The American economy gained 528,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 438,000 jobs. Not bad! The headline unemployment rate went down to 3.5%.
Average weekly wages increased 0.47% from last month, an annualized rate of 5.8%. Adjusted for inflation, this amounts to either -3% or -10% depending on how you count.
So: Lots of new jobs. High nominal wage growth. Terrible real wage growth. And declining GDP. Anyone who wants to smush all this together and decide if we're in a recession is welcome to do so. But I'm just going to keep my mouth shut for a while.
As George H.W. Bush could tell us, a jobs recession is worse than a jobless recession.
In fact, this great recession under joebiden is actually the only true recession.
But, but, but . . . have you seen the price of pork bellies!
How much did the Saudis buy El Jefe Maximo for?
Despite rates hikes totaling 150 basis points in the last month+, employment is accelerating. What does this tell us?
It says, with an exclamation point, that the business cycle has not hit peak.
And for God's sake, stop saying "declining GDP" when you mean to say, "declining real GDP".
Nominal GDP is growing at a historically fast rate, which means that federal receipts are growing at a record pace: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=SuQA
It tells me we have a serious labor shortage. Time to ramp up immigration.
But in this 2006 Lou Dobbs Green Room, Bernie Sanders isn't so sure.
Yep. Can't withdraw over half-million people from the labor market and not have it affect everything.
In a sane world, this would be good news for Joe Biden and the Democrats.
But in this world, where Meghan Mc Cardle is a leading economic thoughtleader, that will never be.
Can we just move on to cat blogging please
So, the Economic Mystery of the Month count as talking about this???
😉
Actual Fux News headline:
“WH MISSES FORECAST ON LOWER JULY JOBS GROWTH.”
Meaning the WH originally estimated only 150,000 new jobs, but the actual number was 580,000.
Typo: should be "Fox News".Or maybe not.
Underprivileged, overdeliver. How is FOX unaware of this? (Especially given their boi George W. promised a plethora of WMD in Iraq, & got nothing. & later, their nu boi Donald promised a beautiful replacement to Obummercare, but never got close to anything but restoring the old system.)
*underpromise