Making Sense of the US Labour Market
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) makes no secret that it attaches a higher policy weight to seemingly tight labour market conditions vis-à-vis low inflation readings. Given this bias, therefore, it is essential that the FOMC accurately assesses whether the economy is indeed at full employment. The Fed’s econometric of the US economy embraces the so-called Phillips Curve, a statistical relationship that depicts an inverse relationship between the unemployment rate and wage inflation. Historically, increases in wages were passed on to consumers via higher selling prices. Unsurprisingly, the Phillips Curve’s original statistical relationship was modified and wage inflation was subsequently replaced
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Interestingly, the numbers of multiple job holders fell during the extremely strong period of economic growth in the late1990s. Arguably, the aforementioned period was effectively a bubble and did not produce “normal” dynamics. Meanwhile, the number of multiple holders needs to be place into context in terms of total employment. Based on this measure, the percentage of multiple job holders within total employment has been falling since the late-1990s. During the current economic cycle, the share of multiple job holders in total employment has been in genteel uptrend since mid-2015. Interestingly, falling numbers of multiple job holders are a leading indicator of recession as the corporate sector seeks to reduce fixed costs to counter deteriorating profitability. The current rising incidence of multiple job holders would, therefore, suggest continued economic growth vis-à-vis imminent recession.
Temporary Help Payrolls Suggest Continued Labour Market Strength
The underlying tone of July’s Employment Situation report released by the BLS erred to the stronger side of expectations. Meanwhile, the FOMC would have taken note that non-farm payrolls are still increasing in excess of the growth in the labour force, thereby placing downward pressure on the unemployment rate. During early-2016, there was a period of labour force growth that was sufficiently robust to prevent further declines in the unemployment rate. This dynamic consequently dissuaded the FOMC from
The unemployment rate has dramatically increased over the last several months. This increase has created many complications for the American people. Although the United States economy has created over 7 million jobs, there is still a long way to go until the economy is back on track.
The discussion of whether the Federal Reserve should raise the federal funds rate is a highly contentious one. Members of the Federal Reserve (“Fed”) and academic economists disagree about what constitutes appropriate future macroeconomic policy for the Unites States. In the past, the Fed had been able to raise rates when the unemployment rate was under 5% and inflation was at a target of 2%. Enigmatically, since the Great Recession and despite a strengthening economy, year-over-year total inflation since 2008 has averaged only 1.4%—as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (“PCE”). Today, PCE inflation is at 1-1.5% and has continuously undershot the Fed’s inflation target of 2% three years in a row. (Evan 2015) In the six years since the bottom of the Great Recession the U.S. economy has made great strides in lowering the published unemployment rate from about 10% back down to about 5.5%. In light of this data, certain individuals believe that the Federal Reserve should move to increase the federal funds rate in 2015 because unemployment is near 5% and inflation should bounce back on its own (Derby 2015). However, this recommendation is misguided.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its report for July 2016, and the numbers have some people speculating that a real recovery may be at hand. Wages have been rising consistently for the past few months; the average hourly wage for July was $25.69. The unemployment rate was 4.9 percent for July, which was the same as June but 0.2 percent higher than May. Jobs are increasing; the July change was 255,000, which was a bit lower than the 292,000 reported for June but significantly greater than the pitiful 24,000 reported for May. At first glance, it appears that the American economy is showing signs of rebounding at an accelerated rate — but is that assessment accurate?
Since 1979 when the dual mandate was established by the Humphrey Hawkins Act, The FOMC made no reference to employment in its policy directives until December 2008 (Thornton, 2012). The fiscal policies that the Federal Reserve made had direct effects on the economic growth. The policies affected the interest rates, monetary growth, and credit aggregates. The FOMC may have argued that these policies had a direct effect on the employment level within the country. The better the economy of the country, the more the production activities will be enough money to offer employment. Nevertheless, there is no mutual agreement on how the fiscal policies on economic growth translate into increased employment rates. Even if there was a correlation between the two, there is neither predictable nor direct effect of policies on employment.
Although America is the greatest country in the world through the protected rights of all citizens and the gifted freedoms and liberties that come with it, we used to be really horrific.
As of November 7th the U.S economy added 214,000 jobs, which makes the unemployment rate down to 5.8 percent, the lowest in six years. The unemployment rate fell from 5.9% to 5.8%, which is lowest since July 2008. Hourly earnings rose three cents to $24.57 and are up just 2% over the past year, in line with the unclear increases so far in the five year recovery. Economists have been looking for a pickup in wage gains to branch more consumer spending. This recent data implies that the slow progression out of the Great Recession is gaining control. However, Americans are seeing their purchasing power rise while jobs come back thanks to falling oil prices.
