state byst state okay state byst state
51:12 employment okay and it's not going to let me do this okay so right here okay we're we're looking at industry employment by state okay so total nonfarm employ um in California for example is almost 18 million in Texas over 14 in Florida almost 10 in Montana little over a half a million okay much smaller workforces not even 300,000 Wyoming Etc okay now let's look at some sectors let's look at um
51:49 construction okay so Construction in California um almost a million people 900 over 900,000 work in construction okay o over 600,000 um work in construction in Florida and almost 850,000 in Texas 23,000 in Wyoming 30 31,000 South Dakota Etc so you can get an idea okay now let's go to uh here we go education and health care services okay so California 3.2 million in education and health care
52:24 services 1.9 million in Texas 1.5 in Florida less than 30 uh I'm yeah less than 30 um is this are these in millions no um so 30,000 um in uh Wyoming um 85,000 in Montana about 78,000 in South Dakota okay by the way um almost a million in Illinois okay now let's look at government okay in California 2.6
53:02 million people work in government now just just to look at that total non-farm in California is 18 million so fif roughly 15% of Californians work in government okay Texas 2 million a little over 2 million versus 14 million so one approximately 17th work in government in Texas okay Florida about 10 million and how many work in government okay 1.1 or about 11%
53:39 actually it's probably closer to 12 okay now let's look at a state like uh Wyoming there's 70,000 in government versus 292 million overall so you've got almost a quarter of the workforce in Wy oming working in government okay so you can see how on a regional basis if if Government employment is growing it's maybe having more of an impact in a in a state like Wyoming than it does in California or Florida where the percentage of people in government is
54:15 lower okay so that's employment by industry okay state by state and let's now let's look at job openings this is the last thing we're going to look at all right so um these are uh these are job openings by industry Nationwide okay and the key thing to look at are um change now this is a change month over Monon so total
54:51 month-over-month change in job openings from January to February zero okay that's and and you can see if you come over here you see essentially the same number of job openings uh 8.75 million 8.75 million actually a few more in February but it you know statistically insignificant okay so where are the changes in job opening where are things grow first of all let's look regionally okay regionally um job openings in the west are the only really sign significant
55:26 change at 0 2% so there's more job openings here in the west than there is in the other four parts of the country where there's zero or they shrunk a little bit in in the South okay now where did job openings increase well there was a 0.1% in almost a almost a 1% increase in state and local government excluding education okay in terms of job openings um in the federal government actually job opening decreased by 7% okay arts and entertainment and Recreation job
56:02 openings increased by 1.7% okay whereas for information they decreased by 2.6% so again Nationwide this is telling you where are job openings increasing and where are they decreasing now where they're increasing there may be Economic Opportunity where they're decreasing there may not be as much opportunity this is again this is for the country as a whole we really want to be looking at state by state so here's a a similar map
56:37 to what we were looking for only this time we're looking at job openings so where are there the most job openings total in the country evidently Alaska Montana Colorado New Mexico Oklahoma South Carolina and Mary okay so the job opening rates there are 6.2% or above um versus the national rate which is 5.3% okay 5% and Below you see the
57:13 states there that are now in in yellow California Washington Texas Iowa Michigan New York New Jersey uh that looks like I think that's Connecticut right there right Connecticut yeah okay um so the middle quintile these are the states that are basically on par with the nation as a whole okay these are the ones that are higher these two and these are the ones that are slightly lower to lower okay so um and let's just look at these okay so California at 4.3% significantly lower than um the
57:52 national average Washington half percent lower Texas 33% lower Iowa 4% lower Michigan okay New York uh New Jersey um 7.7% lower and Connecticut okay so California actually in terms of job openings has the lowest level um in the country it appears okay versus the highest looks like it's going to be Alaska I think Alaska gets that Award right there you go so Alaska at 7 .2
58:27 almost two percentage points higher than the rest of the country so again this um this gives you an indication of how tight the labor market may be okay and where there's opportunity so if you're looking for opportunity in terms of more job openings you want to be in the darker States um whereas in the um lighter states there are fewer job open which would generally mean that employers have a greater amount of of um leverage in
59:04 negotiating than um they than than they would otherwise have all right so what is this all mean right we've gone through a lot of Statistics okay and it really comes down to so there there's the old saying um if I'm employed there's no recession and I'm not employed there is a recession right economics while we talk about it even regionally state by state or county by county right economics is really an individual phenomenon how we experience
59:41 it is separate for each one of us so it's it shouldn't be any surprise that we're not necessarily suede when we hear for example that um inflation is going up or unemployment is going up or down or whatever those don't necessarily affect us unless we're looking for a job okay then unemployment may affect us um if the labor market is tight and we're looking for a job it should be easier to get a job okay um so as we look at the various economic data out there what I
60:17 would encourage you to do is examine your own situation and think what is going to be most impactful on me so if you're working and you're making a good salary and you have prospects for increased income so a lot of the job figures may not necessarily be particularly relevant to you on the other hand inflation numbers may be relevant as long as they're localized to where you're living because if you're going to go in and negotiate for a a salary increase for
60:53 example and you know inflation is 3.5% nationally but you're here in California where it was 4% it doesn't matter that inflation was a half a percent lower uh across the country what matters is here in La if this is where you're living it went up by 4% so for you to get a real pay increase you need an increase of over 4% otherwise you're just keeping Pace with inflation and that's a powerful argument now by the way you might say well wait what if what if inflation is lower than the national average well you know you can you can always go in and sayl you know the it's
61:29 they've been reporting it in the media uh inflation is up three and a half per. so in order for me to gain any kind of ground I need um more than a three and a half percent increase in pay now if you're employer who whoever you're negotiating with isn't smart enough to say well wait a minute but here in our locality you know inflation was only 2.8% so look that's part of negotiating and I'm not saying you should lie um but you know you want to know what the picture is and then you know present it to your best Advantage okay so um
62:04 whatever numbers you want to know well first of all I'm going to be um posting in the show notes all of these links that I was just using so if you want to look at your economic situation you'll be able to click through to all the different graphs and such um plots and maps that we were looking at and you can take a look at your situation and then if there's something specific just do a quick Google search Okay so if you want um you know CPI for um um Columbus Ohio
62:39 so just do CPI Columbus Ohio and you'll you'll it'll take you to the part of the um Bureau of Labor Statistics uh website that has those numbers okay um and and that'll allow you to do just it do it doesn't take you very long okay and putting together this chart with these numbers it took me I think maybe 15 20 minutes to put them together it takes more time to explain it um than it does to search the data out but I would encourage you to take a look at this um on a you know periodically so that you really understand where you're at economically
63:16 more so as an individual than as you know this this sort of a morphus I live in the United States and here's what's going on well so that's the show for today thank you very much for joining me and that's also this is also our last show for the week so I want to wish you a wonderful rest of the day and a great rest of the week next week on Monday at uh at 10 AM Pacific time is my show uh trust and Estates weekly my guest is Paul doery I hope I'm saying that
63:52 correct and he's gonna be he's gonna be talking about the five myths of probate debunked I'm really looking forward to that because I'm not sure I don't think I know what the five myths are so that'll that should be a fun show okay and then on Tuesday at 10: am is uh business lessons from the military and then seven days from today at on Wednesday at 10: am uh is the next edition of people making money so I hope you'll enjo you'll join us all three days next week so again thanks for uh being a part of the show today and
64:27 wishing you all the best in signing off as I always do Marie you are my bell all the best folks