looking for work is rising, with 6,059,000 persons identifying as such in October. The balance between job openings and the unemployed population still indicates a tight labor market, with 1.7 job openings per unemployed person. The current pace of job creation and openings is generally consistent with a healthy economy, but the trajectory suggests the labor market’s strength is waning. All hopes of a policy soft landing in 2023 hinge on the ability of the labor market to support modest job creation and wage gains to offset falling demand from higher interest rates and tighter financial conditions. Consumer spending is offsetting weakness in business investment to support U.S. economic growth. Consumer spending, in turn, is being supported by a mix of savings and credit that is quickly eroding. Household net worth and savings are falling, while credit card use, and delinquencies are rising. It is increasingly unlikely that household spending will be able to keep pace with inflation through 2023. Household net worth fell from $142 trillion in late 2021 to $135 trillion in 2022 Q2. At the same time, household savings have fallen to a level well below their pre-pandemic value. The pace of consumer spending slowed markedly in November 2022, with credit card balances, delinquencies, and issuances all up significantly from a year ago.
For example, from 2022 Q1 into 2022 Q2 real GDP fell for 40 states, with the sharpest contractions in Wyoming and Connecticut. Over this same period, the real GDP in Oklahoma fell at an annual rate of -1.6%. Nonfarm employment rose in nearly every state, with Alaska and Wyoming being outliers. Nonfarm employment growth in the second quarter in Oklahoma grew at an annual rate of 2.8%. A strong labor market, coupled with consumer spending supported by record savings, kept the economy out of recession. In 2023, the question is whether labor market strength and resilient consumer spending can maintain their strength in the face of tightening monetary policy and support additional economic growth. Both labor market conditions and consumer spending remain strong by historical standards, but both are deteriorating, with consumer spending declining rather aggressively. The pace of new job creation has slowed in recent months from a peak of 714,000 net new jobs in February 2022 to a preliminary estimate of 284,000 net new jobs in October 2022. The pace of job openings is also gradually slowing from a peak of 11,855,000 job openings in March 2022 to 10,334,000 job openings in October. Slowly, the number of persons identified as participating in the labor market as unemployed and
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