{"id":190638,"date":"2009-11-06T22:31:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-07T03:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/11\/06\/economics-update-128\/"},"modified":"2009-11-06T22:31:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-07T03:31:00","slug":"economics-update-128","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/11\/06\/economics-update-128\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"
Click for full size<\/p>\n
\n

<\/a> Perspective from the Wall Street Journal<\/a>:
Falling Hours & Wages Drove Productivity Numbers Up<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Long Term Unemployment<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Unemployment vs. the Stress Tests, H\/T Calculated Risk<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
Employment:Population Ratio, H\/t Calculated Risk<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
Average Weekly Hours, h\/t The Big Picture<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

Well, I already mentioned that unemployment (U3) broke 10%<\/a>, with non-farm payrolls falling by 190,000<\/a>, (better than September), so the next thing is the productivity number, where, “Non-farm business sector labor productivity increased at a 9.5 percent annual rate during the third quarter of 2009<\/a>.” OMFG, that is a huge number.<\/p>\n

Normally, this would be good news, but soaring productivity means fewer workers needed for a task, so in the short term it would tend to stall any recovery in the labor markets.<\/p>\n

On the brighter side, we are now getting reports that hiring of temporary workers are increasing<\/a>, which might presage a more general hiring increase, as temps tend to be hired earlier, because they are easier to get rid of.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, US consumer credit fell for the 8th<\/sup> straight month<\/a> in September, which indicates that the consumer is continuing to deleverage an pay down their debts.<\/p>\n

It appears that wholesalers are deleveraging too, as wholesale inventories fell in September<\/a>, though less than anticipated, and retail sales did rise, but inventories are at an all time low, 1.18 months.<\/p>\n

In any case, the unemployment numbers drove a flight to safety, which drove Treasuries up<\/a>, and their yields down.<\/p>\n

This flight to safety has also drive both the dollar and the Yen up<\/a>, while concerns about recovery has driven oil down<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click for full size Perspective from the Wall Street Journal:Falling Hours & Wages Drove Productivity Numbers Up Long Term Unemployment Unemployment vs. the Stress Tests, H\/T Calculated Risk Employment:Population Ratio, H\/t Calculated Risk Average Weekly Hours, h\/t The Big Picture Well, I already mentioned that unemployment (U3) broke 10%, with non-farm payrolls falling by 190,000, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1135,1004,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-finance","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}