We obviously could still have a recession in the future but (a) we're not in one right now and (b) the economy has done much, much better than people were expecting this time last year.
Sure things could stay positive for a while longer, but there's a lot of headwinds on the horizon, more than I've seen in a while, and these headwinds are tangible, concrete, structural things we can put some numbers to, not just vague philosophical notions of "it can't go up forever" and "everything's overvalued". How big an impact it all makes and on what timescale we'll have to just wait and see, but I'm not leveraging up in this environment.
The actual saying was a knock against stock traders:
> To prove that Wall Street is an early omen of movements still to come in GNP, commentators quote economic studies alleging that market downturns predicted four out of the last five recessions. That is an understatement. Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions! And its mistakes were beauties.[20]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Samuelson#Aphorisms_and_q...
Anecdotally, got laid off in early spring, still trying to land a decent job, but despite the so called labor shortage all I get is shit offers for 2018 money. While I'm sure this benefits some, the fact that the stock market is now up, is little comfort to me.
On the ground here we were at 3 typical incomes to make basic bills in Jan 2022. As of this month we're solidly at 4 incomes to meet those same bills. Most of that jump occurred this year.
Yes.
> are you or people you know taking multiple jobs
That would work too, providing there enough hours in the week to work 4 full time jobs. One person earning 4x a typical income would also be able support themselves.
US household median income is about $71k/year. You're saying you need $280k to meet basic bills?
Perhaps by "typical" you meant something closer to "near minimum" ?
OTOH, the median is the number for which half the households in the country earn more and half earn less, and whatever the merits of the mode might be, I still think that's a fairly significant value too.
I'm not pitting it against BoL Statistics metrics. I use it to better communicate how the largest swath of the public experiences the economy.
The actual mode is going to be a single number, not a range, and it will correspond to very few people's incomes. To be usable in the way you mean, you need to add a range to it, and the size of that range is up for debate (mode +/- 1000? 2000? 10,000 ? etc)
I get that. However, that income doesn't reflect the largest bracket of the working population.
It isn't because so few employers pay that. The most available rate of pay would be closer to 10 or maybe 12 an hour.
Higher interest rates can be planned for already has a location in the tax code.
I’m staring to see that the recent recovery funding was a cash infusion to mask the rate increase from the 2008 recovery.
It is a great opportunity to reset expectations.
Ah yes, the fruits of Bidenomics!
Real wages are stagnant so everyone has to pick up additional work to deal with inflation. In a backdrop of inflation, these are essentialy a drop in wages: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/realer.pdf
Inflation is down: sure, from a face-ripping to a merely painful number. More importantly, it took several revisions to the CPI calculation and the lowest SPR levels in decades to make it happen. Also conveniently ignored, food CPI is still at a crushing 6.7% annual rate. If you remove food and energy, CPI inflation is at 5.3%. See: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/
Consumer spending is all-time high: indeed. Sky-high! It becomes quite nefarious when you think about the above: inflation of very important things is still high, but wages are not keeping up. How is the American consumer trying to stay afloat? Household debt. That is credit cards and other forms of personal debt has hit an all time high: https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc
I understand that Biden is trying to paint this as a success, but it's just cherry-picking statistics that hide the disaster the Democrats have created. It's like the Weimar Republic celebrating that the stock market is at all time high and unemployment is 0%.
Under the hood these numbers are not good.
Edit: Also wanted to throw this in: Average weekly hours of all employees https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/u6rate
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
Source? The BLS definition for U3 (ie. the figure that's referenced when people talk about "unemployment") doesn't say anything about 6 months.
However, there are certain factors that can lead to individuals falling out of the official unemployment statistic:
Discouraged Workers: If individuals become discouraged and stop actively seeking employment, they may no longer be counted as part of the labor force or in the unemployment rate calculation.
Underemployed Workers: The unemployment rate may not fully capture those who are working part-time but would prefer full-time employment. These individuals are considered part of the employed category, even if their work hours are insufficient.
Marginally Attached and Particular Job Seekers: Some individuals may have searched for employment in the past but have not actively sought employment in the four weeks preceding the survey. They are classified as marginally attached to the labor force and are not considered part of the unemployed category.
Involuntary Part-Time Workers: People who are working part-time due to economic reasons, such as inability to find full-time work, are included in the employed category but may not be fully reflected in the unemployment rate.
I think it's more nuanced in the types of employment and pay. But I'm also sure I don't even know where to go to get that data.
Isn't that the sign of a good economy then?