The U.S. added 678,000 jobs in February
text.npr.org
text.npr.org
Huge numbers. December and January revised up. Participation rate is up. U3 is down to 3.8%. Wage and price pressure are going to keep increasing and the Fed probably feels very comfortable raising rates with employment this strong.
from tootie's link
Here in DC things are still dead in the middle of the day, but maybe that’s a DC thing. In Annapolis where I live covid effectively ended more than a year ago, apart from the punitive measures on kids. I was talking with a guy who worked for a new local restaurant chain (just two locations near Annapolis) that opened last year. He was shocked to hear things were so bad in DC, because they had a gangbusters opening year.
Not to mention "core hours" becoming a thing even on in-person days for many offices meaning it's no longer as much of a thing to get out of the office for lunch at noon if you're only there until 3 or 4.
Roughly 3 million people left the labor force between retirements, inability to work due to lack of childcare and similar, or death. Immigration is also negligible due to border closures. Labor force ain't coming back.
Anecdotally, every person in my circle who is in their early 60s is just holding on for Medicare (age 65) and their full retirement age to collect Social Security.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/02/25/great-res...
https://www.marketplace.org/2022/01/24/how-much-labor-force-...
https://www.brookings.edu/research/is-long-covid-worsening-t...
The population isn't getting younger due to the rapidly declining total fertility rate, so you're going to experience a labor "squeeze", having a bunch of folks leaving the labor force and a smaller working population having their wages rapidly pushed up. Immigration will remain a challenge due to the political climate not being supportive of it.
For your average worker, it's a net benefit as long as the surging wages last (and inflation subsides as interest rates rise, which will also push asset prices down), even more so if organizing efforts across the country continue.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241494/median-age-of-the...
https://www.marketplace.org/2021/08/19/how-essential-child-c...
https://laist.com/news/california-child-care-covid-disappear...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/us/child-care-centers-cri...
https://childcareta.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/public/a...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-22/child-car...
A .5 hike is already off the table for the March Fed meeting.
To me it feels like we are racing towards a miserable stagflation environment with our stimulus tools never reloaded.
Massively lagging data points look good though so we must be on the right path!
I think it was Stanley Druckenmiller that said he made most of his money by betting that the Fed is always wrong. The older I get the more brilliant this strategy seems.
Please stop this. Words have meanings, and you should not misuse them just because you want to add extra emotional valence to your post. "Stagflation" is when there is inflation even though there is no growth in GDP and/or employment. Right now there are massive gains in both, and while you could make an argument that the benefits of the growth are outweighed by the inflation, it is not stagflation in any sense, nor is stagflation likely to be on the horizon (if there is a recession, the demand destruction will cool off prices, especially as covid ends and demand flows back from goods to services)