Friday, December 5, 2014

Party Like It's 1999! (Musical Tribute)

The following chart shows the 6-month moving average of private production and nonsupervisory employee annual hourly earnings growth.


Click to enlarge.

Let's zoom in for a closer look.


Click to enlarge.

Now that oil has crashed, this is what is going to cause heavy inflation? Seriously? We're not even back to dotcom recession levels, and in case you hadn't noticed, it's a parabola.



NCHS Data Brief ■ No. 175 ■ December 2014

Since 2007, the fertility rate has declined 10%.

Other than experiencing a massive housing bust, being trapped in ZIRP, and having a record low fertility rate, we're nothing like Japan though! So we've got that going for us, which is nice.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart

10 comments:

  1. In the above link, slide the time scale to start at the year 2000.

    If it looks like a duck.......

    ReplyDelete
  2. mab,

    It looks like I should duck, lol. Sigh.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I forget the particulars, but a year or so ago I compared real gdp growth post Great Depression and post dot-com bust.

    Our Greenspan/Bernanke bubble/debt based growth can hold its own against the GD and that's saying something. Of course nobody would know this from watching CNBC or Bloomberg.

    The future is so bright that more and more people are falling behind.

    ReplyDelete
  4. mab,

    I worry most that the nation's economic flaws will come faster than we can rationalize them.

    August 6, 2014
    The Onion: Date’s Flaws Coming At Woman Faster Than She Can Rationalize Them

    WILMINGTON, DE—Over the course of their dinner Tuesday evening at a local bar and grill, area woman Melissa Kowalski, 27, reportedly faced a constant stream of her date’s personal flaws so swift and intense that she could not possibly rationalize them all.

    Oh no! It's starting! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Also from the Onion:

    NASA only 10 years away from faking a landing on Mars!

    I'm sure it will be worth the wait!

    ReplyDelete
  6. What nonsense.
    For wages, climbing at near 4% would double that wage in 12 years. That means a co would end up paying the floor flunky who is getting 11.00 hr now, 22.00 hr in 12 years. Or a better employee who is getting 20.00 hr now, 40.00 hr . It is not realistic to get that kind of compound rate going in business. The business can't compound their prices like you think wages should compound. So wages have to pause. Nothing sinister there.

    ReplyDelete
  7. whydibuy,

    Who said anything sinister was going on?

    In fact, we both seem to be in full agreement that this is nothing at all like 1999.

    ReplyDelete
  8. We also seem to agree that inflation won't be much of a problem.

    It is not realistic to get that kind of compound rate going in business.

    And yet, it happened in the 1970s. In fact, annual hourly earnings growth went the whole decade without even falling below 5.5%.

    But once again, neither of us think inflation is going to be a problem any time soon.

    I'm glad we agree on that.

    ReplyDelete