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发表于 2011-7-8 10:56 AM
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More on the Employment Report - Economic Activity Implications
7/8/2011 10:11 AM EDT
What is of particular concern is the wages and hours component of the report. We see that the workweek edged down for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased by 0.1 hours to 34.3 hours in June. The manufacturing workweek for all employees decreased by 0.3 hours to 40.3 hours over the month; factory overtime edged down by 0.1 hour to 3.1 hours.
There's another measure of aggregate hours worked in the report, which is an index where the year 2007 (just before the recession began) equals "100." In the past month, the measure fell from 93.9 to 93.6, so that means aggregate hours are still 6.4% less than when the recession began. Since the measure of aggregate hours fell by 0.3 points in the last month, that means that economic activity during June may have declined - unless it was compensated for by rising productivity. We don't have the productivity stats yet, but falling aggregate hours worked may suggest a decline in broad-based activity. Also, companies add hours to existing staff before bodies, so the drop in hours doesn't bode well for future employment gains.
Then there are falling wages. When you couple the lower hours worked with wages that fell by 1 cent per hour for all employees, you get weekly pay that fell by -0.33% in nominal terms. We don't have June CPI data yet (that will come next week), but it's safe to assume that real weekly pay fell by an even larger amount, which can serve to depress consumer spending, unless consumers save less, which is not a healthy sign. We may get some relief from falling gas prices, though. |
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狗仔卡
发表于 2011-7-8 10:45 AM
Hopefully we will still remember it one and half year later 