Unemployment

Here is an observation. The last couple of years show some interesting similarities to the period ending in early 2005. The reason for such a comparison is that then, just as now the Fed began to gradually exit its highly accommodative…

Right now, US jobless claims are very low by recent historical standards. I believe this represents a peak for growth in this business cycle. But there are almost certainly seasonal adjustment problems with this data series. Despite…

Despite all the talk of recovery in Europe, the data suggest that the improvement in Europe is uneven at best now. The core has moved into a cyclical upturn but a lot of work remains in places like Italy and Greece. Today's data points…

The recent IMF proposals to help stimulate growth and job creation in Spain at least deserve serious consideration. What the IMF are saying is that if you leave the situation as it is then growth will not be sufficient to make any…

What follows is an interview I did over the summer with the Madrid based publication The Local.

Both Bill Gross of PIMCO and Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs do not believe the weak jobs report will be enough to cause the Fed to call off its tapering of large scale asset purchases.

The U.S. Job Situation Summary was released this morning at 830EDT and the headline number of 169,000 jobs added to non-farm payrolls was just below consensus. Moreover, the unemployment rate dipped to 7.3%. Nonetheless, the reaction to the…

Yves Smith argues that the US equity markets have come to play an outsized role in the US from a policy and practical level. And she warns that it is never a good idea to try to assess complex phenomena with a single metric.

What if automation means that what capitalists really want is a very small, highly skilled workforce to control the robots that do all the work? What if paying people enough to live on simply is not cost-effective compared to the running…