Given that we're at least a couple of months away from turnaround in the labor market, the fact that consumer confidence is not doing much worse than treading water is actually a good-news story. |
Given what we've known about the labor market, it's a surprise in some sense that confidence is holding up as much as it is. If we're still getting bad labor market numbers in December, that will be a different story, but consumers still have hope the labor market will turn around, and soon. |
High and potentially rising energy prices are one consideration in this outlook. Rising costs and questions about whether they will be matched by price hikes are also a factor in how fast the economy grows this spring. |
Historically, job advertising drops off in the months of November and December. This online series does not have a long enough history to seasonally adjust the data. However, we know from The Conference Board's long running Help-Wanted Index for print ads, as well as the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' job vacancy index (JOLTS) that businesses typically decrease their recruitment in the last two months of the year. This seasonal November decline typically reflects the Thanksgiving holiday and a slowdown in recruitments after a seasonal upturn in the late summer/early fall. Year-end budget constraints may also play a role if funds are short for paid advertisements. Nationally, the downturn in new online ad volume the week before and the week of Thanksgiving more than offset the modest increases in the other weeks in November. |
I don't know where they are going to stop, and I don't know that they know. |
I don't think we're back to a stable employment level; we're in for another decline, certainly in manufacturing employment. This should be the best month in the past three, but that's damning with faint praise, given how bad March and April were. |
I think we are going to get consistent job growth. The signals we're getting suggest we're on the road to better growth. Unless something else happens, then perhaps in a few months, we will finally get some good news in the labor market. |
If all we've had is consumption, not business investment, there could be a self-fulfilling factor here, ... If consumers run out of patience, they start trimming sales a bit, and the economy, rather than picking up, may weaken a bit. Then the consumer says, 'See, I told you it was going to happen.' |
If the economy cools a little, the labor market may also cool. Even if energy prices were not going through the roof, the biggest road block would still be the cost of a new hire. |
If we were starting from scratch and had to put all these systems in, that would be costly, but the incremental cost of making sure we have the latest version of protection against the latest version of a virus is not really that much. |
In all of the data, the road is up, but we're going to hit a couple of speed bumps along the way. I'm not sure the Michigan index is reflecting anything more serious than one of those speed bumps. |
Iowa is the center of the advertising storm. This is where it's going on. |
Is this serious? It's damn serious. |
It can't just smell like a recession - it has to smell, look and taste like one. |
It's probably just some reversal of earlier losses. I'm not sure that it's anything more fundamental than that, although its pretty encouraging. |