How tight is the labor market? Let's look at four different ways to assess it: prime age employment rate, the unemployment rate, unemployed per job opening, and the quits rate. This figure scales them all to be comparable using data from roughly two decades prior to the pandemic.
All of them are tighter than they were, on average, in the roughly two decades before the pandemic. Do not, however, confuse that with maximum employment--the economy was almost certainly below maximum employment, on average, over that period.
The quits rate is off-the-charts tight: it is 4 standard deviations tighter than it was pre-pandemic. That is huge. And it matters because the quits rate is as good or better a predictor of both prices and wages than any of these other variables. piie.com/blogs/realtime…
Interestingly the unemployment rate & unemployed-to-job openings are now telling the same story. Very different from earlier this yr. Look at the same chart through April--back then people looking at UR saw a slack labor market but people looking at U/V saw a loose one.
Finally, the prime-age employment rate has improved dramatically this past year but it still lags the other indicators by a sizable margin reflecting the lackluster recovery of labor force participation. It is only 0.6 standard deviations tighter than it's pre-COVID average.
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My talk: "Why Did (Almost) Nobody See It Coming and What Does That Mean for What’s Next?" from an ASSA inflation session w/ @JonSteinsson@GagnonMacro@jhausma1.
"Why did nobody see it coming" was stolen from the Queen's question after the financial crisis.
In some ways it is less important since inflation is much less bad than the global financial crisis.
In other ways it is more important: inflation *should* be more predictable.
I think we know (almost) everyone missed it. More than a third of the way through the yr private-sector forecasters thought 2.3% and put the odds of 4%+ at 0.5% (it ended up 4.5%). FOMC just as bad. And TIPS breakevens missed the CPI by even more than either of them.
The economy added 6.4 million jobs in 2021, a 4.5 percent increase in jobs. that makes 2021 the seventh fastest year for job creation since the aftermath of World War II.
The unemployment rose very rapidly in March & April 2020 but then it has fallen rapidly ever since. Cumulatively the unemployment rate was 6.5 point-years above it's pre-recession value. That is about typical for postwar recessions and much better than the financial crisis.
Although we are not fully recovered economically, with the unemployment rate at 3.9% it is now a decent time to take stock at how the COVID recession and its aftermath compares to previous recessions. The answer: the cumulative increase in unemployment was pretty typical.
The unemployment rate rose sharply to 14.8% in April 2020 (higher if you count misclassified workers). But then it started falling sharply the next month. Adding up all of the cumulative increase relative to its pre-recession value it is 6.5 point-years of elevated unemployment.
That is much less than 20.5 point-years of elevated unemployment following the financial crisis and roughly typical for post-war recessions like what is generally considered the mild 2001 recession (where unemployment did not rise nearly as high but its elevation lasted longer).
FOMC comes in largely as expected following the much welcome Powell pivot. The dots now set the default of three hikes next year--which is both the likely policy and also reduces the risk of surprising markets. We'll see how Chair Powell sounds in the presser.
I still find it unfathomable that as recently as 2 months ago the median FOMC member forecast core PCE inflation of 3.7% for the year. They already had price data for the first eight months of the year when they made that forecast. Now they're at 4.4%.
Also a pretty large increased in the forecast for inflation in 2022, now is 2.7%. I would still take the over on that but with much less confidence than I've taken the over on their 2021 forecasts.
Russia has had more excess mortality from COVID than almost any other country in the world--more than double the US deaths and vastly greater than the Chinese deaths.
But you wouldn't know it from looking at Russian economic data: GDP back or even above pre-COVID foreacasts.
This shows the limits of the "control the virus to save the economy" thesis--both as a positive theory that predicts economic growth & as a normative recommendation.
Look at the vast differences in *reported* deaths for China and Russia and their economies look roughly the same.
Russia's excess deaths are also well above their officially reported numbers too and second only to Bulgaria with more than 1 million excess deaths. China likely underreports COVID deaths but would still be a tiny number compared to Russia. economist.com/graphic-detail…
What I would like to see from the FOMC today, what I expect the FOMC to do today and what the FOMC will do next year--one tweet for each.
OUGHT:
1. Raise it's 2022 inflation forecast to 2.8%+.
2. Revise its statement to ditch the dichotomous language about needing to at maximum employment and return to the framework language.
3. Announce ending asset purchases in March
4. Median dots show three hikes in 2022.
(OK, cheating with one extra tweet: would also love to see the median long-run unemployment forecast come down to 3.5% and the long-run FFR come down to something more like 2.0% given that the neutral real rate is probably about zero. But less important than the above.)