By many metrics, the US economy is humming along. The jobs market is robust; consumers are spending again; and inflation has eased to a three-year low.
There’s always layoffs going on to some extent, overall the labor market has been great though. Unemployment has been consistently low, something like 14 million new jobs have been added over the past few years. The tight labor market has been pushing up the median wage, which is exactly what you want to see. We’re basically at full employment and people are finally starting to see real wage growth that beats inflation. The layoffs recently get disproportionate media coverage because of who they impact (and for political reasons) rather their overall economic significance.
“Jobs” might be the worst metric to look at overall. How many of those jobs are part-time? How many of those jobs include health insurance? How many of those jobs pay a living wage? How many people have to have two or more of those jobs out of necessity?
Hell, how many of those “jobs” are listings that companies never intend to fill? I’ve seen countless listings for high qualification jobs offering poverty wages with no benefits.
The way they calculate the unemployment number makes that metric even worse. If everyone looking for a job gave up the unemployment rate would fall to 0, because it only counts people who are looking for work.
There’s always layoffs going on to some extent, overall the labor market has been great though. Unemployment has been consistently low, something like 14 million new jobs have been added over the past few years. The tight labor market has been pushing up the median wage, which is exactly what you want to see. We’re basically at full employment and people are finally starting to see real wage growth that beats inflation. The layoffs recently get disproportionate media coverage because of who they impact (and for political reasons) rather their overall economic significance.
“Jobs” might be the worst metric to look at overall. How many of those jobs are part-time? How many of those jobs include health insurance? How many of those jobs pay a living wage? How many people have to have two or more of those jobs out of necessity?
Hell, how many of those “jobs” are listings that companies never intend to fill? I’ve seen countless listings for high qualification jobs offering poverty wages with no benefits.
The way they calculate the unemployment number makes that metric even worse. If everyone looking for a job gave up the unemployment rate would fall to 0, because it only counts people who are looking for work.