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I'm not an economist so this is a fairly easy prediction for me to make. I'm basing this prediction on how the weekly Initial Unemployment Claims have gone up this month (see here, here, and here plus tomorrow's post when I write it). Or at least, the numbers have not dropped as much as anticipated. Either way, things are not improving.
Whether the economic recovery in the U.S. can continue could depend on a single factor: consumer confidence. Confidence is important because consumers who are upbeat about prospects tend to spend more, driving corporate profits and job growth. Companies hire more employees, boosting spending, growth and confidence.
...snip...
According to a monthly survey released last week by Consumer Reports, households that earn less than $50,000 have been extremely downbeat on the economy every month since the survey's April 2008 launch. Such households make up half of the U.S. population. Meantime, affluent households — those that pull down $100,000 or more a year — have been feeling on average positive about the economy since February 2010.
The primary factor behind the disparity: jobs. Affluent households have seen little impact on job prospects overall. Meanwhile, low-income households have seen a net decline in jobs for 23 out of the past 24 months, according to the survey.
Please do click through and read the whole article as it offers a number of reasons besides those I've extracted to show how the affluent have benefited in this "recovery" while the rest of us have struggled.
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This past week, President Obama was in Pittsburgh to tout a government/industry/academia initiative for technology. CNN had this to say:
President Barack Obama -- whose poll numbers have dipped in recent weeks amid a stubbornly sluggish economic recovery -- touted the hard-hit manufacturing sector Friday, saying the country's best production days may well lie ahead.
"We are inventors, we are makers, and we are doers. If we want a robust growing economy, we need a robust manufacturing sector," Obama told a crowd at Carnegie Mellon University, the school founded by steel industrialist Andrew Carnegie nearly 100 years ago.
President Obama visited a university research center in Pittsburgh on Friday to announce a new partnership between the government, industries and leading universities to speed the movement of technological advances to commercial users. The trip was the latest of his increasingly frequent travels to battleground states to showcase administration efforts to create manufacturing jobs.
After touring the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University, a high-technology facility adjacent to a rusted factory symbolic of the area’s industrial past, Mr. Obama said federal agencies would invest more than $500 million to seed the initiative. Of that, $70 million is to go to robotics projects like one he viewed at the center: a boom-box-size robot that inspects sewer pipelines, made by a company started by a Carnegie Mellon professor.
Now, I am all for technological advances. My professional field is Software Quality Assurance and Testing and I have worked in every phase of software development projects. I remember all the "world of the future" type stories that Disney and other film makers would do, showing their visions of how robots would affect the world of the 21st century, making life so much easier for everyone from the assembly line worker to the housewife in her kitchen. Yet for all the potential this initiative may have for the long term future, it does nothing for the "stubbornly sluggish economic recovery." The US economy needs something along the lines of $500B investment (and that is probably no where near enough) in initiatives that bring jobs now, not five or ten or twenty years from now.
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Ho hum. Here we are once again. The weekly report of Initial Unemployment Claims is out, jobless claims for last week are up "more than expected," the figures from last week's report have been revised upwards again, economists are surprised and water is wet. Via Reuters:
New claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week, a government report showed on Thursday, suggesting little improvement in the labor market this month after employment stumbled in May.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits climbed 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 429,000, the Labor Department said. The prior week's figure was revised up to 420,000.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims to edge up to 415,000 from a previously reported count of 414,000.
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This morning (Wednesday, June 22) David Dayen at FDL News reports that the entire Senate Democratic leadership is getting behind a jobs/stimulus push:
The Senate Democratic leadership – all of them, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Patty Murray, Debbie Stabenow and Mark Begich – planned a morning press conference today where they will call for job creation measures, or stimulus, to be included in any debt limit deal.
Fearing the economy may be getting worse, Democrats plan to soon unveil what they’ll call a “Jobs First” agenda — and the stakes are high. A bleak economic outlook, like the May jobs report, could cost Democrats their thin Senate majority and even the White House if they can’t make a strong case to an anxious electorate that their policies will create jobs.
Senate Democrats are now grappling with ways to gain an edge in the economic debate dominated by budget talk. For instance, in an attempt to woo Republicans, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the White House are open to extending a payroll tax break to stimulate the economy, but that has spawned unease from Democratic senators such as Maryland’s Ben Cardin who worry that it would drive up the deficit and unnerve liberals such as Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, who are concerned it would deplete the Social Security trust fund.
