Category: Purchasing Managers Index

Optimism Reigns

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Dec. 11, 2016

For the second week since the election the SP500 index rose more than 3%, reversing a slight loss the previous week.  The SP500 has added 160 points, or 7.6%, in total since the election.  Barring some surprise, the market looks like it will end the year with a 10+% annual gain, all of it in the 6 – 7 weeks after the election. Small cap stocks have risen 17% in the past five weeks.  Buoyed by hopes of looser domestic regulations, and that international capital requirements will be relaxed, financial stocks are up a whopping 20% in the same time.

Having held their Senate majority, Republicans now control both branches of Congress and the Presidency but lack a filibuster proof dominance in the Senate.  They are expected to pass many measures in the Senate using a budget reconciliation process that requires only a simple majority. The promise of tax cuts and fewer regulations has led investment giants Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to increase their estimate of next year’s earnings by $8 – $10.  Multiply that increase in profits by 16x and voila!  – the 160 points that the SP500 has risen since the election.  The forward Price Earnings ratio is now 16-17x.

Speculation is about what will happen.   History is about what has happened. The Shiller CAPE10 PE ratio is calculated by pricing the past ten years of earnings in current year’s dollars, then dividing the average of those inflation adjusted earnings into today’s SP500 index.  The current ratio is 26x, a historically optimistic value.  The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates at their December meeting this coming week.

As buyers have rotated from defensive stocks and bonds to growth equities, prices have declined.  A broad bond index ETF, BND, has lost 3% of its value since the election.  A composite of long term Treasury bonds, TLT, has lost 10% in 5 weeks.  For several years advisors have recommended that investors lighten up on longer dated bonds in anticipation of rising interest rates which cause the price of bond funds to decline.  For 6 years fiscal policy remedies have been thwarted by a lack of cooperation between a Democratic President and a Republican House that must answer to a Tea Party coalition that makes up about a third of Republican House members.  The Federal Reserve has had to carry the load with monetary policy alone.  Both former Chairman Bernanke and curent Chairwoman Yellen have expressed their frustration to Congress.  If Congress can enact some policy changes that stimulate the economy, the Federal Reserve will have room to raise interest rates to a more normal range.

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Purchasing Manager’s Index

The latest Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) was very upbeat, particularly the service sectors, where employment expanded by 5 points, or 10%, in November.  There hasn’t been a large jump like this since July and February of 2015.  For several months, the combined index of the manufacturing and service sector surveys has languished, still growing but at a lackluster level.  For the first time this year, the Constant Weighted Purchasing Index of both surveys has broken above 60, indicating strong expansion.

The surge upward is welcome, especially after October’s survey of small businesses showed a historically high level of uncertainty among business owners.  This coming Tuesday the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) will release the results of November’s survey.  How much uncertainty was attributable to the coming (at the time of the October survey) election?  Small businesses account for the majority of new hiring in the U.S. so analysts will be watching the November survey for clues to small business owner sentiment.  Unless there is some improvement in small business sentiment in the coming months, employment gains will be under pressure.

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Productivity

Occasionally productivity growth, or the output per worker, falters and falls negative for a quarter.  Once every ten or twenty years, growth turns negative for two consecutive quarters as it has this year. Let’s look at the causes.  Productivity may fall briefly if businesses hire additional workers in anticipation of future growth.   Or employers may think that weak sales growth is a temporary situtation and keep employees on the payroll.  In either case, there is a mismatch between output and the number of workers.

During the Great Recession productivity growth did NOT turn negative for two quarters because employers quickly shed workers in response to falling sales.  The last time this double negative occurred was in 1994, when employment struggled to recover from a rather weak recession a few years earlier.  For most of 1994, the market remained flat.  In Congressional elections in November of that year, Republicans took control of the House after 40 years of Democratic majorities.  The market began to rise on the hopes of a Congress more friendly to business.  Previous occurrences were in the midst of the two severe recessions of 1974 and 1982.   As I said, these double negatives are infrequent.



