Saturday, December 20, 2014

The Leisure and Hospitality Employment Growth Bubble

The following chart shows the natural log of leisure and hospitality employment per capita. When using natural logs, constant exponential growth can be seen as a straight line.


Click to enlarge.

Let's zoom in for a closer look.


Click to enlarge.

We're way above the long-term trend again (last seen heading into the dotcom and housing bubbles).

There sure are a lot of leisure and hospitality employees out there per capita. Isn't that fantastic? What's the worst that could happen again? There are only 14.8 million jobs in this industry!

December 8, 2014
McDonald’s Decline in U.S. Sales Accelerates

McDonald’s blamed the decline on “strong competitive activity”...

What happens in the subprime shale oil industry (strong competitive activity), stays in the subprime shale oil industry! That's what we're told! Therefore, this is just a fluke!

Have no fear! The unintended consequences of easy money are well contained again!

Too much sarcasm? Too many optimistic exclamation points? Not enough forehead action? Easily solved!

Forehead. Desk. Whack. Whack. Whack.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart

2 comments:

dearieme said...

Brill! The requested parabolic-exponential trend: amazeballs!

Stagflationary Mark said...

dearieme,

You missed an even better one devoted to you! :)

The Holy Grail of Trend Failures