Thursday, February 10, 2011

Civilian Labor Force

Energycon has a few charts of the civilian labor force here and here.

Here's my take.



I've included an exponential trend line in red. Here's a closeup of the most recent activity.



In order to be in the labor force, you must be working or you must be seeking a job. So what are the 7 million missing people doing with their free time if they are doing neither?

Here's my tongue-in-cheek theory. They are busy making E-Trade babies to fund their future expenses. Everyone knows that day trading has become a sure thing. You simply cannot lose when competing against other day traders and high frequency trading algorithms located within investment banks while simultaneously paying a fee on each transaction.



I've never seen so many E-Trade babies. It's a bit scary.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Civilian Labor Force

2 comments:

Jazzbumpa said...

You know how those little kids have sort attention spans?

It shows in their trading habits.

Do you know the average holding period for a stock purchase? I ran across this recently, and couldn't believe it. 22 seconds.

Things are slowing down. That's up from 20 seconds the previous year.

Don't remember where I saw this, but it was someplace legit.

Cheers!
JzB

Stagflationary Mark said...

Jazzbumpa,

Don't remember where I saw this, but it was someplace legit.

I doubt you read that kind of information here. I'm just some random anonymous blogger on the Internet. ;)

Average Stock Ownership Time Period