2015-05-03telegraph.co.uk

``The employment component dropped sharply to 48.3, below the "boom-bust line" of 50 and the lowest in almost six years. The relapse is likely to set off alarm bells at the Fed, where chairman Janet Yellen pays very close attention to the labour market.

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There is now a clear risk that the US economy may slow to "stall speed" under the Fed's model, defined as a "slow-growth phase at the end of expansions before falling into a recession".

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A separate report by Markit found that US manufacturing output in April fell to its lowest level this year, depressed by declining exports.

... wages have failed to pick up as expected. Average pay growth for non-supervisory workers has languished at 1.6pc over the past year and has actually slowed to a rate of 0.8pc in the past three months.

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The labour participation rate is still at a 37-year low of 62.7pc. The rate for males has dropped from 73.8pc to 69.3pc since 2007, a drastic fall that cannot be fully explained by changing technology or "structural" problems.

A new paper by Danny Blanchflower and Andrew Levin for the National Bureau of Economic Research argues that there are still large numbers of people with part-time jobs who want to work full-time. Once all forms of "hidden unemployment" are included, the shortfall reaches 3.3m jobs. The real unemployment rate is around 7.5pc.



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