Sunday, November 17, 2013

Employment Gone Wild v.2

The following chart shows the year over year employment growth as seen in the average of the government's establishment and household surveys.


Click to enlarge.

I have added two 2nd order polynomial trend lines for your consideration. Both use data points that start from the trough to the point that the growth first turns negative. Note that both polynomials currently have the same 0.93 correlation.

Although history cannot often accurately predict the future, I do think those who argue that employment growth is about to pick up might not be wrong. I think downward is the most likely direction though, for what that's worth.

Just opinions. This is not investment advice.

See Also:
Employment Gone Wild

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart
at

5 comments:

  1. Stagflationary MarkNovember 17, 2013 at 7:14 PM

    One note about that first parabola:

    Technically speaking, the growth first turned negative in September of 2003. It slipped to -0.0003% year over year. I do not consider that to be statistically significant, especially since it only lasted for the one month.

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  2. JazzbumpaNovember 17, 2013 at 8:22 PM

    Although history cannot often accurately predict the future

    First time as tragedy, second as farce.

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  3. TJandTheBearNovember 17, 2013 at 9:15 PM

    Looks like last time it hit the 1% level on the way down just about the time the market peaked. Of course, QE "investment" isn't likely to roll over like housing did, so no telling how far the markets can go.

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  4. Stagflationary MarkNovember 17, 2013 at 10:27 PM

    Jazzbumpa,

    "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

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  5. Stagflationary MarkNovember 17, 2013 at 10:49 PM

    TJandTheBear,

    Of course, QE "investment" isn't likely to roll over like housing did, so no telling how far the markets can go.

    What we probably need is good data on the distance between the weakest fingers and the sell buttons and the level of itchiness of said fingers.

    That's assuming that the 23.4% annualized S&P500 gains since the 666.79 intraday low on March 3, 2009 (4.7 years ago) would cause some fingers to naturally become itchy of course.

    On the one hand, perhaps we've achieved a permanently new plateau of non-itchiness!

    On the other hand, how much more monetary lotion can the market's fingers take before they get hosed again?

    ReplyDelete