Tag Archives: economy

the September 7th Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report

September 9, 2016 By in Federal Reserve, JOLTS report, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Labor Department released its latest JOLTS report on Wednesday.

The main results:

–nationwide job openings are now at 5.9 million, the highest figure in the 16 year history of the report.  This is substantially above the 4.5 million level of 2006-07.

–the rate of new hires has been flat for about two years at just over 5 million monthly.  While this is 5% – 10% below the rate of 2006-07, the very high number of job openings would have been consistent with an unemployment rate of 3% ten years ago.  This seems to me to be a point in favor of the idea that the main impediment to filling jobs is finding workers with needed skills.

–3 million workers are voluntarily leaving their jobs monthly.  This is a sign they’re confident of finding employment again without much difficulty.  That’s back to the pre-recession levels of 2006, and almost double the recession lows.

All of this argues that the US is at or near full employment.  On the other hand, however, there’s little sign of the upward pressure on wages that this situation would have produced in the past.

 

Whatever the reason for slow-rising wages, it seems to me there’s no reason in the employment figures for the Fed to maintain anything near the current emergency-room-low level of short-term interest rates.

 

 

Employment Situation, August 2016

September 2, 2016 By in employment, Employment Situation report, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

This morning at 8:30 edt the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Labor Department released its monthly Employment Situation.  This was a so-so report.

The economy added +151,000 new jobs last month.  Revisions to the prior two months were -1,000, or insignificant.  Wages were up, but only slightly, maintaining their growth of about 2.4% annually.  Service industries continued to gain; manufacturing and construction were flattish.

The results did fall short of Wall Street economists’ estimates of a +181,000 advance, but to my mind this says more about the economists and the difficulty of forecasting the jobs figure precisely than it does about the jobs.

It there’s one thing I take from it, it’s that the period of turbocharged jobs gains–well over +200,000 a month–we were experiencing earlier in the year is now behind us.  If I were forced to attribute this relative slowdown to anything, it would be the strength of the dollar.

For me, the most curious thing about the report is that it appears to have sparked a rally on Wall Street, on the notion that this report makes it less likely that the Fed will raise interest rates later this month.  This makes little sense to me, although I’ll take an up day rather than a down one any time.  Personally, I think the Fed risks accusations of trying to influence the election if it acts before November, so not matter what its rhetoric it’s unlikely to move now.  Looking at the character of gaining stocks, it’s primarily smaller doing better than larger, something that mostly happens when rates are rising.

This is the first time in a long while I’ve been nonplussed by market movements.

 

Wal-Mart (WMT), economic indicator and investment

August 30, 2016 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

WMT and the economy

WMT is the largest retailer in the US (Costco (COST) is #2).  Despite its very large size, WMT has a distinct economic focus, one based in its roots as a chain of quasi-department stores for small towns.  About a third of its customers are relatively low income blue-collar workers, whose personal fortunes tend to be very highly linked to the strength of the overall economy.  Because of this, when WMT profits start to rise, as they have been over the past several quarters, it’s a sign that economic recovery is strongly rooted and has spread relatively widely.

WMT as an investment today

In the past, periods like this have also been good ones to own WMT shares.  Two factors, however, suggest to me that this time could be very different:

—the dollar stores.  During recessions, consumers tend not only to cut back on expenditures but also to trade down, that is, to patronize less expensive retailers.  In the case of many WMT customers, that means turning to the the dollar stores, whose target  customer has been a single head of household who earns $20,000 +/- a year, who walks to the store and who visits several times a week.  During the last downturn, the dollar stores decided to shift their business model and expand their product offerings in hopes of holding onto their new, more affluent former WMT customers when the economy improved.  The industry has also consolidated into a smaller number of larger firms, to the same end.

As a result, WMT has new competition for the low end of its market demographic, a segment that becomes more important as customers who have traded down to WMT from, say, Target, return to their former niche.

–like many traditional retailers, WMT hasn’t paid enough attention to the internet.  Its recent decision to acquire jet.com for $3 billion+ is evidence that WMT realizes it has to play catchup.   I think jet.com’s most important asset is its innovative top management.  Whether it will mesh well with traditional WMT executives remains an open question.

keeping nominal GDP growth above zero

August 29, 2016 By in economics, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 3 Comments

A reader asked a question about this after my Stephen King post from last Friday.  I think the best place for an answer is here.

In most circumstances, what counts is real GDP, not nominal.  That latter is, after all, just real GDP + inflation.  However, what comes to mind when people start to look for instances where nominal GDP shrinks is the Great Depression   …or maybe Japan during the series of Lost Decades it has been experiencing since 1990.

A potentially huge economic problem during a period of declining nominal GDP is that virtually all borrowing contracts–bonds or bank debt–are written in nominal terms.    In many places, labor contracts are also framed the same way, with an x% increase in wages yearly over the term of the agreement.

The revenues that businesses generate to meet these obligations are a function of unit volumes and price changes.  If real GDP is falling by, say, 3% and prices rising by only 1%, overall revenues are contracting.  Given that operating costs are typically fixed over the short term, this means firms in the aggregate will have less income to meet debt repayments and salary obligations.  For highly operationally or financially leveraged companies, even small declines in revenues can be deadly.

If, on the other hand, volumes are down by 3% and prices are rising by 4%, then revenue growth will still be positive.  On the margin, at least, this means fewer layoffs and fewer insolvencies to act as an economic drag during a time  when governments are trying to stimulate demand.

 

The situation where nominal prices are actually falling–which we’re not talking about here– is far worse.  Consumer soon learn that waiting a month, or two or three, before buying will mean a lower price.  So they just stop buying.  Given that consumers make up the bulk of economic growth in developed economies, they can ill afford to get the idea in consumers’ heads that purchasing anything today is a bad idea.