Let me explain. Ultimately, how much money the workforce is making matters to consumer spending. People may be ok not having a job, because they have some way to stay at their standard of living. But unless a bunch of them are sitting on family trusts, it also means they don't have a growing amount of money to spend.
Yet consumer spending has been growing steadily for the last 5 years. How can that be? The likely scenario is really cheap debt. The kind that disappears when interet rates aren't basically zero anymore.
We've shoved a lot of stuff under the "free money" carpet. When the Fed bumps up the interest rates, all those spiders are going to come out to play.