More About Friday's Jobs Report
Friday's jobs report boosted the stock market to record highs (at least they say it was the jobs report - who really knows?). At best, you could find some remarks that tempered the typical happy talk. But I want to point out one small slice of the report for your consideration: average wages.
The report stated that average hourly earnings rose more than inflation. Now how could that not be positive? Answer: if average hours worked declined - which they did.
So, great, I earned a bit more per hour, but I worked fewer hours, resulting in the actual money I earned going down, not up. In fact, the decline in hours was the equivalent of a loss of 500,000 jobs lost.
We previously showed how MSM headlines can deceive. Here's another lesson: you can't take little snippets of data and make too much out of them. To the extent the you can discipline yourself to step back and not react to initial headlines and numbers - that is, gain some perspective - to that extent you'll stand a much better chance of understanding what's really going on. At the very least you won't fall for the rantings of cheerleaders and shills.
To gain additional perspective:
The report stated that average hourly earnings rose more than inflation. Now how could that not be positive? Answer: if average hours worked declined - which they did.
So, great, I earned a bit more per hour, but I worked fewer hours, resulting in the actual money I earned going down, not up. In fact, the decline in hours was the equivalent of a loss of 500,000 jobs lost.
We previously showed how MSM headlines can deceive. Here's another lesson: you can't take little snippets of data and make too much out of them. To the extent the you can discipline yourself to step back and not react to initial headlines and numbers - that is, gain some perspective - to that extent you'll stand a much better chance of understanding what's really going on. At the very least you won't fall for the rantings of cheerleaders and shills.
To gain additional perspective:
If we average the first four months of the year, we find that aggregate hours grew at a 1.2% annual pace, consistent with about 2% growth in gross domestic product.More
That’s not a disaster, but it’s a long way from being strong.
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