Tag Archives: jobs

Employment and Interest Rates

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The US economy added 151,000 net new jobs in August, below consensus expectations for 180,000. Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate remained stable at 62.8%, as did the jobless rate at 4.9%, though it was expected to tick slightly lower to 4.8% for the month. The closely-watched U6 rate, or “underemployment” rate, which measures unemployed workers and those working part time for economic reasons, remained stuck at 9.7%.

The unemployment rate and the jobs numbers are misleading when taken out of context.  The context of importance here is the historically low labor force participation rate, from folks having given up looking for work, even though they’re perfectly viable potential employees rather than boomers who’ve retired (a number of whom actually have retired earlier than they wanted to and still would work, were there jobs).

Then there’s this, from Dan North, of Euler Hermes North America:

The most important part [of the report] is the weakness in hours and wages. That slammed the door on September [rate-hike chances].

I’ve said it before, and here I am saying it again: if the Fed wants 2% inflation, then it needs to stop chasing the market; it needs to stop focusing on jobs numbers, per se; and it needs to stop holding out for 2% inflation before it moves.  It needs to set its benchmark interest rates at levels historically consistent with 2% inflation and then sit down and watch.  Watch the economy recover, watch folks who’ve given up come back into the labor force, watch wage growth reappear, watch the labor participation rate, from that, recover to more normal levels; and watch the unemployment rate, still low, actually mean something.

And watch prosperity and productivity resume growing.

Some Labor Day Questions

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First published in 2015, I’ve updated it for today.  In an ideal world, I’ll be able to update it again next year, with a more optimistic tone.

The Wall Street Journal asked some questions on Labor Day 2012, and supplied some answers.  Here are some of those questions and answers, which remain as valid this Labor Day.

  • Q: How are America’s workers doing? Not good. Over the past decade, over the ups and downs of the economy, taking inflation into account, the compensation of the typical worker — wages and benefits—basically haven’t risen at all. … The Labor Department recently said that 6.1 million workers in 2009-2011 have lost jobs that they’d had for at least three years. Of those, 45% hadn’t found work as of January 2012. … Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Friday that unemployment is still two percentage points higher than normal….
  • Q: Things ARE getting better, though. The US economy is creating jobs, right? Back in December 2007 when the recession began, there were about two jobless workers for every job opening.  When the economy touched bottom in mid-2009, there were more than six unemployed for every job.  At last count, the BLS says there were 3.4 jobless for every opening.
  • Q: How much of this elevated unemployment is because the unemployed just don’t have the skills that employers are looking for right now?  …the bulk of the evidence is a lot of the unemployment really is the old-fashioned kind: the kind that would go away if the economy was growing at a stronger pace. Mr. Bernanke said as much at the [2012] Jackson Hole conference….

The Democratic Party President has taken a bad situation and done little to improve it, even though he’s had four more years in which to do so.  He has, though, actively attacked businesses—the hirers—demonizing them, (over)regulating them, demanding to raise taxes on them.

At least as importantly, the current Democratic Party Presidential candidate has vowed to continue these Democratic policies, and to extend them.  Even with nearly eight years of empirical data demonstrating the bankruptcy of these policies.

Happy Labor Day.

Employment

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Employers added 255,000 jobs last month while wages for private-sector workers matched their strongest annual pace of growth in seven years. More Americans joined the labor force, keeping the jobless rate steady at 4.9%.

That’s part of the best two months of hiring all year.  This is all good news, right?

Not so much.

The increase in the labor force participation rate was only a tenth of a point to 62.8%, still the lowest rate in 40-ish years—two generations.

Over the course of the year, GDP rose by all of 1%–another historically low rate, one that’s typical of our economic performance these last eight years of Democrat economic policies by abnormally low for GDP growth rates coming out of recessions over the last 70-ish years.

Businesses continue to cut their own investment, now for the third straight quarter.  That’s future growth, future employment, and future productivity growth—and future competitiveness—that won’t occur.

Don’t be fooled, either, by the week’s and the recent months’ rise in the stock market.  The stock market and our underlying economy are tied together, but the ties are very loose: either the market will fall back to the tepid level of our economy, or the economy will perk up, finally.  But neither can be expected to occur any time soon or with any accuracy in timing prediction.

