The Long-Term Cherry Picked Employment Trend

Click to enlarge.

I started with nonfarm payrolls which already exclude the long-term decline in farm labor. I then subtracted the declining long-term trend in manufacturing employees. I then subtracted the awful construction employment numbers of late. And lastly, retail trade employment hasn't been performing well at all since the success of Amazon.com.

What's left? All that cherry picked employment trend goodness! That's what!

Oh, crap. It's still a massive exponential trend failure? 29.6 million jobs below trend? Seriously? Can't say I didn't try. Hey, at least there has been some growth since 2000. That's something I guess. Sigh.

And people wonder why I'm a permabear?

This post inspired by Rob Dawg's comments found here.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart