Sorry for this late post
Gary Becker
The April US employment report gave mixed signals. The good news is that employment grew by 300,000, and the employment gain in March was revised upwards from 160,00 to 230,000. But in seeming contradiction, the unemployment rate also rose by two percentage points, from 9.7% to 9.9%. Which of these figures gives a better indication of the speed and breadth of the American recovery from a deep recession?
The employment figures are consistent with the solid growth of 3.2% in real GDP during the first quarter of 2010. Economists trust employment data more than unemployment datat since the latter is subjective, as unemployment figures depend on how many persons are actively looking for work. The unemployment rate excludes men and women who lost their jobs but have given up finding new ones. It also excludes potential new entrants to the labor market who would like to be employed, but are not actively looking for work since they do not expect to find anything. Such an explanation of the difference in the change in employment and the change in unemployment would suggest that the underemployment rate fell since the measure of underemployment includes people whose hours have been reduced, or who are working part-time because they cannot find full time work. Yet contrary to these expectations, the reported underemployment rate also increased, from 16.9% to 17.1%.
In most other respects, the anatomy of unemployment has been no different during this recession than other severe recessions. Most of the unemployed are young and have limited education and other skills. Long term unemployment-those unemployed more than 6 months- now accounts for almost half the unemployed, up from 40% in February of this year, and from 22% in February of 2009. As is typical during serious recessions, long-term unemployment grew a lot as the recession became more severe and prolonged. The fraction of the unemployed who are long term unemployed usually rises even after a recovery begins since the unemployed who have not been able to find jobs for many months are among the least likely to find employment during the early stages of a recovery.
Employment has been growing more slowly than is typical during this recovery. Usually, an economy recovers faster after severe recessions than after mild recessions because greater pent up demand by consumers and investors accumulates during severe recessions. For example, the recovery was very strong in 1983 after a prolonged recession when unemployment peaked at 10.8% in December of 1982, higher than the peak unemployment rate of 10.2 in October 2009. The recovery was even sharp during the Great Depression years of 1934-36 until a second severe dip began in 1937.
GDP grew sharply not only during the first quarter of this year, but even more rapid at 5.6% during the last quarter of 2009, and decently at 2.2% during the third quarter of 2009. So GDP is growing at reasonably good rates, although it is not booming. GDP grew, for example, considerably faster during the all the quarters of 1983 after the severe recession that peaked in December 1982. The difference between the much faster rates of growth in GDP than in employment during much of the Great Recession, and so far during the recovery period, is the result of the continuing improvement in labor productivity, measured by output per employee or per hour worked.
The typical pattern during most recessions is for measured labor productivity to fall as good employees are kept on even though they do not have much to do, and as fixed capital is underutilized. Yet productivity continued to grow during most of this past recession. A common explanation for this improvement in productivity is that businesses tried to squeeze more out of their employees and capital because times were bad. However, times are bad during all serious recessions, yet measured productivity usually falls. The EU has had a more serious recession in GDP than did the US, yet EU countries followed the typical patter with reductions in labor productivity during the recession.
This growth in labor productivity during the recession of 2007-09 suggests that unemployment may fall more slowly than is typical after a severe recession because growth in GDP will be achieved in good part through further improvements in labor productivity. Why the recovery in employment and in unemployment has been relatively slow, given the severity of the recession, is not completely clear, but I believe one factor is the uncertainty about the policies that Congress and President Obama are impatient to implement.
Among the issues of concern to businessare how severe will be the new regulations of the financial sector? Will taxes be raised on individuals with higher incomes and corporations? Will a stiff carbon tax be introduced? Will trade unions be encouraged? Will the Justice Department adopt a new approach to anti-trust policy that is less pro consumer and more pro competitors of successful businesses? Will caps and other restrictions on the pay of top executives be continued and expanded? Members of Congress and persons close to President Obama have discussed these and other possible policies that may have discouraged many businesses from rapidly increasing employment and investments in capital.
To be sure, other uncertainties are likely also affecting business hiring, such as whether the EU will experience a double dip because of its sovereign debt crisis, or whether China will have to cut back because of excessive inflation and structural defects. But the US government does not control most of these other uncertainties. It does control its own policies, and they should be pro a private enterprise competitive economy rather than anti big and small business, and pro big unions.
"...and they should be pro a private enterprise competitive economy rather than anti big and small business, and pro big unions" I take to mean "should be pro a private enterprise competitive economy and all business, but anti big unions."
Posted by: Jimbino | 05/11/2010 at 03:14 PM
Could we please use a more appropriate term for governments shooting themnselves in both economic feet other than "soverign debt crisis" as if government's profligicy is akin to some natural disaster like a flood or tornado. Please?
Posted by: Jim | 05/11/2010 at 06:15 PM
Prof Becker? "In most other respects, the anatomy of unemployment has been no different during this recession than other severe recessions."
