Ed Huntress wrote:


Until around 1978, we never had as high a percentage of the adult population
working as we have today:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2...EMRATIO?cid=12

Women became a larger part of the workforce


If you look at the high employment rate (64.6%)
of the year 2000 as the norm
Then current employment (58.4)
is down about 10% from the norm

But the bottom lone is consumers are not buying
which means businesses are not selling and
therefore won't be
hiring until they have some better prospects
of selling more of their goods and services




So what do these recently high "unemployment" numbers mean? It's an
interesting question, but it's curious that the historically unprecedented
percentage of adults who have been employed in recent years parallels that
giant sucking sound of wealth and incomes to a minute slice of population at
the top of the economic heap.

So current low employment would mean the opposite?
I.E. not so much money being made by that top tier

The middle class may not be accumulating wealth
in the form of consumer goods
But they are also not accumulating debt
And the federal deficit is where the money is going
It's not going to the top earners.

Of course you take away the federal deficit
and you have a full blown depression

I suppose if you have invested your life savings
into over-priced gold and guns and ammo
you want a depression to avoid looking silly



In other words, the high percentage could prove to be a structurally
unsustainable ratio, one which didn't appear until a severe recession took
the gas out of an employment bubble.

No evidence that is true

what was unsustainable is the level of consumption
that produced that high level of employment
And that was unsustainable because it was financed
by private debt which can't go up forever

the over-valued dollar is what creates the necessity that
somebody has to go into debt if your net national exports
are -$0.5 trillion a year
The private sector went deep into debt in the last 30 years
to finance the consumption and growth and the trade deficit

But that is done now
they aint gonna do it anymore

So now what?

-jim





Maybe. It would take a lot of work to analyze it.

--
Ed Huntress