While the Politico piece reinforces for me the idea of the Dems actions as just so much posturing, so does this, also from the Dayen piece:
There’s a sense that this is mainly rhetorical. Democrats have seen Republicans obstruct even the most piddling of jobs bills in the Senate. Yesterday the reauthorization of the Economic Development Administration, an old Great Society program, failed to break a filibuster.
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It was the 1970s, and the chief executive of a leading U.S. dairy company, Kenneth J. Douglas, lived the good life. He earned the equivalent of about $1 million today. He and his family moved from a three-bedroom home to a four-bedroom home, about a half-mile away, in River Forest, Ill., an upscale Chicago suburb. He joined a country club. The company gave him a Cadillac. The money was good enough, in fact, that he sometimes turned down raises. He said making too much was bad for morale.
Forty years later, the trappings at the top of Dean Foods, as at most U.S. big companies, are more lavish. The current chief executive, Gregg L. Engles, averages 10 times as much in compensation as Douglas did, or about $10 million in a typical year. He owns a $6 million home in an elite suburb of Dallas and 64 acres near Vail, Colo., an area he frequently visits. He belongs to as many as four golf clubs at a time — two in Texas and two in Colorado. While Douglas’s office sat on the second floor of a milk distribution center, Engles’s stylish new headquarters occupies the top nine floors of a 41-story Dallas office tower. When Engles leaves town, he takes the company’s $10 million Challenger 604 jet, which is largely dedicated to his needs, both business and personal.
The evolution of executive grandeur — from very comfortable to jet-setting — reflects one of the primary reasons that the gap between those with the highest incomes and everyone else is widening.
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Over a lifetime of watching the political dances and games, there are a few things that can always be counted upon. The deficit hawks invariably claim that they are really, really, really only interested in "cutting out the fat honest." Except that public sector budgets have been slashed so many times over these last few years, the politicians are not only slicing meat and bone, they are carving up the gourmet cuts, all in the name of some nebulous "greater good" and "sacrifices must be made by the courageous." From Friday's (June 17) NY Times:
Lawmakers and aides say the negotiators quickly gobbled up low-hanging fruit like trimming agriculture subsidies and selling more of the telecommunications spectrum to generate revenue. There is a general consensus that federal workers are going to have to contribute more to their pensions, though the details are still to be determined. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation will collect higher fees from stable companies, and some idle federal property could be up for sale.
...snip...
To get there, negotiators are going to have to make some excruciating choices about federal health care and safety-net programs, as well as the tax structure. At the same time, they need to reach a deal that not only can be sold to a bipartisan majority in the House and Senate, but also is credible enough to assure investors worldwide that Washington is getting serious about taking care of its financial health.
...snip...
Republicans want to see Democrats embrace more changes in Medicare and Medicaid, the federal health programs for older Americans and the poor.
Former adviser to presidents of both parties, David Gergen, was all over the AARP sell out with praise for their "courage":
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So what makes today any different from any other day? Not a thing. It's a day ending in "y" so that means we are treated with a mix of articles and opinions where the headline doesn't actually match the story or the lede is buried or the cheerleaders try for the misdirection.
One of the first articles I saw this morning in my surfing of the news sites was this one from CNN on jobs returning to the US from overseas:
It's still only a trickle compared to the flood of jobs that America lost to overseas outsourcing in recent decades. But some American businesses are bringing jobs home again.
...snip...
This trend of reshoring or insourcing is likely to grow in the coming years, as the cost gap between building overseas and building at home narrows. It's an encouraging sign in a job market where hiring has stalled in recent months.
...snip...
According to BCG, Chinese labor costs are rising about 15% to 20% a year. That makes producing goods in China not nearly as cheap as it used to be. For many manufacturers, that narrowing is enough to tip the balance back to U.S. plants.
...snip...
What's more, countries such as China and India that have profited from U.S. offshoring won't stand pat and lose the potential jobs without a fight.
"It's not as if the Chinese government is helpless is to offset this rising wage trend," Tonelson said.
Anyone else find it interesting that the Chinese government isn't helpless on jobs but the US government is? Apparently, repression is good for business in all ways.
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The weekly report on Initial Unemployment Claims came out earlier today and while the numbers did fall a bit, they are still over the 400K threshold that seems to be the cut off for declaring that things are going to get better. From Reuters:
The Labor Department said on Thursday new jobless claims fell to 414,000 in the week ended June 11 from an upwardly revised 430,000 in the prior week.
Economists polled by Reuters had been looking for a smaller decline, to 420,000. Claims have been above 400,000 for two months, reflecting a rough patch in the recovery that has led to renewed weakness in an already anemic job market.