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The Next Crisis?

The economies of the United States and China are so large that each country naturally exports its problems to the rest of the world.  The causes of the 2008 Financial Crisis were many but one cause was the extremely high capital leverage used by U.S. Banks.  A prudent ratio of reserves to loans is 1-8 or about 12% reserves for the amount of outstanding loans.  Large banks that ran into trouble in 2008 had reserve ratios of 1-30, or about 3%.

Now it is China’s turn.  Many Chinese banks have reported far less loans outstanding to avoid capital reserve requirements.  How did they do this?  By calling loans “investment receivables.”  It sounds absurd, doesn’t it?  Like something that kids would do, as though calling something by another name changes the substance of the thing.  70 years ago George Orwell warned us of this “doublespeak,” as he called it.  Reluctant to toughen up banking standards for fear of creating an economic crisis, the Chinese central bank is planning a gradual move to more prudent standards that will take several years.  However, it is a crisis waiting for a spark.  Here’s a Wall St. Journal article on the topic for those who have access.

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Third Quarter Rebound

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October 9, 2016

Last month I reviewed the background and history of the CWPI index based on the monthly survey of purchasing managers.  I was a bit concerned that this index might continue to decline.  Instead it showed a big upsurge in new orders and employment in the service sectors, sending an index of these two components above its five year average. This may be a sign of a third quarter rebound after a lackluster first half of the year.

September’s stronger manufacturing survey lifted its index from the contractionary reading of the previous month. The CWPI composite of the manufacturing and non-manufacturing surveys is a smoothed average to dampen any month-to-month erraticness and give a truer picture of trend. Although the CWPI indicates strong growth, this is the longest period of time since 2011 that the CWPI has registered below 60, a mark of fairly robust expansion.

The height of this last wave was over a year ago, in August 2015.  The downward trend is stil in place but this month’s survey gives some hope of a turnaround.

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Households

A Pew analysis of Census Bureau data shows that 18-34 year olds are living with their parents in even greater numbers – 32% – than during the Great Recession. This bests the previous record set in 1940, between the Great Depression and World War 2. In the EU, almost half of 18-34 year olds are living with their parents. In a consumer driven economy, growth depends on children moving out of their parents’ home to form new households, to buy furniture and home furnishings, to consume electricity and water, to pay property taxes and all the many expenses involved in running a household.  Here is a recent paper published by the Federal Reserve.

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Infrastructure
There is not much that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump agree on.  However, both candidates are calling for a big infrastructure spending program to repair roads, bridges, airports, dams, water pipes, schools, etc.  The American Society of Civil Engineers has given a D+ grade to this country’s  infrastructure and has estimated that $3.6 trillion of repairs are needed by 2020.  $3.6 trillion is the entire Federal budget, or about $12,000 per person.

A Liberal Idea Adopted by A Republican Candidate

It is unlikely that either candidate can get a bill through a Republican Congress.  In 2011, Robert Frank, Paul Krugman and several liberal economists called for a $2 trillion infrastructure spending bill.  The goverment could borrow at rock bottom interest rates, the repairs were needed and the spending would have been good for employees and businesses at a time when unemployment was 9% and real GDP had finally reached the same pre-recession level four years earlier.  Citing large budget deficits and a Federal debt that had increased 50% in three years, Republicans squelched any infrastructure bill.

The Current Distribution of Highway Trust Fund Dollars

Included in the price of each gallon of gas is a Federal excise tax that is paid into the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) to pay for repairs to the interstate highway system. The allocation of tax revenue is currently based on the amount of gallons of gasoline that each state sells but that presents another set of complications.  Exclusions to the allocation computation are jet fuel, fuel used by tribal lands and a host of other exceptions that are peculiar to each state.  This results in a spider’s web of adjustments to the gallons reported by each state. As you can imagine, the instructions for the adjustments are complicated.

