At this point in the economic cycle, it’s time to move on from the monthly jobs count — just as we all stopped obsessing a while ago about the unemployment rate (as it moved well below recessionary territory) and began to look at the pace of job growth. The game now, with nearly everybody working, is how long the “good” times will last and exactly how good they’ll get.
And the number that tells you that is the wage number.
...The U.S. has made plenty of bad policy the last two years, but its economy is a $20 trillion, mostly autonomous organism that is in a good part of its cycle. The way you know that is that the wage gains are good — and, as economist Joel Naroff points out, they are likely to keep rising since job gains are averaging more than 180,000 per month even with today’s weak number.
As long as you have solid wage growth, coupled with moderate inflation, you know the relatively good times are likely to get better, at least for a while.
No comments:
Post a Comment