Just as they did last week, the reporter just brushes right on by how the figures for the week before had been revised upwards. Last week it was reported as 427K now revised up to 430K - the week before it had originally been reported as 422K but then revised up to 426K. I would not be surprised if next week's report revised this week's numbers upwards again, closer to the original figure from the economists of 420K.
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Talk about getting it from all sides. Economists want Americans to cut down on debt and boost spending all at once, even as home values tumble and gasoline prices soar.
It may all be a bit too much for the average U.S. household, particularly with an already sluggish labor market stuttering again.
From the second Reuters piece:
The big mystery in the United States today is why the job crisis is not at the center of the political and economic debate. After all, the numbers — and the human tragedies they reflect — could not be bleaker.
Nearly 14 million Americans — 9.1 percent of the working population — are unemployed. That’s just a couple of a million shy of the populations of Greece and Ireland, Europe’s two problem children, combined. Another 8.5 million would like to work full time, but can only find part-time jobs. A further 2.2 million have been so discouraged by the grim labor market that they have given up looking for jobs altogether.
It is hard to blame them — those still actively looking for work have been unemployed for an average of 39.7 weeks. These are cruel numbers, and they depict an unemployment crisis that is deeper and more sustained than at any time since 1948, when records first started to be kept.
Meanwhile from the Washington Post piece:
Washington politicians are flailing for job-creation ideas like a drowning man lunging for a life preserver. President Obama probably remembers Ronald Reagan’s setup and punch line: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”
So it’s no surprise that rumors of new payroll-tax cuts and dreams of a new infrastructure bankhave followed the miserable jobs report released June 3. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman seems to be scavenging Grandma’s attic for old Works Progress Administration signs to put up again.
Here’s a simple idea to cut unemployment that won’t cost the government any more money and won’t require devaluing our currency: Turn unemployment benefits into a signing bonus.
...snip...
After 26 weeks of receiving benefits, a job-seeker would be eligible for a “signing bonus” equal to three additional months of benefits if he or she took a full-time job. It wouldn’t matter whether the job paid more, less or the same as the worker’s old one. We don’t want the logistics mess of a “cash for clunkers” type of program, in which the government had to figure out which clunkers really clunked.
The author of the Post piece was an economic adviser to the Bush I White House. Of course, he fails to explain just how his "bonus" idea would help folks to get jobs when there are still four to five applicants for each and every job opening out there today. He must have missed that McDonald's had over a million applicants during their "McJobs Fair" back in April.
Today, we also have President Obama meeting with his "Jobs Council" in North Carolina. Once again from Reuters this morning before the meeting:
Washington should streamline permitting for construction projects and make it easier for tourists to visit the United States to help boost hiring and spur the economy, a top adviser to President Barack Obama said.
Jeff Immelt, chief executive of General Electric and head of Obama's jobs and competitiveness council, said his panel's "progress report" outlined ways to increase hiring in manufacturing, construction, healthcare, and tourism sectors.
Somehow, I don't think we will find much support with DHS in easing the way for tourists to come to the US. And as I and others have also noted, minimum wage tourism jobs are not really going to go very far in building a long term sustainable economy.
Bloomberg has a couple of articles this afternoon that seem to fall on the same side as the Washington Post piece above - mainly in the "are you kidding me with this" style. First up is this one on the Jobs Council meeting:
The president is seeking to convince the business community as well as voters that his economic policies will help restore long-term growth even as data indicate the recovery is slowing.
...snip...
Immelt said in an op-ed article in today’s Wall Street Journal that the panel is recommending five “fast-action” steps to create more than 1 million jobs in five specific areas.
...snip...
Obama has spent this year seeking to repair relations with the business community, and the administration is still working to overcome criticism from Republicans and some executives that its regulatory policies are creating uncertainty for companies.
The Immelt-led board was formed in January to build a bridge to the country’s major employers. The same month Obama appointed former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive William Daley as his chief of staff. Last month, the White House proposed revising and trimming regulations to reduce reporting requirements and cut compliance costs.
Yeah. There are nearly 14M unemployed and 25M to 30M un and underemployed and the MOTU on this jobs council can come with ideas for 1M jobs. I've got an idea - why don't they bring a few million jobs back to the US that they've sent overseas?
Profits at American companies are poised to be one of the few bright spots in the U.S., helping to steady the faltering recovery.
Earnings will climb an average 10 percent a year through 2013, more than three times quicker than the economy, after what has already been the fastest rebound since the late 1940s, JPMorgan Chase & Co. projects.
