US Economy At a Glance

[esskreemr]

Wow! Changes in Payroll Employment (New jobs created) really took a hit in September. I assume that's the vestiges of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and will hopefully rebound. The consumer price index and the producer price index both had a pretty significant increase. Are there darker days ahead?


http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm

[Maeve_Mari]

You should have seen the merit increases this year at my company. The absolutely lowest I have ever seen in all the MANY years I have been working there. Never has the pool for merit allocations been so bare. The last several years have had a tremendous hit on compensation for employees.

[Slim]

Wow! Changes in Payroll Employment (New jobs created) really took a hit in September. I assume that's the vestiges of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and will hopefully rebound. The consumer price index and the producer price index both had a pretty significant increase. Are there darker days ahead?


http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm

yes, we're doomed. We're doomed.

[Slim]

You should have seen the merit increases this year at my company. The absolutely lowest I have ever seen in all the MANY years I have been working there. Never has the pool for merit allocations been so bare. The last several years have had a tremendous hit on compensation for employees.

Another clear indicator we are all doomed. Small merit raises.

[esskreemr]

I know that one set of data does not a trend make. With GM's going under, and no end in sight to the energy prices going up, we could see several months of these types of figures.

[Larrison]

I know that one set of data does not a trend make. With GM's going under, and no end in sight to the energy prices going up, we could see several months of these types of figures.

I read the summary statements which are at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm

Interesting reading -- the BLS notes that they are extrapolating a lot of information, and there were significant disruptions in both the economy and how they get their statistical data from Rita and Katrina. They point out their data is preliminary data, and subject to revision as they get better statistics (usually takes them about 2 months to get their data finalized).

The key groups that seem to have been hit were teenage workers, and those in the retail trade, and in "leisure and hospitality". The teenage labor rates need to be seasonally adjusted (September is the start of school, so the percentage of teenagers working tends to go down anyway). Labor rates (% employeed) were up in adult men and women, and with job gains in construction, "professional and business services", and "Education and health services". From a labor basis, if the reconstruction is getting underway from Rita and Katrina, you can see more construction hirings (although the seasonal downturn is also going to be happening outside the warmer south of the country), and I would suspect that the "leisure and hospitality" employment levels will start to go up as Florida (one of the big drivers in this) starts to pick up both their winter vacationeers business and as people stop feeling that the US south has been leveled by hurricanes.

Oil prices look fairly stable in the short term -- the production/ distribution impacts from Katrina and Rita look like they are disappating rapidly, and I've noticed around a $0.20 per gallon reduction in local gas prices. I'd guess international oil prices are going to be more of a driver to overall barrell prices, although its about time for the usual end-of-summer gas hikes as the refineries switch from producing auto gasoline for the summers into heating oil for the NE for the winter, which reduces the supply of gasoline. With the recent legistation which may reduce the dozens of boutique blends of gasoline mandated in some regions, this might be a bit better this year than some years (there are limited refineries which are equipped to produce the boutique blends,when tends to take additional refineries out of the overall gasoline supply business -- but that legislation has not yet been fully passed, as I understand it.)

We should see the preliminary October results and the revised September results on the 4th of November... As you note, one data point does not make a trend.

[Larrison]

And I'm going to add a coda to my previous statement as per esskreemr 's statement of "With GM's going under..."

I don't follow GM very much, but I figured I should probably look at them. I don't think GM should have very much problem. at least not in the next 6-12 months, unless the UAW takes them down. GM's got around $32 B in cash on hand, and another $50 B or so in unused credit lines, and a fully funded pension plan. Even if they take on another $6-10 B or liabilities from Delphi going under (which is debatable in my opinioin -- they've separately managed companies for almost 6 years), they should do OK, if their sales don't collapse. What could collapse their sales is if UAW took them into an protracted strike... which is always a possibility, but I don't see as a high probability.

[Inquartata]

"In the long run, we're all dead."

But before that, any economic downturns should give me more opportunities to invest in stocks at lower prices...

[Have At You]

What I want to know is, given that the US economy really took a hit in the last year of Clinton's presidency, and has never really recovered during the Bush years (not to imply causation one way or the other), how come we're not seeing nearly so much griping and general claims of hardship as one would expect from such a state of affairs?

Remember back in the recession that started under Carter and continued through Reagan's first term, how people moaned and groaned all the time about it? Apart from the Kerry campaign's botched attempt to spotlight the economy, I haven't seen anywhere near the same level of kvetching and inconvenience during the current, much longer-lived stagnation.

[Inquartata]

"Has never really recovered"? News to me.

Have you looked at the per capita GDP growth rates for the last few years?

[esskreemr]

Oh wait, sorry guys. I forgot to 'translate' my post to Slimspeak:

Wow, those greedy Repubs have really screwed the pooch this time! In their constant attempt to make the Middle-Class American disappear, BushCo and their corporate buddies are putting the final screws in the American Economy's coffin. I wonder how much Cheniburton will make if the US economy plummets into a recession? I've heard that there preparing to blame it on the Democrats for indicting that nefarious criminal DeLay.

OK, time for bed.

[Larrison]

"Has never really recovered"? News to me.

Have you looked at the per capita GDP growth rates for the last few years?

I'll echo Inquarta here -- check out http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/home/gdp.htm for the offical GDP values by quarter for the last 15 years or so. You can download the data as an Excel file. (2nd bullet on the page)

I compared data for 1st Quarter 1993 (since Clinton took office in Jan 1993) to 1st Quarter 1997 (start of Clinton 2nd Term) to 1st Quarter 2001 (start of Bush Term) to 1st quarter 2005 (start of 2nd Bush term, and end of 1 full term by GW Bush).

Clinton First term -- 24.0 % growth in GDP in current then-year dollars
Clinton 2nd term -- 23.5 %
GW Bush 1st term -- 21.7%

So while there was a slowdown (not a "recession", which I believe is defined as 2 successive quarterly decreases, and there were no quarterly decreases..), the slowdown looks to have started in the 3rd quarter of 2000, and continued through about 1st quarter of 2003.

[pigeonmeister]

I think we're in trouble too!

Brown 'on thin ice with economy'

Someones got a plan to save you though- Gold!

The Gold Parachute