{"id":28720,"date":"2017-12-10T10:09:02","date_gmt":"2017-12-10T15:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28720"},"modified":"2017-12-10T10:09:02","modified_gmt":"2017-12-10T15:09:02","slug":"peak-fantasy-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28720","title":{"rendered":"Peak Fantasy Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peak Fantasy Time<\/a><\/h3>\n
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If you want to know why both Wall Street and Washington are so delusional about America’s\u00a0baleful economic predicament, just consider this morsel from today’s\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/strong> <\/em>on the purportedly\u00a0awesome November jobs report.<\/p>\n

Wages rose just 2.5% from a year earlier in November\u2014near the same lackluster<\/strong> pace maintained since late 2015, despite a much lower unemployment rate. But in a positive sign<\/strong>for Americans\u2019 incomes, the average work week increased by about 6 minutes<\/strong> to 34.5 hours in November…. November marked the 86th straight month employers added to payrolls.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whoopee!<\/p>\n

Six <\/strong>whole minutes<\/strong> <\/em>added to a work week that has been shrinking for decades owing to\u00a0the relentlessly\u00a0deteriorating\u00a0quality mix of the\u00a0“jobs” counted by the BLS\u00a0establishment survey. In fact, even by that dubious measure, the work week is still shorter than it was at the December 2007 pre-crisis peak (33.8) and well below its 2000 peak level.<\/p>\n

The reason isn’t hard to figure: The US economy is generating fewer and fewer goods producing jobs where the work week averages 40.5 hours<\/strong> <\/em>and\u00a0weekly pay equates to $58,400<\/strong> <\/em>annually\u00a0and far more\u00a0bar, hotel and restaurant jobs, where the work week\u00a0averages just\u00a026.1 hours<\/strong> <\/em>and weekly pay equates to only\u00a0$21,000<\/strong> annually.<\/p>\n

In other words, the ballyh0oed headline averages are essentially meaningless noise because the BLS counts all jobs equal—-that is, a 10-hour per week gig at the minimum\u00a0wage at\u00a0McDonald’s weighs the same as a 45 hour per week (with overtime) job at the Caterpillar plant in Peoria that pays $80,000 annually in wages and benefits.<\/p>\n

When the line is trending inexorably from the upper left to the lower right,\u00a0of course, it means there are more of the former and fewer of the latter. Six more minutes of continuing worse—-is still bad.<\/div>\n
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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peak Fantasy Time If you want to know why both Wall Street and Washington are so delusional about America’s\u00a0baleful economic predicament, just consider this morsel from today’s\u00a0Wall Street Journal on the purportedly\u00a0awesome November jobs report. Wages rose just 2.5% from a year earlier in November\u2014near the same lackluster pace maintained since late 2015, despite a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3598,2120,827,860,861,865],"class_list":["post-28720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-contra-corner","tag-david-stockman","tag-united-states","tag-wall-street","tag-wall-street-journal","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28721,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28720\/revisions\/28721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}