Job creation slowed in August, with only 130,000 jobs added to the U.S. economy compared to expectations of around 160,000.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1246719
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1246719
And 25,000 of those jobs are temporary government workers hired to help with the Census.
So.Much.Winning.
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And so it begins.
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Iāve been sensing slow down for about 2 months. Given that the numbers for they year have been revised by as much as 500k jobs downward, the actual data may well be weaker than this report which fell short of estimates.
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How did Obama make THAT happen? BLM, I assume?
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One of my anecdotal measures of a economic activity/slowdown is ridiculously cheap clothing prices:a sign that stores are trying to get rid of inventory. That happened in December and sure enough the data released in July confirmed that our Q4 2018 growth rate was around 1%.
Another anecdotal measure is freeway traffic. My last two drives across Southern California have been pretty reasonable, except that shouldnāt be the case post Labor Day. The drive should suck. Fewer cars on the road might mean fewer people with places to go (e.g.,to an office).
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I think itās too late for the Fed or Congress to stop whatās happening. This isnāt just about tariffs. We didnāt capitalize on the window we had to address demand because we didnāt bring in immigrants, we didnāt invest in people, innovation or infrastructure, and now we have high consumer debt, higher consumer costs/prices, higher govāt debt, and gradual retrenchment of business spending. In addition, we donāt have foreign market capacity to sell into thanks to the trade war. Some parts of this country (mostly in red areas) are going to get screwed and that may be the universeās statement to Red America and conservatives: āYou rise and fall together with your urban/POC/immigrant/liberal neighbors. And guess what, the urban/POC/immigrant/liberals can do just fine while you tumble downward. So pull it together and take cultural āissuesā out of your voting decisions.ā
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So much for the wisdom of putting a ābusinessmanā in charge.
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So are these real numbers, or will they be adjusted to a more favorable level in a few months? How long before the Tweets start about these numbers being fake news? How long before it registers with the minions that theyāre the ones that are getting hurt by all of this?
These questions and more on the next episode of āSoapāā¦
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Iāve made this forecast earlier: we have reached the apogee of job creation in this cycle. We are at basically full employment and the fantasy beliefs in this virtuous cycle will lead to more misaligned investments.
There will then lead to a bigger payback for those increased misinvestments.
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I think weāre all tired of all this winning.
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Lately the initial monthly numbers have been getting adjusted downward. The story says the June-July numbers were reduced by 20,000
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Bigly
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Personally, Iām tired of all the whining.
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Iāve been seeing my own economic barometer in my business of IT consulting.
A couple of factors: a few of the big six consulting firms (e.g., Accenture and Cap Gemini, to name a few) negotiated big greenfield contracts to implement the software. They won these contracts on the basis of the assumption that H-1B contractors would be widely available. To explain H-1B, these are foreign contractors that come here at low rates and take work away from American consultants (thereās an entire quadrant of the business that is now exclusively off-shore - no one will pay the American rate, so the quadrant went completely away). Now that there are fewer H-1Bās, these contracts are going unfilled and the firms are in big trouble.
How do I know this? Iām seeing the same few positions from multiple ālow-feeā contract houses in my inbox daily. These arenāt contract houses that I will do business with because they are notorious for offering rates that are half of market value. Iāve seen the same gig in Cary, NC, now for about a month, as an example.
My ālegitā contract houses wonāt go near these because they know they canāt staff the positions with reputable, qualified consultants.
We like to say about ourselves that we arenāt non-profit organizations. We bring a skill set that (in my case) took decades to develop and weāre not selling it for less than market. When rates are this low and are offered as all-inclusive (meaning, expenses are paid out of the already low rate), it makes more sense for me to take a minimum wage position locally than to take this consulting position because I wonāt make all that much out of it.
And thatās my barometer. Looking at the rates being offered and the poor choices made by the big six in their negotiations, this market is starting to depress.
And for the record, in my near-quarter century in the business, this will be the third downturn. Iāve survived all of them to date, but one was with a four-month period without work.
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Nothing a Sharpie canāt fix.
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And we know they lie about this stuff.
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Once the spiral downward starts, it is hard to stop. People get worried about their finances, stop going out to eat, put off purchases. The companies and employees affected by those decisions have less money to spend, etc., etc. I hope the suffering this is going to cause makes more people think about how they vote in 2020.
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The famous ākitchen tableā discussions - a point the Dems need to also bring up regularly.
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