Failure To Launch

The popular belief that the U.S. economy has been steadily recovering has endured months of disappointing data without losing much of its appeal. A deep bench of excuses, ranging from the weather to the Chinese economy, has been called on to justify why the economy hasn’t built up any noticeable steam, and why the Fed has failed to move rates off zero, where they have been for seven years. But the downright dismal September jobs report that was released last Friday may prove to be the flashing red beacon that even the most skilled apologists can’t explain away. The report should make it abundantly clear that we are far closer to recession than recovery. But old notions die hard and, shockingly, most economists still believe that we have hit a temporary speed bump not a brick wall. But at some point healthy hope turns into dangerous delusion. We may have just turned that corner.

The report was horrific any way you slice it. The consensus of economists had expected to see 203,000 new jobs in September, not a particularly impressive number, but at least it would have been an improvement from the 173,000 new jobs that were added in August. Not only did September miss substantially, at just 142,000 jobs, but August was revised down to 136,000 (Bureau of Labor Statistics) (there were economists who had even expected August to be revised up to as high 247,000). This means that the last three months have averaged just 167,000 jobs, a level that is not even close to where we should have been in a real recovery. But it gets worse from there.

The labor force participation rate got even lower still, dropping from 62.6% of working age adults, to just 62.4%, a near-40 year low. In September, another 579,000 potential workers gave up looking for jobs altogether and simply left the labor force. This figure dwarfs the 142,000 people that actually found jobs. Those lucky enough to still be working saw no increase in their hourly wages (the consensus had expected a .2% increase) and their average workweek ticked down from 34.6 hours to 34.5. In short, in September, fewer Americans worked, and those who did had fewer hours and lower pay. This is not supposed to be what a recovery looks like.