Somebody is hiring as unemployment across all ethnic groups and sexes (real and self-identified) is at historical lows?
Dow 30,000
- Thread starter RonBurgundy
- Start date
Somebody is hiring as unemployment across all ethnic groups and sexes (real and self-identified) is at historical lows?
I work with lots and lots of former Enron sub folks... Some of my energy industry friends were 100% invested in Enron stock only because they were making money!
It's hard to resist the allure of easy money and likely every one of us has over-played our market hand (tech stocks, bitcoin, no diversification, etc...) but there ain't NOTHING wrong with slow and steady returns while others mortgage their houses to buy the next big thing.
Fundamentals work but I think we all agree market forces and the faceless entities behind the curtains of algorhithms are spooky.
Mine too and I'm cashing out next year! Now the onus is really on me to be responsible and make solid financial choices...
They are considered "retirement" funds, not "let's buy a new boat" funds...
Personal discipline and accountability are still things but to a smaller and smaller segment of the population.
I took a large position in the spray.
I made the same mistake as when I played the pork belly markets. I took physical possession so now I have LOTS of spray (and pig parts) to unload. I will say the spray keeps the pig smell down - some.
The data shows that unemployment is low because many are forced to take a second job to make ends meet. What should be happening with record low unemployment is salaries starting to raise, but so far that has not been happening for the average worker. Employers so far have not done much to change that.
https://www.epi.org/nominal-wage-tracker/
Unemployment is the ratio of people with a job compared to the people in the labor force, which is the sum of people with jobs and those recently looking for one.
https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
Somebody getting a second job has zero relevance to the unemployment rate.
Mary has a job. She is employed.
Mary has a second job. She is still employed.
The unemployment rate change exactly zero.
Less than 5% of workers have more than one job...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620
...which is done from roughly 6% to 6.5% during the 1990s.
So not only is the situation you describe irrelevant to the formal calculation of the unemployment rate, which is not affected by multiple jobholders, it is actually a pretty rare situation. "So many" means roughly 1/20 workers, a number that has declined over time.
Your second point about wages being slow to recover since the Great Recession has much more merit to it, but it is a non-sequitur of a point relative to your first one.
No one is saying they are not, but for a 45 year old guy with a half million in his 401K to think that the money or more will be there when he can draw it out at 59.5 is silly. It might be, but it might not. A lot of people I know lost hundreds of thousands in the last market crash, and this bull market cannot go on forever.
With a defined benefit package I know the amount I will getting per month, depending upon which plan I chose to take. Less risk, with more security, now it might be less than a 401K plan, but we will not know.
I know lots of people drawing IPERS, I know of none complaining about it. Hell, many are making more than when they worked when they combine it with SS.
Great graphs, but then why are salaries not increasing? Saw some data last week that said wages increased 6 cents for the last quarter.
If employed people are at record low numbers, than either fewer workers are needed, or the data is really not that relevant.
We have to stop looking at the percent of people with jobs, and study more what those jobs are paying. Especially in times of record employment.
What I have heard is the reason that wages haven't been increasing is because productivity is stagnant. If employers aren't getting any more for that increase, they either leave wages where they are or they raise them and raise the cost of their product - that drives inflation and results in no real increase in the buying power of the worker.
Can you give an example of a broad based mutual fund or index that lost money over a 14.5 year time period like you are suggesting?
I will take your failure to address my refutation of your prior point about "everybody has to work 2-3 jobs to keep their head above water" as an admission it is not factual.
I think your critique of why wages have been slow to recover despite the supposed tightness of the labor market, as measured by the U-3 "headline" unemployment rate, is a fair one. But the labor market has very few "double-dippers" or "triple-dippers."
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RTFPNAUSA632NRUG
You can see a "kink" around 2005. it was growing decently in the 1980s and the 1990s but has since slowed down. Seems the Internet has not been as useful for enhancing productivity as were previous rounds of industrial technology, starting with the steam engine and up through electricity. We were promised flying cars and got Twitter instead.
Wage growth and productivity growth are heavily correlated in the long-term.
The reason is simple, for the past 40 years we have been working under the false economic theory of trickle down economics. Factories sell less, because wages for the average working have not been increasing. Therefore they are forced to cut back on their purchases.
It does very little for the economy as a whole to give most of the profits to those at the top end of the spectrum. They spend a smaller share of those profits than a working man does, buying goods and services.
You want to see factories start selling more goods and increase production, you do it by raising the minimum wage, giving tax cuts to the people in the middle and bottom, not at the top.
I think another reason for low wage growth is healthcare. This chart does a great job of describing the current job market. Openings (yellow) are still at record highs. Quits (blue) are moving up, but not at a rapid pace given the amount of job openings. I think a lot of workers would like to pursue a higher wage job and quit, but don't want to hassle with changes in healthcare resulting from job changes unless the pay increase is significant.
Healthcare portability would be a great problem to solve.
Healthcare portability would be a great problem to solve.
Did you not comprehend my question? I asked for an example of a 14.5 year period where a major index lost money. It looks like the Dow topped out in 07 at about 14,000, crashed, and recovered back to 14,000 in 2013. We are currently 12 year out from the crash and if you had put money in at the high right before the crash, you would have almost doubled it by today.
Like they say, the only people that get hurt on a rollercoaster are the ones who jump off.
