It's A Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs World!
It's A Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs World!
Nice work if you can get it ... oh, you can!
Today’s monthly jobs report from the Labor Department shows that the economy added 187,000 new nonfarm jobs in July, which was just a squeak under the Dow Jones forecast of 200,000. The overall unemployment rate remains low at 3.5 percent, a tenth of a percentage point lower than in June, and close to the record low of 3.4 percent. US unemployment continues to run at historically low levels; unemployment since March 2022 has remained between 3.4 and 3.7 percent, where it was in 1969 when the Monkees were actually on network TV in vivid color, if you had it.
Hey-hey, it’s a good but somewhat cooling economy as the Fed has been keeping an eye on inflation. Soft landing — i.e., getting inflation down without a recession? Looks likely!
Good new for workers in the jobs numbers, too, with average hourly earnings up by .4 percent, or a 4.4 annual rate, which is a bit ahead of inflation so you can go to the grocery store and splurge on eggs, which are plentiful and closer to normal-ish in price. Just don’t go all Cool Hand Luke on us, OK?
Stocks were up a bit on the news, so that’s nice we guess, if you’re into that kind of thing. And the obligatory economist pull-quote at CNBC was appropriately Hey, this isn’t bad! Unless it could be better!
“The labor market seems to be humming along rather well at this point in the business cycle. A 3.5% unemployment rate, you can’t complain about that,” said Satyam Panday, U.S. chief economist at S&P Global Ratings. “It’s a nice glide path down. We would have liked to see wage growth come down a little, but the purchasing power of the consumer seems to be holding up well.”
A recession stubbornly refuses to show up to give economists an opportunity to say they saw it coming a mile away, so they’re mostly clucking contentedly in their nests, occasionally sitting bolt upright to look in panic at the sky, which stays right where it was five minutes before. The poor things are even having to find creative ways to say “Yep, it’s fine, really, um. Yes, very fascinatingly OK,” like this other guy at CNBC:
“Overall, this is still not the picture of the labor market we would expect to see if the economy were in danger of decelerating dramatically in the short term, although without question there are signs of moderation,” said Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income at asset management giant BlackRock.
Extra points for phrasing the okayness in weirdly negative terms, there. “Not the economy we’re looking for … in a crash, so yeah, it’s good.”
In conclusion, it’s August and really a good time to have a relatively non-exciting economic report, so let’s all enjoy the Trump indictments some more, the end.
[Bureau of Labor Statistics / CNBC / NYT]
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Regarding the above pic...
"Good Times! is the twelfth studio album by American pop rock band the Monkees. Produced primarily by Adam Schlesinger, the album was recorded to commemorate the band's 50th anniversary. It is the first Monkees studio album since Justus (1996), marking the longest gap between releases to date, and the first since the death of Davy Jones. The album features surviving Monkees Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork, as well as a posthumous contribution from Jones.
Good Times! received generally positive reviews from music critics and reached number 14 on the Billboard 200, becoming the band's highest-charting album in 48 years.' Wikipedia
Since then, both Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork javed died, making Micky Dolenz the only one alive.
But also, Adam Schlesinger, was a member of two well-known groups - Fountains of Wayne, and Ivy.
It was in the latter group that I met him and talked with him several times.
It was a double sadness that he was the first person I had known who died of COVID, and the first well-known musician that died of COVID
This should be Big, BIG news. And yet...