Like housing off from 2.5 million starts to half a million? And all related industries from wood and cement to appliances and furniture? It will be a good while before housing even comes back to the replacement plus population growth rates of perhaps 700,000 starts.
"Yet contrary to these expectations, the reported underemployment rate also increased, from 16.9% to 17.1%."
....... and:
"In most other respects, the anatomy of unemployment has been no different during this recession than other severe recessions. Most of the unemployed are young and have limited education and other skills. Long term unemployment-those unemployed more than 6 months- now accounts for almost half the unemployed, up from 40% in February of this year, and from 22% in February of 2009."
.......... not good news with another cohort of "young" joining the prospective work force next month with perhaps 25% college grads and the others HS or sadly drop outs. What to do? Send the HS or less back to school? WPA projects? or wait for wandering street gangs to expand?
Jim: Take heart! Government profligicy declined as a percentage of GDP doing the Clinton years and even during the Bush admin spendathon the ratios didn't get much higher until the melt down.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html
But! the ratios aren't likely to improve while 17% are un or under-employed.
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Posted by: Pariuri | 05/13/2010 at 02:26 PM
This is a very difficult issue. Of course, the economy is so complex that we do not know exactly what is going on throughout the millions of players and the web of their relationships. But we do know in general that when there is large-scale unemployment, we should expect to see movements made within months from less profitable and less sustainable businesses and entire sectors of the economy to more profitable ones. Market mechanisms should induce market players to move toward a new equilibrium of supply and demand for labor. When we do not see these shifts made within a year or so, then there is good reason to believe that some distortion in the regime of relative prices is distorting this corrective process.
There is no escape from the adjustment process brought on by the over-expansion of credit in recent years that was followed by the corresponding contraction in credit in 2008 since the original expansion was not adequately funded by savings. So, workers who were caught in-between in sectors of the economy that could not be sustained with sufficient capital when the supply of credit tightened were displaced. The outstanding question is since credit now seems to be expanding, why have the unemployed and underemployed not found comparable employment? Incidentally, the countervailing trends in these statistics should give us pause to consider their accuracy and how informative they really are.
I am not sure about the underlying reason for the relatively slow recovery. I suspect part of the story has to do with the analysis presented by Professor Becker focusing on the uncertain expectations of business due to the enormous deficits, questions about future crowding out, questions about future rises in taxes or new ones such as the VAT, questions about additional expensive employer mandates such as those that might fund the new health care legislation, new and unclear regulations introduced by the Obama Administration in recent months. Anytime the government makes it more expensive or troublesome to hire additional workers, then there will be fewer hired.
We could also be witnessing an application of a version of Rational Expectations Theory. Entrepreneurs might be leery about new investments and new hires as they could entertain doubts about the sustainability of the surge of credit that has become available to counter the recession. They might have caught on to the false signals being sent out by the Fed with their incredibly low interest rate that too closely resembles the policy Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan pursued following the dotcom bubble bursting about ten years ago that set us up for the current recession.
Posted by: Chris Graves | 05/15/2010 at 03:34 AM
Chris: "I am not sure about the underlying reason for the relatively slow recovery."
............... Housing.
"focusing on the uncertain expectations of business"
.............. Yep, kinda risky lending on what may well be still declining prices for homes and commercial buildings with soaring vacancy rates and especially so when they can borrow at half a percent through the Fed and lend at 3% on Treasuries that are in plentiful supply.
"Market mechanisms should induce market players to move toward a new equilibrium of supply and demand for labor. When we do not see these shifts made within a year or so, then there is good reason to believe that some distortion in the regime of relative prices is distorting this corrective process."
............... Agreed, those better off have a home, perhaps more than one, and much of what they need, while those unemployed, poor, or afraid are not buying homes or much else. A demand limited economy. Perhaps it will beat down wages even further, but! to what end? that the lower ranks become even more dependent on taxpayer subsidies? while other eke out a "living" with next to nothing to spend beyond the immediate basics causing further contraction?
Posted by: Jack | 05/15/2010 at 04:20 AM
Jack, the fall in the price of housing is part of the adjustment process. House prices had been artificially inflated.
Further, the issue is not stimulating aggregate demand but providing a stable legal and monetary background for sustainable capital, investment, and production to emerge. Over time, these factors will produce more jobs and opportunities for people that will last.
Posted by: Chris Graves | 05/15/2010 at 07:32 PM
Chris: While the fall in home prices has had the contractionary effect of disappearing trillions in capital Americans and even others around the world had just a few years ago, in terms of stubborn unemployment, that's not the main, or most direct point. That direct effect is that of the jobs lost as some 2 million homes per year are not begin built by comparison to 2006.