...snip...
The recent spate of weak economic data, capped by news that payrolls grew in May at the slowest pace in eight months, is sparking concern about the expansion’s sustainability. Even so, private employers have added 2.14 million workers since job creation resumed in March 2010, nine months after the recession ended. That’s about a quarter of the 8.8 million positions lost during the 18-month slump.
Once again they present numbers without context. 2.14M private sector jobs since March 2010 works out to be 142.6K jobs per month on average. In an economy that needs to create roughly 100K to 150K jobs per month just to maintain the status quo. And the numbers do not include all the lost public sector jobs in the same period.
I'm going to end this post with a link to an AP (via Yahoo) article on a "survey" taken of economists by the AP. Best I can tell, the economists surveyed are telling us all to click our heels three times and wait for the miracle to happen. I wonder how Scarecrows feel about that.
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When I was a kid, I used to love double-dips. I'd go to the doctor and afterwards, we'd stop by the drug store soda fountain for my free ice cream. Summers, there would be all the ice cream suppers at the churches with fresh home made ice cream and cake. Double-dips of chocolate ice cream and cake!
Unfortunately however, today's double-dip will be a recession. Yes, there it is; I'm predicting that we will officially fall back into a recession in the very near future even though for the 25M to 30M long term un and underemployed, we've never, ever left the recession that began officially back in December '07 and ended officially in June '09. I do so very much hope that I am wrong on this but will even go so far as to act like an economist and claim to be surprised if I am wrong.
What makes me think this will happen? Well, to start with, too many folks like The Benbernank in his speech last Tuesday in Atlanta and the presidents of the Philadelphia and New York Federal Reserve Banks all saying the economy will improve in the second half of 2011. In addition, Bloomberg has a survey of economists claiming this as well:
After growing at a 2.3 percent annual pace this quarter, the world’s largest economy will expand at a 3.2 percent rate from July through December, according to the median forecast of 67 economists polled from June 1 to June 8.
Rising exports, stable fuel prices, record levels of cash in company coffers and easier lending rules will be enough to overcome the damage done by one-time events like poor weather and the disaster in Japan, economists said. Nonetheless, the current slackening means Federal Reserve policy makers will wait even longer to raise interest rates next year, the survey shows.
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The Initial Unemployment Claims report for last week is out and guess what? The Economists are surprised. And water is wet and the sky is blue. From Reuters:
The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, according to a report on Thursday that could reinforce fears the labor market recovery has stalled.
Initial claims for state jobless benefits increased 1,000 to 427,000, the Labor Department said. However, economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims dropping to 415,000 from a previously reported count of 422,000.
Note how the reporter managed to skim right over how the report from last week got revised upwards from 422K to 426K.
Point of fact however, this report is not even close to being the best example of Beltway Village IdiotsPundits and Courtiers the last couple of days. It may not even be in the top ten at this point.
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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech yesterday (Tuesday, June 7) to the International Monetary Conference in Atlanta, GA. Only one speech. Yet looking around the Toobz at the various headlines at news sites on this speech, it must have been an all things to all people speech as I've found at least four different perspectives presented, some of them directly contradictory.
The most prevalent theme appears to be The Benbernank as cheerleader (links embedded in titles):
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Austan Goolsbee, head of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers was making the rounds of various political shows this past weekend. HuffPo quotes him telling Christianne Amanpour of ABC:
“It's not a jobless recovery. That is an incorrect phrase," he told Amanpour.
Goolsbee is correct in one fashion. It can't be a recovery if it is jobless. But he is way wrong on a couple of points (also from the HuffPo link):
Austan Goolsbee, who heads the president's Council of Economic Advisers, says the addition of a million new jobs over the past six months shows "we have improved a long way from when the economy was in rescue mode."
My bold. Now a million new jobs over the last six months sounds good, right? Not so fast there Bucky. In an economy that needs to add roughly 125K jobs every month just to maintain status quo (that would be 750K jobs for a six month period), then a million jobs in six months doesn't begin to put a dent in the 14 or so millions of unemployed, much less the un and underemployed numbers sitting somewhere between 25M and 30M.
