Technology continues to disrupt in disappointing jobs report

Technology continues to disrupt in disappointing jobs reportTechnology continues to disrupt in disappointing jobs reportThe U.S. Department of Labor has released its monthly jobs report, which indicates how employers are behaving.The upshot yes, there are jobs available, but some major industries are suffering and a continuing rise in part-time work, the quality of jobs isnt very high.What the latest jobs report tells us about whos working in AmericaFirst, the overall view job creation is notlage as strong as economists had hoped, which means the economy isnt as strong as it should be.How do we know that? Because fewer new jobs are being created. When the economy is strong, and companies feel confident, they create mora jobs. Thats not the case now, or for the past two months.For instance, although many economists expected 185,000 jobs to be added in May, only 138,000 jobs were added. In more bad news, the Labor Department said it had overestimated its initial March and April job gro wth estimatesand was off by 66,000 jobs for the two months.Which industries are up, and which are downSecond, some major industries are suffering. Retailers lost 6,100 jobs in May, continuing the trend of brick-and-mortar stores being in freefallbecause more Americans are shopping online.Although there were promising job increases in healthcare and mining, that strength stands out because other industries are so weak.On Thursday, consultancy firm Challenger, Gray Christmas reportedthat grocery stores and the automotive industry were beingimpacted by job cuts. Michael Kors announcedThursday that it isclosing about 100-125 stores over the next two years to save costs.Whats causing the job destruction in retail? Right now, people prefer to shop online more than they did in the past. Even though online shopping is less than 10% of all shopping, its enough to hurt the stores and the people who work there.And its only going to get worse. When online technology can giveyou price transpare ncy at the click of your fingers, it makesin-person salesobsolete.The consumer has an amazingly efficient and effective mechanism to discover what prices are and to make a virtually snap judgment about what theyre willing to pay for such things and that has shifted the balance of power to consumers away from retailers and producers, Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com, said. Theres still going to be brands like Apple and Teslathat continue to be capable of commanding premium prices but its harder and harder.People are dropping out of the workforce, but where are they going?Hamrick said that overall, the May jobs report was a big disappointment and that the job numbers showed that the recent past hasnt beenas strong as we thought it was.On the positiv side, the unemployment rate stayed steady at 4.3%, the lowest its been since 2001.This all sounds good on the surface - until you see that the labor force participation rate fell too. Labor force participation is a me asure of how many people are working when the number drops, it means theyre dropping out of the work force. Thats whats happening now. More people are not looking for work and are not rejoining the job market. The labor force participation rate declined by 0.2% to 62.7% in May as about 429,000 people dropped out of the labor force.Its a firm trend labor force participation has been dropping since 2000, as this chart from Business Insider shows.There are no clear answers about exactly why and which Americans are disappearing this month, and if this is out of the ordinary. The obvious suspects are Baby Boomers, who are of retirement age, but women and young workers are also dropping out of the payrolls.Theres nothing thats going to compel baby boomers to stop retiringeven if theyre underfunded for retirementAnd for the most part, high school students are continuing to stay in school and go to college, Hamrick explained. Between those factors and the fact that females are not contribut ors to the labor force participation likethey were in years past, those are all demographic reasons that arent changed by a days or months or years worth of headlines on employment.This make sense. More Americans are going to college than ever before and are not joining the job market until later. Moreover, the U.S. not having mandatory paid family leavedisproportionately hurts women when it comes to employment.Some economic analysts also believe that labor force participation rates slumpis due to the job market being at full capacity everyone who wants a job currently can find one. Thats an optimistic view, but one thats hard to prove.So, jobs are there but are they may not be good enough for people to want them.If we want to compel more people to join the job market, we could entice them with more job training and higher wages, but growth inaveragehourly earnings remains sluggish. Wages increased by just four cents last month to $26.22 an hour.