A debate has been recently raging on how much housing has – either directly or indirectly – contributed to US employment growth in the last few years. I have argued that this contribution has been at least 30%; others have suggested that the contribution has been smaller, as little as 13% only. So, who is right?

Part of the discussion is about what the starting point should be.  My starting reference point is February 2001 – the month before the start of the 2001 recession. At that time total non farm employment in the US was 132.5 million based on BLS data. Total employment fell during the 2001 recession and kept on falling during the 2002-2003 “job-loss” and then “job-less” recovery, thus reaching it through in August 2003 at 129.8 million. Since then employment recovered and reached a level of 135.1 million in May 2006 (and modestly higher until August). Thus, the total change in employment during this period since 2001 has been 2.56 million. I estimated that the change in employment in residential construction and related sectors has been 1.046 million between February 2001 and May 2006. Of this total, 713,000 was directly in residential construction; the rest – 333,000 - was in sectors directly related to housing. These sectors include two main areas: first, manufacturing sectors producing materials for the construction industry as well as the furniture sector; second, financial and other services related to housing (such as real estate credit, mortgage and real estate agents and brokers, real estate property managers, etc.).  Thus, the contribution of housing and housing related sectors to employment growth has been 40.8% (=1.046/2.56), of which the direct contribution of the construction sector alone has been 27.8% (0.713/2.56). Thus, the housing contribution to employment growth has been directly at least 28% and indirectly at least 41%.

These figures do not include other housing related sectors that have – more indirectly – contributed to employment growth: for example, they include furniture production but they do not include home appliances, a sector that is strongly correlated with housing as new home buyers are large purchasers of big-ticket home appliances (fridges, kitchen stoves, dish-washing machines, laundry machines, TV and home entertainment electronic devices). This 40.8% figure also does not include the purchase of transportation vehicles that are directly related to the construction industry: for example, Ford recently reported a sharp drop in sales of pick-up trucks that are usually purchased by building contractors. If one were to add these and other sectors that are related to housing, the contribution of housing to employment growth could be as high as 45%.

These figures are much larger than those presented by other authors. But beware of the usual perma-bull spin doctors’ attempts to massage the data to achieve what they want, i.e underestimate the role of housing in recent US employment growth. The only way to reduce the estimated contribution of housing to employment growth is to ignore the period from 2001 to 2003 in which overall US employment growth was falling; one then needs to start counting employment changes from August 2003 when total US employment reached its post-recession through. If one does that – as usual spin doctors do – the increase in total US employment – between August 2003 and May 2006 - is a whopping 5.32 million rather than the much smaller 2.56 million that we had since the beginning of the 2001 recession. So, if you ignore the massive job losses between 2001 and 2003 and consider only the job creation since the bottom of the employment cycle in mid 2003 you can sharply boost the figures for overall job creation in the US economy. This is cheating as the economy lost 2.7 million jobs between 2001 and 2003; and even after the recovery since August 2003, total non farm employment in the US was below its pre-recession level of February 2001 until the beginning of 2005. So, if you concentrate on the period since the bottom of the employment cycle you boost the total employment increase and you get a smaller increase – since that through point – in the housing and housing related employment, about 717,000 jobs created in housing related sectors since August 2003. Then, this 717,000 figure appears as only 13.5% of the total employment growth since that through point in the employment level. So, you can spin around that the contribution of housing to employment growth is “only” 13%. But this spinful choice of the starting point totally ignores the 329,000 jobs created in the housing related sectors between 2001 and 2003, at a time in which total employment was falling at a rate of 2.75 million jobs.

One could certainly argue that choosing – as I do - as the starting date 2001 is also biased as this was a period in which total employment was falling while it was increasing in housing and housing related sectors. But ignoring altogether the 2001-2003 period in considering the contribution of housing is also altogether biased. Since taking any starting point – be it February 2001 or August 2003 - involves one potential bias or another leading to the very different figures of 13.5% or 40.8%, consider the following Solomonic approach: split the difference and take the average of the contributions of housing to employment growth between one “biased” extreme point – February 2001 – and the other “biased” extreme point – August 2003. Then, the average of these two extremes gives you 27.1%. So, even if you want to be most generous to the view that part of the overall employment losses in the 2001-2003 period should be – for whatever unexplained reason – ignored to reduce the role of housing activities in employment growth, you still get a figure that is very large, 27%, that is close to the one of  30% that I have been using and much larger than the 13% spinned around by the usual perma-bull spin doctors. And this figure – again – does not include other sectors that are highly housing-related, such as home appliances and some segments of the auto sector; including such sectors would push this Solomonic figure of the share of housing in employment growth above 30%.

This debate is not just a semantic discussion on what the past contribution of housing has been to employment growth since the last business cycle. It is also relevant for the future as the current bust in the housing market could then have severe direct and indirect effects on employment in the near future. With the housing bust now taking place, you will soon see sharp reductions in employment in the housing construction sector. But this is only the direct effect; the indirect effects will be even more important. As housing slumps, jobs among real estate brokers and agents will fall; so will jobs in the mortgage finance industry (where, for example, Washington Mutual has already slashed 2,500 jobs related to mortgage finance) and related jobs (residential property managers, offices of real estate appraisers, lessors of residential buildings, direct title insurance carriers, other real estate credit employees).

You will also observe soon job losses in manufacturing sectors directly related to housing such as wood windows and doors, plywood wood products, clay building materials, cement and concrete products, architectural and structural products, construction machinery manufacturing, household furniture manufacturing). These are all sectors that are directly related to housing; in some sense one degree of separation from housing.

The next, and more indirect, effect will be on sectors that are two degrees of separation from housing: home appliances, motor-vehicle sales related to construction activity (such as pick up trucks, etc.), home electronic devices, etc.

Finally, if my argument that the housing bust will – together with the oil shock and the delayed effects of interest rate increases – lead to a sharp fall in consumption growth and an economy wide recession - as the wealth effects of the housing bust lead to a sharp fall in home equity withdrawal - you will see much broader effects on the economy and on employment with an overall fall in employment in most sectors of the economy. Indeed, the recent mediocre sales results of a number of retailers and other major US corporations (Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, Family Dollar, Federated, Starbucks, Home Depot, Lowe’s, UPS, Intel, Ford to name just a few leading firms) will soon trigger a more significant contraction in jobs and employment during the fall and winter.

With employment growth being anemic and mediocre for the last six months, real wages falling, increasing debt and debt servicing ratios, slumping housing wealth, negative savings, and geostrategic risks – Iraq, Iran, etc. - increasing risk aversion and reducing confidence, it is no wonder that the US consumer and worker is in a really foul and sour mood – based on all indicators of consumer confidence and broader surveys of political and economic mood - during this Labor Day. And given the latest reports showing that real wages have not kept up with productivity and the recent Census data showing the dismal state of working America, it is no wonder that the US worker and consumer has very little to cheer and much to be concerned given the scary drift in his/her personal economic fortunes – and the broader drift in the rudderless US economic and political ship - during this Labor Day.

So, on this Labor Day beware of the spin doctors that carefully choose figures to underestimate the significant and important contribution of housing to the US employment growth in the last few years; and they thus choose to ignore how much a housing bust will have severe direct and indirect effects on US employment during the coming ugly recession of 2007.