But wait, it gets worse for Mr Goolsbee and his figures. Being the somewhat anal retentive person that I am, I went back and looked at the blog posts I had done starting in December 2010 based on the BLS report on the first Friday of each month for the month just past. Other than the report for February 2011, I have a post that covers the jobs number for each month going back to November 2010's figures and for February 2011, I found a link to a site that includes a PDF with the appropriate numbers:
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Back in January of 2009, I wrote a diary titled I Am Unemployed but Not a Statistic. I was thinking about that diary this morning. With all the discussion of statistics, unemployment rates, jobs created or unemployment claims filed, there is a human being somewhere who is affected. I started Just A Small Town Country Boy as an attempt to put a human face on just one of those people (myself) who sits behind the statistic. But as we all know, I am just one voice among the millions.
I am not alone as a human face though. Every time the politicians decide to vilify a teacher, there is a human being back there, on both sides of the issue. Yes, even the politicians have to be considered human. Every state and public sector employee who is laid off or demonized is a human being. We hear about the occasional worker who commits suicide; sometimes we see the stories about individuals since we do all love the human face of the stories and the human interest story has long been a staple of TradMed. Just last month there was the story of the "laid off federal worker confronts Obama at a town hall meeting." One human face confronting the President about losing her job because of federal budget cuts. How many millions of other federal, state, and local workers have lost or are losing their jobs due to budget cuts and austerity measures?
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Yesterday in this post, I predicted today's Jobs Report from the BLS would show a far smaller increase in jobs for May than was being predicted by the 'economists' interviewed by the various media organizations. The 'experts' were predicting 170k private sector jobs with 150k increase overall. My prediction was for 42.5K jobs overall. Guess who was closer to being correct? (via Reuters):
The U.S. economy may be in for a prolonged period of soft growth as employers hired the fewest number of workers in eight months in May and the unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent.
Nonfarm payrolls increased 54,000 last month, the Labor Department said, fewer than the most pessimistic forecast in the Reuters survey and just over a third of what economists had expected.
...snip...
The private sector, which has shouldered the burden of job creation added just 83,000 jobs, the least since last June, while government payrolls dropped 29,000.
Adding to the gloomy labor market picture, about 39,000 fewer jobs were created in March and April than previously estimated.
...snip...
Payrolls had been expected to rise 150,000, with private employment gaining 175,000.
This is not the first time I have been more accurate than the "experts". How is it possible for someone like me to be more accurate in predicting the numbers than the so-called expert economists? Well, I'll take a WAG and say it might be because I'm not trying to force reality into a pre-conceived computer model designed to reinforce an ideological position based as much on wishful thinking as anything else. Plus, I am actually living the life of the long term un and underemployed.
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Unlike economists, I can in no way ever claim to be surprised at all the continuing bad news on the economy (and yeah, I will continue to link to and milk that schtick). Just today, we have the Initial Unemployment Claims report (via CNN):
In the week ended May 28, 422,000 Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits, the Labor Department said Thursday.
While that marked a 6,000 decrease from the revised 428,000 initial claims filed the week before, it was worse than economists' expectations for 413,000 claims.
...snip...
Next up is the government's monthly jobs report due Friday. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney say they're expecting to see that 170,000 jobs were created in May and that the unemployment rate eased to 8.9% from 9% in April.
In case you're wondering, that "revised" figure from last Thursday's Initial Unemployment Claims report was revised upward from 424K. Given how woefully inaccurate the economists' predictions have been, I will go out on a limb as I stated yesterday and predict that the BLS numbers for May will be much lower than 170K. I'm thinking more likely closer to a quarter of that (42.5K) but I do hope that I'm wrong. As far as the "unemployment rate" easing, this article from the AP (via Yahoo) this morning (Thursday June 2) goes a long way to explaining why the "official" unemployment rate may drop. Good way to make the figures look better by not counting those who get frustrated and give-up.
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The economic reports are starting to come out for May and while there are those economists and Beltway Village Idiots Pundits who are making "gee, everything is just fine" predictions, the verifiable numbers easily refute this attitude.
First up is the monthly report from payroll processor ADP on the private sector jobs creation for May (via Reuters):
The ADP report showed private employers added a scant 38,000 jobs last month, falling from a downwardly revised 177,000 in April and well short of expectations for 175,000. It was the lowest level since September 2010.
The report boded poorly for the key U.S. non-farm payrolls report at the end of the week. Credit Suisse lowered its estimate for Friday's employment number to 120,000 from its previous forecast of 185,000 and its private payroll estimate to 135,000 from 200,000.
ADP's number has been weaker than the government's private payrolls figure for 12 of the last 14 months, making Friday's government numbers likely to come in above ADP's report, Credit Suisse said.
There is a reason that ADP's number has been different from the government's numbers (I will not say ADP's number is weaker though), since the government numbers cover all of the economy and not just the private sector.
