‘Soft Landing’ Hopes Electrocuted By Million-Volt JOLTS Beat
Crucial labor market data released a day ahead of the Fed's November policy meeting suggested no additional progress on the road to resolving a record mismatch between worker demand and supply.
Job openings rose 437,000 to 10.717 million on the last business day of September (figure below), the BLS said Tuesday. Economists expected a decline.
Between the upside surprise and expectations for another monthly drop, the headline JOLTS print was almost one million more than consensus. It was a mill
I suppose it depends upon your definition of soft landing. As long as most everyone that wants a job can find one, the “consumer” should remain strong and a recession if it happens will be mild.
Or the JOLTS data could indicate a massive skills mis-match….
If everybody who has a job is confident they can quit and find a new one that pays more, they’ll keep quitting and keep getting paid more. If that allows corporates to keep raising prices to consumers, it’s a never-ending exercise in tail-chasing. People will keep quitting to chase higher wages to pay for more expensive goods, and the companies who are hiring them at ever higher comp costs will keep raising prices to consumers to avoid eating it on the bottom line and irritating shareholders.
Shareholders and labor are at odds with one another. Also in tandem.
Higher interest rates are only going to help create inflation. And as odd as it seems it may be part of the problem at this point.
Raising various taxes may be the only thing to slow it down at this point.
Step-down? With the economy heating up? Not likely.
The US can not implement reasonable immigration policy fast enough.
We are entering the Millennial peak spending and earning years. Slowing the economy with counter cyclical policy can only end badly. If the Fed destroys employment and demand, it will just result in a pent up rally and expansion afterwards. The only way, THE ONLY WAY, fix the unemployment mismatch is to find 10 million immigrants and give them work visas. Start with amnesty for those already here, which is several million, but most are working already illegally, so this just makes them legal and paying taxes. Then beef up immigration resources and allow another several million in on work visas with priority to those with kids who can be labor fuel in 10-15 years. Biggest problem is xenophobia, let’s hope we can get a little over that.
I am in 100% agreement.
It is interesting to watch Corporate America work around this issue.
Fast food restaurants quickly moving to food ordering/payment on a screen.
Grocery stores and big box retailers are ripping out flooring and polishing the concrete so that a robot can clean floors at night.
We probably don’t need 10 million immigrants- but we need a lot, for sure.