Source: Bloomberg
Yellen’s Labor Market Dashboard
August 14, 2015 9:00am by Barry Ritholtz
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I love how the doom and gloomers shift from one number to the next to support their theory that everything is just horrible. Now that unemployment is looking decent, they move to labor participation rate.
Maybe there is a problem here, but do these people ever consider that maybe Americans are finally exiting the cult of work for early retirement or other long term time off?
Work is just another stupid status symbol in America, not unlike a luxury car or huge house. Many people that have vacation time don’t take it. Many people that can retire don’t retire. Many people answer emails at midnight, on the weekends, during what little vacation time they take. And brag about what martyrs they are as if they are doing something so important in discussing in an endless loop about what background color some stupid computer icon should have.
Maybe, just maybe, America is getting better and people have awoken to the stupidity of the cult of work.
I find it laughable that you don’t consider the possibility that many of the poor souls that went into “early retirement” didn’t do so on their own volition.
Given that the vast majority have little to nothing saved for retirement how do you suppose they live? The lucky ones scrape by on Social Security (barely); the rest are just screwed.
Anybody and their brother know that is demographic. Retirements are surging right now and 66.1% is not achievable in our lifetime again without another baby boom. Matter of fact, it should move down a bit more, closer to 61% before it gets a bit of a boost in the 2020’s. People that ignore the head and shoulders formation of that index are not being smart.
I had thought that the index did not include those past their retirement age, but you are right, it includes anyone over 16. Stupid me for assuming that “working age” didn’t include 105 year olds. Get to work great granddad! You’re making us look bad!
http://www.bls.gov/bls/cps_fact_sheets/lfp_mock.htm
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/03/declining-labor-participation-rates/
The Fed is supposed to balance maximum employment and inflation. Given that there’s no realistic prospect of inflation at or above the Fed’s 2% ceiling, why is there any need to tighten, no matter how healthy the labor market might be?
Not that the labor market is tight. If it were, we’d see more growth in compensation, which we don’t. Note that unemployment went under 4% under Greenspan, without inflation being a problem.
The spread between nominal treasuries and TIPS is very low, implying inflation rates from 1.3% at 5 years to 1.8% at 30 years. No apparent danger of hitting 2%.
When the Fed lowered rates to zero, the economy was in a freefall, GDP off nearly 10%,m Unemployment over 10%, and the stock market in a freefall. It was an EMERGENCY.
Why do you believe that we should continue this emergency footing?
None of those conditions currently exists.
The Fed’s legal mandate is maximum employment consistent with stable prices. The Fed currently interprets stable prices as 2% inflation (it was 4% for many years). Raising interest rates will lower employment at a time that it’s not necessary to do so in order to rein in inflation. That would seem inconsistent with the law governing the Fed.
The Fed’s monetary policy has long been to balance employment (and growth) against inflation. It acted to do so in the emergency (requiring cutting rates and, when it could not cut further, implementing QE), as it has before and since. Just because the crisis is over is no reason to abandon normal monetary policy. Normal policy is to strike a balance, not any specific rate level or action to get there.
You have to remember, the Fed goes by core inflation. It has not been so weak.
Core inflation only matters to those who neither eat nor drive.
I keep waiting for them to take rents out of core inflation.
Core CPI excludes the only things people absolutely need, food,
shelterand energy, It’s not an accurate measure of the cost of living.~~~
ADMIN: Fed’s definition of Core is Food and Energy
9 metrics … the first 8 deal exclusively with job counts, without regard for quality/income. The 9th, LFPR, paints a bleak picture of this recovery. Why isn’t median income up there, Barry? Show us how good that looks …
~~~
ADMIN: Do not ignore U6 Underemployment, more important than Labor Forece Participation Rate . . .