A Court Gets One Right

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In a sexual orientation case involving an adjunct professor who claimed she was denied “full time employment and promotions based on sexual orientation,” the 7th Circuit ruled unanimously that her employer can, indeed, do exactly that.  In particular, Title VII, under which the case was brought, does not apply to sexual discrimination in the workplace.

The reason the Court got this one right has little to do with discrimination—and everything to do with it—rather, it’s centered on what the law actually says, and what the judges said about what the law actually says.

…a paradoxical legal landscape in which a person can be married on Saturday and then fired on Monday for just that act. For although federal law now guarantees anyone the right to marry an ‐ other person of the same gender, Title VII, to the extent it does not reach sexual orientation discrimination, also allows employers to fire that employee for doing so.  …  Many citizens would be surprised to learn that under federal law any private employer can summon an employee into his office and state, “You are a hard‐working employee and have added much value to my company, but I am firing you because you are gay.” And the employee would have no recourse whatsoever—unless she happens to live in a state or locality with an anti‐discrimination statute that includes sexual orientation.

Because the law, Title VII as it’s written, doesn’t address that question.

There’s more [emphasis added]:

…the distinction between gender nonconformity claims and sexual orientation claims has created an odd state of affairs in the law in which Title VII protects gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, but frequently only to the extent that those plaintiffs meet society’s stereotypical norms about how gay men or lesbian women look or act…. By contrast, lesbian, gay or bisexual people who otherwise conform to gender stereotyped norms in dress and mannerisms mostly lose their claims for sex discrimination under Title VII, although why this should be true is not entirely clear.

Yet, this [emphasis added]:

[T]he paradox is not our concern. Our task is to interpret Title VII as drafted by Congress, and as we concluded in Ulane, Title VII prohibits discrimination only on the basis of gender.

Regardless of what we might think of the particular ruling—concerning a woman who was denied advancement on the basis of her sexual orientation (assuming, arguendo, that her claim was accurate)—or of other rulings involving actual firings over sexual orientation, this court got this ruling right.  The court is right because it applied the law as it was written, and not as it might have preferred it to have been written or as a government agency (EEOC had sided with the professor) wanted it to have been written.

The court also was right because it didn’t stop there.  The court went on to point out that while the law in question, as it was written, conflicted with other laws—one driving the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriages, for instance—the court was powerless to resolve the conflict.  Such a resolution is a political decision, not a judicial one; it’s for the people and their elected representatives to alter the law(s) in directions they see fit; no court can do that.

The court’s ruling can be read here.

The Other Supreme Court That’s in the Election Balance

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This one is the National Labor Relations Board, a Democrat/union-dominated entity that is nearly the last word on what employers are allowed and required to do.

It’s the NLRB that threatened Boeing with labor unrest expensive lawsuits for its effrontery in wanting to build an aircraft manufacturing plant in the right-to-work state of South Carolina and forced Boeing to keep primary manufacturing in the union state of Washington.

It’s the NLRB that decided that franchise employees actually are jointly employed by the franchise—a McDonald’s burger joint, for instance—and the franchisor—McDonald’s corporate headquarters, for instance—a complete rewrite of the prior NLRB view of franchise employment.

It’s the NLRB that keeps pushing for card-checks at union elections whose purpose is to have the employees decide whether they want a union to represent them, a move designed solely to eliminate heretofore secret ballots in those elections.

It’s the NLRB that has pushed through, regarding those elections, the right of unions to demand an election within 30 days of the start of their public efforts to “organize” a company but without the company’s opportunity to respond in those 30 days—or even to begin to respond to the unions’ non-public efforts to organize.

It’s the NLRB that pushed through its “Persuader” Rule which requires employers to identify publicly all sources of consultation or advice the employer might have contacted—however peripherally—for thoughts on how to deal with unions.

The list goes on.  And on.

The NLRB already is dominated by a Democrat/union majority, and it will only get worse with a Democratic Party President and a Democratic Party-owned Senate making the appointments to the five-member board.