US economic activity looks strong or weak, depending on the data sets you choose to craft a narrative. That’s always true in some sense for the simple reason: there’s always some slice of the economy bucking the broader trend. But this time is different because the degree of the conflicting signals is so stark.
The poster boy for growth and thinking positively is the labor market, which continues to post strong gains – far stronger than suggested by other indicators that in previous decades offered relatively reliable business-cycle signals.
The debate is whether the surprisingly robust gains in payrolls of late are due to extraordinary one-time factors linked to the ongoing effects of the pandemic. So-called labor-hoarding is one theory. If there’s something different this time, can it reverse suddenly? Or is it persistent?
Regardless of the explanation (and the staying power, or lack thereof), there’s no denying the numbers. US unemployment remains low and payrolls are rising at a strong pace: payrolls rose 517,000 in January, the highest monthly gain since July. Meanwhile, the jobless rate ticked down to 3.4%, the lowest since the 1950s. 1969.
Other key areas of the economy are strong as well. Notably, consumer spending, although wobbly in recent months, shows a strong ability to bounce back. Personal consumption expenditures surged 1.8% in January, the most in nearly two years.
Definitions of recession vary, but it’s a safe assumption that the economy will almost certainly avoid contraction if payrolls and consumer spending are robust. That doesn’t change the fact that key indicators otherwise continue to flash warnings. The inverted Treasury yield curve, for example. Rising interest rates and unusually steep declines in money supply are others portents.
In fact, several broad-minded measures of the business-cycle look downright ominous. The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index in January, for instance, paints a dark profile.
But the labor market suggests otherwise. The crucial question: Which side will blink first? In search of an answer, watching payrolls and related numbers will offer early clues on how this mystery resolves. On that front, keep an eye on what could be hints of weaker data for payrolls in the next round of updates.
Job postings on Indeed.com, a jobs platform, suggests that the recent strength in the labor market is reversing and that rise in job openings will continue to reverse.
Analysts at other platforms report similar results. “We haven’t seen [the slowdown] in the employment data yet, but we will see it soon,” predicts Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. “We also speak to customers all of the time. We discuss with them their plans for future hiring. They are telling us they are worried about the risk of overhiring.”
The Kansas City Labor Market Conditions Index is trending lower, which implies that the strength in year-over-year payrolls will soon weaken.
The question is whether the warning signs will continue to be one more case of premature and possibly misleading indicators? This much is clear: the usual conditions for evaluating the business cycle are issuing conflicting signals. We may be in the middle of a learning experience that rewrites how analysts evaluate business-cycle risk.
Meanwhile, it’s hard to argue that a recession is near as long as the labor market remains tight and hiring is robust. Until the hard data on this front tell us otherwise, payrolls appear the only game in town for deciding if business-cycle risk is high or low.
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Job postings on indeed.com? Really?
Spectrum, the ISP company, had one job opening in my community but posted two dozen ‘ads’ (all slightly different) for the single opening. Postings for companies like Uber also clutter the job portals as if they are a meaningful metric of actual need. Our local hospital has dozens of openings that are repeated by at least a dozen different recruiting companies which means hundreds of ads for the same job. Employers post new job ads for the same opening they posted three days ago because they want to avoid filters that screen out old jobs.
The demand for labor isn’t reflected in real wages for many new openings. I can find thousands of jobs paying 10 bucks an hour that aren’t intended for teenagers. These postings are trolling. They don’t teflect an actual need for labor.
Using indeed.com to determine labor market trends is only useful if their postings are properly filtered to remove the noise.
“”Meanwhile, the jobless rate ticked down to 3.4%, the lowest since the 1950s. “”
Actually since 1969, which was a recession year.
A strong labor market is the result not the cause of a strong economy. The unemployment rate was 3.8% in the fall of 2000. Three months later, we were in a recession. In 2007, unemployment was 4.4%, less than one year later was the worst recession since the Great Depression.
The Fed will continue to raise rates, until they break the economy.
Yes, and no. I should have wrote that the current 3.4% matches the lowest since 1969 (not the 1950s as I originally reported). Good catch. But 1969 was not a recession year, per the NBER. The peak was Dec. 1969 and so 1970 was the recession year: https://www.nber.org/research/data/us-business-cycle-expansions-and-contractions