Friday, November 7, 2014

Central Bank Policies Unable to Restore Lost Central Bank Jobs

The following chart shows central bank employment. I have added an exponential trend channel in red and a parabolic trend in blue.


Click to enlarge.



Source Data:
BLS: CES Databases

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

A fair share of this decline is from reductions in bank operations. Particulary in areas like check processing where the Fed eliminated 30+ processing sites during this period.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Anonymous,

Thanks for sharing that!

March 2, 2010
Federal Reserve Banks Complete Check Processing Infrastructure Changes

"The changes we have implemented to our paper check infrastructure position us well to continue to meet the needs of the nation's payments system. At the same time, they have been difficult for our organization as we have been required to reduce our staff."

In any event, ZIRP and QE did not exactly halt the decline. Technological progress within the Federal Reserve has destroyed Federal Reserve jobs.

Over the long-term, we better hope that more jobs are created elsewhere than are destroyed. Over complete business cycles, I remain very skeptical. Sigh.

Anonymous said...

As you've pointed out recently, nail salon employment can soak the Central Bank discards right up!
-psychodave

Stagflationary Mark said...

pscychodave,

I'm not sure that's true, at least not without retraining. Perhaps it isn't too late to invest in nail polishing schools!

In all seriousness, I do not expect the nail salon trend to continue forever. Like every other exponential trend I follow, it is a mathematical certainty that it will fail. The timing, on the other hand, is very difficult to determine in advance. Sigh.