No, hyperinflation and, in fact, high inflation, ain't coming, yet. But the concerns with both are rising...
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No, hyperinflation and, in fact, high inflation, ain't coming, yet. But the concerns with both are rising...
Given a lot of noise about economic re-opening and abatement of the late 2020 wave of the pandemic, we expected BRIC countries PMIs to improve significantly in 1Q 2021 compared to 4Q 2020. Alas, the opposite took place:
In a recent article for The Currency, I covered the topic of the forthcoming wave of financial repression, as Governments worldwide pursue non-conventional fiscal tightening in years to come: Make no mistake, financial repression is coming in the US: https://thecurrency.news/articles/36547/make-no-mistake-financial-repression-is-coming-in-the-us/.
My recent article for The Currency covering the ongoing global developments in entrepreneurship: The US is experiencing an entrepreneurship boom. So, what is going wrong in Ireland?: https://thecurrency.news/articles/40790/the-us-is-experiencing-an-entrepreneurship-boom-so-what-is-going-wrong-in-ireland/
Now, the last of the series of posts on U.S. labor markets, concluding with America's Scariest Chart, plotting the index of employment (jobs) in the U.S. based on each recession-recovery cycle:
Despite some positive headline numbers on some labor market metrics, jobs creation in the U.S. is not progressing well-enough to claim any end in sight for the Covid19-induced recession. Current reading for jobs index, relative to pre-recession highs is woeful. So woeful, today's state of U.S. markets ranks as the second worst jobs recession in modern history, so far, worse than the Great Recession.
Good news is that in March, pace of recovery accelerated from a major slowdown experienced in the first two months of 2021. The bad news is, unless this pace is sustained, we are risking a scenario where unprecedented policy (fiscal and monetary) supports unleashed since the start of 2Q 2020 will be associated with a jobs recovery that is second-third worst in the modern history of U.S. recessions. Time will tell.
Note:
One of the America's Scariest Charts - a long-term running issue I have been highlighting for a number of years now - is roaring back to prominence as Covid19 pandemic crisis continues to impact U.S. labor markets across virtually all possible metrics of health.
Here it is: the average duration of unemployment spells:
Based on the average duration of unemployment, we are now (in the Covid19 pandemic recession) are tracking the worst recession on record: the Great Recession. Weeks ahead will tell us, if indeed this will be a new record-breaking recession, beating the length of average unemployment spell established in the Great Recession. But for now, with all the recovery going around, the unemployed are becoming longer and longer-term unemployed.
Not exactly a picture of robust health being restored in the U.S. labor markets.
Continuing with the coverage of core statistics for the U.S. labor markets performance. This post covers new unemployment claims through March 20, 2021, with the last two weeks of data being preliminary estimates.
In the week through March 20, 2021, new unemployment claims fell to 656,789, or four weeks running total of 2,892,799 dipping below the peak of the Great Recession levels of 4 weeks total of 3,313,000. This is the good news.
The bad news is that latest reading would rank 58th worst in the history of the weekly series, if we are to exclude the Covid19 period. Another part of the bad news is that last week's weekly rate of decline of 100,412, the fastest rate of decline in four weeks, is actually slower than average weekly rate of decline for the pandemic period.
Things are improving. But they are improving at less than impressive rates.
Note:
In the first part of the series of updates on the U.S. labor markets, I covered continued unemployment claims (https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/04/2421-us-continued-unemployment-claims.html), followed by the second post covering labor force participation and employment-to-population ratio (https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/04/2421-us-labor-force-participation-and.html).
Now, consider total non-farm payrolls - a measure of jobs present in the economy:
Total non-farm payrolls rose in march 2021 to 143,400,000, up on 142,077,000 in February. However, the increase still leaves the payrolls 9,777,000 short of the pre-Covid19 highs. The rate of jobs addition rose in March to 1,323,000 from February growth rate of 1,097,000. Combined jobs expansions of February and March, however, are not sufficient to cover the jobs losses of 2,622,000 sustained in January 2021. Average monthly jobs recovery during the pandemic period is 1,195,000, which means that it will take ca 8 months at the average rate of jobs creation for the economy to regain its pre-Covid19 highs in jobs numbers.
In the previous post, I covered U.S. continued unemployment claims: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/04/2421-us-continued-unemployment-claims.html, noting that decreases in unemployment counts are, in part, driven by workers dropping off unemployment rolls due to exits from the workforce and/or expirations of unemployment benefits. Here is the data on U.S. labor force participation rates and employment to population ratio through March 2021:
Things are still ugly when it comes to these two measures of labor markets health in the U.S:
Continued weekly unemployment claims fell in the week of March 20 to their lowest Covid19 pandemic period point of 3,794,000 (seasonally adjusted). The decline in the unemployment claims driven by a combination of:
Sweden continues to perform poorly compared to peer countries, irrespective of how one defines Nordic countries as a group:
US vs EU27 comparatives in the pandemic dynamics through the week 12 of 2021 are showing continued, albeit declining improvement in the relative position of the US. That said, much of the improvement is down to lags in new waves development, with the EU27 now firmly in its Wave 3 and the U.S. potentially entering Wave 4.
Is American public health system fit for purpose? Anyone?