Showing posts with label Jobs 2025. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jobs 2025. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 27, 2025

The decline of worker hours in America

 In 1966 all the hours worked by all the full time and part time workers divided by the civilian employment level peaked at about 35.35 hours per worker per week. That's full time level work. That's prosperity.

The flood of Baby Boomers, especially Baby Boomer women under the influence of feminism and the social revolution of the 1960s, and also foreign born workers after the Immigration Act of 1965, into the labor markets after the mid-1960s reduced hours per week per worker by almost 11%, not forming a new stable bottom until the 1980s at about 31.5 hours per week.

Increased labor supply = fewer hours to go around = less prosperity.

By 1999, when peak Baby Boom had passed 40 years of age, hours per week had risen as high as 32.68 per worker per week. That was the end result of the good times kick-started by Ronald Reagan twenty years prior, which hit in four waves: 1984-85, 1989, 1995, and 1999.

But the whole subsequent period 2003-2019 inclusive fell apart.

Many, many troubles reduced hours worked per worker by almost 7% between 1999 and 2009, not the least of which were admission of China to the World Trade Organization in 2001, and the Great Recession.

Hours per week per worker have risen again as of 2022, but only to the old bottom, at around 31.57 per week.

Median real earnings per week are up just $38 since 1979.

Will that be As Good As It Gets?

 




 

 

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Tomorrow is a big day for economic reports: Core pce inflation and 1Q2025 real GDP

 The consensus estimate for tomorrow's core pce inflation number is 2.6% year over year in March, and 0.1% month over month. In February the actual numbers were 2.8% year over year and 0.4% month over month.

The consensus estimate for tomorrow's real GDP estimate is 0.4% vs. 2.4% actual the previous quarter. Yes, you read that right, 0.4%. GDPNow's final read on 1Q2025 out this morning is  . . .  -2.7%.

Yikes.

The ADP employment change will also be reported. Consensus is for +108,000 vs. +155,000 actual the previous month.

Nonfarm payrolls comes out on Friday. Consensus is for +130,000 for April vs. +228,000 actual in March.

Saturday, April 19, 2025

High unemployment, high inflation, and high interest rates 6% or higher all at the same time plagued the country for six years 1975-1982, but we survived

 There were six years when all three, the unemployment rate, headline inflation, and 10-year US Treasury yield, were at 6% or higher on an average basis at the same time:

1975: 8.5%  9.14%  7.99%

1977: 7.1%  6.46%  7.42%

1978: 6.1%  7.62%  8.41%

1980: 7.2%  13.5%  11.43%

1981: 7.6%  10.37%  13.92%

1982: 9.7%  6.15%  13.01%.

 

In March 2025 unemployment was 4.2%, headline inflation was 2.4%, and the 10Y yielded 4.28%.

The current data set is no compelling case for reducing interest rates.  If Trump had confidence in his tariff regime, he wouldn't be clamoring for further reductions.

 


Monday, April 7, 2025

Car manufacturing jobs, so-called good jobs, already don't pay enough to enable these Detroit auto workers to buy their own homes and have families, and they fear layoffs because of the tariffs

 The Wall Street Journal doesn't mention it here.

This guy's been working for the company for 10 years and he's still renting.

... Daniel Campbell, who maneuvers steel auto parts around a Stellantis factory north of Detroit, says he and many of his colleagues are worried about layoffs.

“I’m scared,” he said from his brick bungalow on the west side of Detroit, which he rents with two roommates. “We’re complaining about gas and eggs now. Who is going to be able to buy these cars that are already $80,000, and then you make it $90,000?”

The 46-year-old UAW member, who makes about $30 an hour, and one of his roommates have talked about trimming their spending, including eating out less and cutting clothing and electronics purchases. 

“There’s going to come a time where we’re not going to be able to go and spend,” he said

 At work, the assembly lines have been running faster in recent weeks as Stellantis has tried to stockpile parts ahead of the tariffs, Campbell said. He and his co-workers are running out of room to store the parts. ...

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Multiple job holders hit what only looks like a new high in Feb 2025 at 9 million not seasonally adjusted

 But as a percent of civilian population, the 3.3% current level still doesn't come close to the 1996 peak at 4.2%.

 
 


Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Since Donald Trump wants to move the goalposts for counting the costs of his tax cuts and for calculating GDP, let's use his dumb ass unemployment rate from 2015 from now on, shall we?

 Donald Trump had one of the worst annual dumb ass unemployment rates in history in 2020: 38.25%.

Every president between Carter and Obama did better than he did.

Get off your ass you losers and get to work.

 


 


Imbeciles Trump and Musk claim millions over the age of 100 get Social Security when it is 89,106 people in December 2024 lol

Trump loves Whoppers.

Smell the farts of nothing has changed.

In 2015 Trump used Rush Limbaugh Math and came up with 42% unemployed lol. "Not in labor force" is not a measure of unemployment.

These Social Security claims are loonier than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris saying 200 million and more had already died of COVID in the United States during their campaign for president-vice president in 2020. Joe corrected himself eventually. Trump and Musk WILL NOT.

... The [Social Security] issue has been repeatedly identified by inspectors general at the agency, but the Social Security Administration has argued that updating old records was costly and unnecessary.

Per the agency’s online records, just 89,106 people — not tens of millions — over the age of 99 received retirement benefits in December 2024, out of the more than 70 million people who receive benefits each year.

It’s a “humiliating mistake for anyone else to make, but they’re doubling and tripling down on it,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank that addresses government spending. ...

More.

Meanwhile the US population 65 years old and older was only about 59 million in 2023. Hello.

 




Friday, February 7, 2025

January 2025 is the fifth consecutive January with full time employment not as good as in January 2020 when 49.85% of civilian population usually worked full time

January 2020: 49.85%
January 2021: 47.42%
January 2022: 49.29%
January 2023: 49.32%
January 2024: 49.16%
January 2025: 49.22%
 


Thursday, January 23, 2025

Peak Baby Boomers worked when they were teenagers, at 2.07% of population, still the peak, today at just 0.78% of population

Get a haircut and get a real jobClean your act up and don't be a slobGet it together like your big brother BobWhy don't you, get a haircut and get a real job?

-- George Thorogood, 1993


 








It's not a perfect one to one comparison, let alone an actual measurement, but about 20% of teenagers worked in 1979, and not quite 12% today: