Cautious optimism for job market outlook ahead of election

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - The U.S. labor market appears to have stalled. Several recent months have seen negative job growth, and just 29,000 jobs were created last month.The Bank of America Institute looked into their job data, and believes, despite poor top line numbers, there is reason for optimism. “Our overall impression is things are not too bad. Now obviously we had a weak payrolls just last week, print from last week, but actually in our data, it’s consistent really with fairly decent employment growth overall,” said David Tinsley, Bank of America Institute senior economist.The Bank of America Institute notes lower income household wages are starting to catch up to higher income household wages. Also, more people are switching jobs, with July showing the highest rate of job changes in more than three years.“One of the things we also see in our data is that the raises people get when they switch has moved higher over the last year or so,” Tinsley said.Economists believe there are m