Do the latest job numbers point to a coming recession?

The number of new jobs created each month has been trending down for the past year — but there is also a good amount of positive data in the latest report.

Economists have been alternating between predicting a recession and a soft landing for about two years now, and with the latest jobs report, they’re not stopping. The truth is there is some positive data in the latest report — and a little bit to maybe worry about.

Are we headed for recession? Well, not if you’re in health care. Health care won the economy over the past year — 900,000 more people now have jobs in health care. Leisure and hospitality did well over the year, and so did government jobs.

“Those three together were responsible for 73% of all jobs added in 12 months,” said Selcuk Eren, who heads the labor market institute at The Conference Board.

So, some industries are doing great but they might not be representative. Those gangbusters health care numbers, for instance?

“That is related to the aging population,” Eren said. “As people get older they demand more health services. That is going to continue independent of whether there’s a recession or not.”

Overall, the number of new jobs created each month has been chaotic but generally trending down for 12 months. Temp workers, which Eren said are kind of a canary in the coal mine, have seen a big decline. And wage growth is now what some economists call “puzzlingly low.”  

“Eventually we do expect a recession and we expect the job losses are going to be more industry-wide,” Eren said.

There’s not a consensus there, though, because on the other hand, things are objectively speaking pretty good. 

“It is slowing down but granted we are slowing down from a period where we had 2 million jobs recovered per quarter and we’re now at a place where we’re adding over 600,000 a quarter which is still a very very healthy clip,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at Zip Recruiter.

So the slowdown in jobs growth is relative, Pollak said. And another way of looking at the current job market is not that we’re on the road to fizzling out, but rather, “Things are getting back to normal,” said Justin Wolfers, professor of economics at the University of Michigan.

“In a period we’ve been creating jobs basically at among the fastest rates it’s ever done so and unemployment hovering around its 50 year low, we’ve had a drum beat of recession talk — it’s absolutely bananas bonkers makes no sense,” Wolfers said.

So are we headed for recession next year? The answer is definitively …