Because it was outdated by publication of the most recent payroll data for April 2021, the follow-up updated JOLTS estimates for March don’t end up having quite the same impact. In one sense, that’s unfortunate because they are once again providing another useful demonstration of the limitations over decoding the employment situation.Job Openings (JO), for one. Before getting to them, [...]
According to newly revised BLS benchmarks, the labor market might have been a little bit worse than previously thought during the worst of last year’s contraction. Coming out of it, the initial rebound, at least, seems to have been substantially better – either due to government checks or, more likely, American businesses in the initial reopening phase eager to get [...]
If the payroll numbers are old news because they aren’t supposed to matter anymore, what with TGA drawdowns and vaccines, then JOLTS figures one month further behind them must count for even less. Gradation does factor here, though, and that’s why it’s important to keep the current and slightly-in-arrears data in mind.What I mean is that the stimulus-frenzy narrative does [...]
It doesn’t quite rise to the level of the LABOR SHORTAGE!!!! fiasco, not yet, but it’s moving up toward that territory. This, of course, had been during Inflation Hysteria #1 when at its absolute peak the unemployment rate was being used to justify expectations for not just a little more in consumer prices but a lot more. In 2018, in [...]
Sticking with our recent theme, a big part of what Inflation Hysteria #1 (2017-18) also had going for it was loosened restrictions for US oil producers. Seriously. Legacy of the 1970’s experience depending too much on OPEC, subject to embargoes, American oil companies had been prohibited for decades from exporting oil. Not that it would have mattered before 2014, the [...]
COVID-19 is a 2020 story and not so much one for 2021. Pretty much everyone, however, will be seeking to make it that way. To begin this week a stark reminder of that promise: vaccine-phoria. While that unleashed a curiously narrow risk and reflation frenzy, the fact that it wasn’t more widespread speaks to this disparity.A vaccine doesn’t really change [...]
I missed it: did anyone ask Chairman Jay Powell how in the world he’s going to be able to create this “hot” inflation he already needs to balance out a decade without it (meaning: recovery and growth) in order to satisfy this newfangled average inflation target? And though he makes it sound like it’s a new thing, especially adding the [...]
Confident consumers are risk takers. Not only do they spend freely, they freely borrow in order to spend. Jay Powell has done his absolute best (I know) to convince Americans they have nothing to fear insofar as any economic fallout from COVID might be concerned. The Federal Reserve working in combination with the federal government has got every conceivable angle [...]
What was stupidest about the past few months was how it was these guys who everyone was depending upon to make it all go just perfectly moving forward. Worse, those geniuses being held up as competent economic stewards practically reran the 2008 playbook line by line. What that said, more than anything, was that they had come up with zero [...]
It was one of the first major speeches of his tenure. Speaking to the Economic Club of Chicago in April 2018, newly crowned Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was full of optimism. At that time, however, optimism was being framed as some sort of bad thing. This was the height of inflation hysteria, where any sort of official upgrade to [...]
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