In my above post I left out the negative effect on banking. Consider: Gone are 2 million "loan origination" fees that are typically one percent of those millions of homes times a median sale price above $200,000. Gone too are title insurance fees, credit report costs, a host of "junk" fees, and sales commissions. On top of all else it IS going to be a LOT harder to shovel loans out the door under something akin to responsible underwriting standards than it was when a totally corrupted system was ladling them out to all comers.
As for "not stimulating aggregate demand", in this mess it had better be about ginning up true demand backed by dollars in the wallet while we make the transition from relying on housing and said housing helping the "financial sector" "earn?" 30% of all profits earned in the US.
Lastly, during a decade or so of an increasingly corrupted private sector "creating capital" at a fierce rate based on the sloppiest underwriting the world has ever seen bearing no relationship to a viable income stream, were you as "concerned" about "stable and legal monetary" policies? Including those of collecting nearly as much in tax revenues as was spent?
Posted by: Jack | 05/15/2010 at 11:05 PM
Jack, I am not sure that I disagree with anything you have just said. As I said above, naturally the housing market should shrink some because it was affected by overinvestment as a bubble resulted from Fed policy and irresonsible lenders encouraged by Federal law and policy. So, I agree that the Fed along with prominent financial institutions created the housing bubble-- I think that is what you are saying here. That is what I was saying above. The "created" capital you refer to is exactly what I am critical of.
So, yes, I object to a reckless financial sector spurred on by the inflationary monetary policy that the Fed followed under Alan Greenspan and has continued under Ben Bernanke. To be honest, I did not realize at the time that Greenspan's policy was as inflationary as it turned out to be since I, like Greenspan, focused exclusively on the general price level to identify the rise of inflation ignoring how lowering the interest rate so dramatically was affecting changes in relative prices. Now, I have learned better, but it does not appear that Chairman Bernanke has.
As I have said before in related discussions, I am in favor of a monetary rule, a return to something like Glass-Steagall, and some limits on or regulation of financial derivatives. The key to further problems such as we are suffering through is to avoid the set-up for a bust by not inflating the economy to begin with.
Posted by: Chris Graves | 05/16/2010 at 04:39 AM
Chris: Some do like to claim that low Fed rates were a major cause of the massive distortion of the housing biz but I am not aligned with them. First, were low Fed rates the problem we'd see far more evidence of bad investments throughout the economy.
No, we could have done very nicely with low mortgage rates, as was the case during the post-WWII housing boom of the 50's HAD we similarly responsible underwriting, banks retaining at least some of the loans they made in house, non-banks NOT gambling at 30 times somewhat fictional assets, and "rating agencies" not selling off reputations built over a century to the highest bidder. Nope.... the Fed's sins if any were venial by comparison to those of the ENTIRE WS establishment we've seen implode into rubble to be bailed out by taxpayers already lip-deep in the tidal wave of the impacts meted out to them by a sector gone completely mad with greed not the least leavened by ethical considerations or accountability to their stockholders or those whose capital they were drunkenly flinging about.
Or? turn it around? The very same scheme could have been propagated at higher rates of interest, and especially so as so many of the players had no intention of paying the interest for very long, or in all too many cases, at all.
Gspn "inflationay policies?" While there's not much of a long term trend to go by due to the anomalies of going off the gold std (devaluing) and the related "oil shock" it looks as though the Gspn era is one of very modest inflation, a much lower rate than one would expect considering the very low rates of unemployment during the 90's.
Further, "inflation fighting" is a very different game since an "overheated" economy can reach out for a nearly infinite supply of labor throughout the world. You'll note no real gains in purchasing power being made by working folk despite a doubling of per capita productive during the entire era.
http://www.miseryindex.us/irbyyear.asp
Well, complete agreement on GS! Instead of launching what was the baby in the 30's with the bathwater as Phil Gramm did at the behest of lobbyists who provided him with a VERY tidy post senatorial sinecure, it would have indeed been wise to have held many meeting with long debate as to how to modernize GS for a more international world.
And............. ahh yes! Regulation! Does it seem the world needs more than say three? five at the most, standardized credit card contracts with a clearly written, single page of obligations? The ER seems WELL ahead of us on this.
Mortgages: There are reasons in a small minority of cases for mortgages other than a 15 or 30 year amortization requiring some "skin in the game" but both interest only, or yet worse, negative amort, or teaser rates followed by hefty jump-ups unrelated to indexes, really ought to be limited to those who can demonstrate a market sophistication and documented means of handling them.
As for "not inflating the economy" other than cost push of oil and other imported resources seeming to go up as the dollar, necessarily, declines, I suspect that creating inflation is about as likely as making a roaring campfire out of rotted and water-logged firewood. Let's set the time to "worry" about inflation when the under and unemployed rate drops (miraculously?) to 10 percent and the "official" rate approaches 5%. In other words enjoy the summer, along with five or so more before beginning to wear out your inflation worry beads.
Posted by: Jack | 05/16/2010 at 05:03 PM
Meant "EU seems well ahead" on CC regulations and customs
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