Labor market & wages

Strips out government hiring to isolate private-sector labor demand, the cleaner read on corporate hiring momentum and cyclical strength.

Tracks how hard it is for the unemployed to find new work; rising continued claims signal labor-market slack and softening re-hiring.

Determines labor supply; falling participation tightens the market and pressures wages even when the unemployment rate looks benign.

Measures unmet labor demand; the openings-to-unemployed ratio is the Fed's preferred tightness gauge and a leading wage-pressure signal.

The quits rate proxies worker confidence and voluntary churn; high quits force employers to raise pay, directly pressuring labor-cost margins.

Captures realized gross hiring flow, complementing openings to show whether demand is converting into actual employment.

Direct measure of involuntary separations; an uptick is an early, granular sign of deteriorating corporate labor demand before payroll losses appear.

The timeliest monthly wage-inflation print; accelerating hourly earnings squeeze margins for labor-heavy firms and inform Fed policy.

The cleanest mix-adjusted measure of underlying wage growth; the Fed's preferred labor-cost gauge and a structural margin-pressure signal.

Adds benefits to wages for total compensation cost trends, capturing full labor-cost inflation including healthcare and pensions.

Wages relative to productivity; rising unit labor costs are the core economy-wide margin-compression and inflation-persistence signal.

Productivity growth offsets wage inflation; rising output-per-hour lets firms absorb higher pay without margin loss and lifts potential GDP.

A cyclical bellwether of goods-sector labor demand; manufacturing payrolls turn early and track industrial activity and capex cycles.

Tracks construction-sector hiring, a rate-sensitive read on residential and nonresidential building demand and labor tightness in the trades.

Gauges retail-sector labor demand and seasonal staffing; a barometer of consumer-facing employment and discretionary spending capacity.

The most labor-cost-sensitive, low-wage sector; its payrolls and pay trends drive minimum-wage pass-through and services inflation.

A leading labor-demand signal; employers cut hours before headcount, so falling weekly hours flag softening before payroll declines.

Sector-specific wage inflation for goods producers, isolating manufacturing labor-cost pressure on industrial margins.

The raw payroll level for analysts needing unadjusted year-over-year comparisons and seasonal-pattern analysis of hiring.

Share of the working-age population employed; a structural utilization measure unaffected by participation-driven distortions in the jobless rate.