Thursday, April 13, 2017

Jobless Claims at Extremely Low Levels

Initial jobless claims were essentially unchanged at 234,000 in early April, holding near extremely low levels that show the U.S. labor market is going strong, reports MarketWatch.

It should be noted that we are more than a year beyond when Austrian-lites panicked after the first Fed interest rate hike since the 2008 financial crisis. Austrian-lites claimed that the late 2015 Fed rate hike wouldn't hold. That the Fed was "out of bullets" and that the rate hike would have to be reversed and the Fed might have to go negative with rates, So much for that theory.

-RW 

3 comments:

  1. So what is the prognosticating from a Austrian-HEAVY such as yourself, RW? Think you got the timing right??......SOLD! The imbalances have been inherent for so long but the complex global banking and monetary manipulation BS keeps the parade going; does it not?? All you can play is the risk and probability of this market in the short term. For the longer no one knows how long it would take but even the Austrian-heavies have to be surprised at the length and extent of the asset inflation. Regarding interest rate, a quarter point move is NOT going to give the Fed enough ammunition back to think dropping again is going to work. We are now at 3 quarter point moves but we will see when that gets to a total of 1 to 2 percent.....then the Fed, to avoid a possible 5-10% correction in the stock market will do what they set out to do.......stimulate again!

    Now to jobs, are the UE claims a sign of improving economy or more a reflection of stagnating workforce for those who have exhausted their claims and/or no longer tracked as umemployed because they stopped looking for work. And how is the labor participation rate? Has that turned around or we still going to accept that it is because of retiring babyboomers? And what is the percentage of those over counted that are holding 2 or more jobs? Also, is the percentage considered underemployed growing or falling?

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  2. A very good argument could be made that this is a worthless metric in today's economy.

    Retail sales, Federal tax revenue, restaurant performance index, Auto Sales,etc., have peaked and are not doing so well.

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  3. Yeah, right. Where are the jobs? This where RW always has it wrong.

    "Civilian employment now stands at 153.0 million workers. Based on demographic projections by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the civilian labor force will reach 163.8 million workers in 2024. Even if we assume that the unemployment rate will remain at 4.5% at that date, the resulting level of civilian employment would be (1-.045)*163.8 = 156.4 million workers. Let that figure sink in. Even assuming a permanently low unemployment rate of 4.5%, cumulative U.S. job creation over the coming 7 years is likely to amount to 3.4 million workers, averaging about 40,000 new jobs per month. That's dramatically fewer than investors seem to be expecting. Worse, if the unemployment rate was to climb to 6.6% by 2024, the number of jobs created over the intervening 7-year period would be zero."

    https://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc170410.htm

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