Today’s nonfarm payrolls report finally arrived, but it wasn’t worth the wait. Private-sector employment increased by a net 126,000 jobs last month on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the US Labor Department. That’s not the slowest pace this year, but it’s close. Only July’s meager 100,000 rise is lower so far in 2013. There’s nothing to cheer about in today’s employment release, but it’s still not obvious that the jig is up for the business cycle. True, the latest monthly perspective looks discouraging, but that’s not the only statistical lens at our disposal. Consider that the year-over-year percentage change for private-sector employment continued to expand by just over 2% through last month. That rate is unchanged from the previous month and is in line with the annual pace of growth we’ve seen so far this year.
Daily Archives: October 22, 2013
Why This Year’s Nobel Award In Economics Makes Perfect Sense
Last week’s news on the choice of this year’s winners of the Nobel prize in economics perplexed and even disturbed some pundits. How could two economists—Eugene Fama and Robert Shiller—with such diametrically opposed ideas on asset pricing be awarded a Nobel at once? (A third winner, Lars Peter Hansen, shared the prize for his work in econometrics.) By some accounts, elevating the two names, and their respective bodies of work, in one Nobel award is misguided at best because it mistakenly suggests a degree of equality in the underlying methodologies for evaluating markets. I’ve heard some people argue over the past week that one or the other name should be stricken from the list. But that’s a foolish read on this year’s award. Giving the prize jointly to Fama and Shiller makes perfect sense because it reminds us that no one theory can tell us everything we need to know in the money game.