The Federal Reserve is adjusting to what some call the “new normal.” After the most recent recession the United States has experiences a slow recovery which has a notable disconnect between inflation and unemployment. Further, banks hold high excess reserves and the Fed has a balance sheet which includes over $1.7 trillion in mortgage backed securities (Quarterly, 2017, p.4). As such the Fed has had to rethink its past procedures in order to maintain its dual mandate of maintaining unemployment and price levels. While it has been a decade since this recession began the economy is just now showing signs of strength and such the Fed is beginning a process of “normalization.” To do this the Fed’s has changed its stance on monetary policy in
Working in American Theartre: A Brief History, Career Guide and Resource Book for over 1,000 Theatres starts out by giving readers advice from professionals in the theatre industry. These professionals range from being artistic directors to professors to actors. The some advices given to the readers is to find a mentor, learn as much as possible, do not give up on one’s dreams, be friendly, etc. Next the readers learn of the birth of theatre in America during the Revolutionary War. Theatre started out as shows with comedians, musicians, and actors. Over the years theatre turned into things like traveling plays and the circus. Everyone wanted to be a part of Theatre and thus came booking agents and The Syndicate. With all these new people
The book Jobs in America, which is edited by David Ramm, is a series of articles put together by different authors describing many different aspects in the jobs in America. It describes the importance of good jobs, education related to wages, population size for a market, the relevance of people wanting to be their own boss, different classes in America, diversity in the workplace, gender differences, the biggest financial decision known as retirement, as well as many other factors. This book covers basically all the aspects of jobs in America. It gives many different views from different authors around the U.S on the factors that affect and are related to jobs in America. Jobs are very important everywhere you go. Working is the only
In this article Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen stated that there is “no fixed timetable” for raising the U.S. interest rates. She also confirmed that rate increases will happen since strong labor market gain continue, which will push inflation above the current central back target. The current labor market has continued a growth trend and employers are adding new jobs each month. Additionally the unemployment rate has been held relatively steady. The chairman also warned that if job gains continue and unemployment drops further the inflation rate could rise, which will subsequently raise interest rates at a faster rate than planned.
Imagine that you wake up and turn on the television as you are getting ready for work at 0600. You decide to watch the news, specifically the business channel. As you watch the news you learn that the Dow futures is down 300 points and that the Asian and European markets have done poorly. As you continue to listen to the news you learn that there is another healthcare facility that is laying off 3,000 people nationwide. Are you shocked by this information? Most likely you are not. This is how many people in the United States start each morning. There continues to be fluctuations in the economy, even though the numbers show that there is slight improvements. The purpose of this paper is examine unemployment, the interest rate and inflation,
Today, September 21, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) had an announcement released at 2:00 p.m. in which it was declared that the FOMC will keep their policies intact. I was unable to follow the announcement at the time of release, although I was informed of the decision a little before 5:00pm. I immediately checked federalreserve.gov when given the opportunity and further learned the reasoning behind the FOMC’s decision. The FOMC felt the economy is still stagnant and not growing at the rate they would like. Due to this, they kept their policies intact hoping the economy will right itself.
The unemployment rate in the United States has improved dramatically over the last two years, from a high of 8.3% in July 2012, to a low of 6.6% in January 2014. In October of 2012, the civilian labor force increased from 578,000 to 155.6 million, labor force participation increased up to 63.8%, and total employment overall rose by 410,000! Since then, the unemployment rate has been falling at a stable rate due to a political push from Washington DC and new employment initiatives. The inflation rate over the last 2 years has been relatively stably, with a few major increases and decreases in 2012 and 2013. It reached a high of 2.3% in June of 2012, and reached a low of 1.0% at the end of 2013. The federal interest rate has remained at a constant .25% over the past few years.
The rising unemployment has generated challenges in low income communities. Unemployment involves a situation where people in a particular community are actively seeking employment but the employment rates are low. The increased rates of unemployment are contributed to by factors such as recession periods that adversely affects the economy. Impacts on the economy in turn affect the labor force leading to loss of employment and reducing the rates of employment opportunities in the country. The United States has experienced cases of recession periods and has caused significant negative impacts on the communities and economic growth of the country. The prevalence of high unemployment rates in low income communities in the U.S
Downsizing, restructuring, rightsizing, even a term as obscure as census readjustment has been used to describe the plague that has been affecting corporate America for years and has left many of its hardest working employees without work. In the year 2001 we had nearly 1.8 million jub cuts, that’s almost three times as much as the year 2000(Matthew Benz). In the 1990's, one million managers of American corporations with salaries over $40,000 also lost their jobs. In total, Fortune 500 companies have eliminated 4.4 million positions since 1979 including the 65,000 positions cut in February of 2002 (Ellen Florian). Although this downsizing of companies can have many reasons behind it and cannot be