Alternative Distribution Models

 An easy formula for distributing the tax revenues to the states could be a simple one: allocate the money based on the number of miles of interstate highway in each state.  But that would treat a low traffic route like U.S. 90 through Montana the same as the heavily traveled U.S. 495 running through part of New York City.  One suggestion has been to count only the interstate highways that pass through more than one state, and to exclude secondary highway routes designated by a three digit number.  For instance, US 495 is a route from US95 through New York City.  US 635 is a highway that goes around Dallas, Texas and connects with the primary north-south highway US 35.

An allocation scheme based on actual mileage driven has been proposed but would require the reporting of one’s travels to a government agency via a transponder, a step too far for many.  While newer cars and many trucks already have a GPS locator in the vehicle, the logistics and cost  of upgrading older commercial and passenger vehicles are daunting.

Twenty Years Without An Increase in the Highway Tax

The last increase in the Federal exice tax occurred in 1993 and efforts to rate the rate have met fierce resistance from Republicans, most of whom have taken an oath not to raise taxes of any sort.  Even though gas prices have come down in recent years, there seems to be little enthusiasm for bringing this subject back from the dead. (More info on the gas tax)

Every four years we have a Presidential election, a contest to choose the next Peter Pan who will magically overcome an entrenched bureaucracy, a recalcitrant Congress and a horde of fat cat lobbyists feasting on the power and money flowing into Washington.

The Supply Chain Sags

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September 11, 2016

Fifteen years ago almost three thousand people lost their lives when the twin towers crumpled from the kamikaze attack of two hijacked airplanes.  Over the fields of rural Pennsylvania that morning, the passengers of a another hijacked plane sacrificed their own lives to rush the hijackers and prevent an attack on Washington.  We honor them and the families who endured the loss of their loved ones.

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Purchasing Managers Index

Each month a private company ISM surveys the purchasing managers at companies around the country to assess the supply chain of the economy. Are new orders growing or shrinking since last month?  Is the company hiring or firing?  Are inventories growing or shrinking?  How timely are the company’s suppliers?  Are prices rising or falling? ISM publishes their results each month as a  Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), and it is probably the most influential private survey.

ISM’s August survey was disappointing, especially the manufacturing data.  Two key components of the survey, new orders and employment, contracted in August. Both manufacturing and service industries indicated a slight contraction.

For readers unfamiliar with this survey, I’ll review some of the details The PMI is a type of index called a diffusion index. A value of 50 is like a zero line.  Values above 50 indicate expansion from the previous reading; below 50 shows contraction. ISM compiles an index for the two types of suppliers, goods and services, manufacturing and non-manufacturing.

The CWPI variation

Each month I construct an index I call the Constant Weighted Purchasing Index (CWPI) that blends the manufacturing and non-manufacturing surveys into a composite. The CWPI gives extra weight to two components, new orders and employment, based on a methodology presented in a 2003 paper by economist Rolando Pelaez.  Over the past two decades, this index has been less volatile than the PMI and a more reliable warning system of recession and recovery, signaling a few months earlier than the PMI.

Weakness in manufacturing is a concern but it is only about 15% of the overall economy.  In the calculation of the CWPI, however, manufacturing is given a 30% weight.  Manufacturing involves a supply chain that produces a ripple effect in so many service industries that benefit from healthy employment in manufacturing. Because there may be some seasonal or other type of volatility in the survey, I smooth the index with a three month moving average.  Sometimes there is a brief dip in both the manufacturing and non-manufacturing sides of the data. If the downturn continues, the smoothed data will confirm the contraction in the next month.  This is the key to the start of a recession – a continuing contraction.

History of the CWPI

The contraction in the survey results was slight but the effect is more pronounced in the CWPI calculation. One month’s data does not make a trend but does wave a flag of caution. Let’s take a look at some past data.  In 2006 there was a brief one month downturn. In January 2008, the smoothed and unsmoothed CWPI data showed a contraction in the supply chain, and more important continued to contract. The beginning of the recession was later set by the NBER at December 2007. ( Remember that these recession dates are determined long after the actual date when enough data has been gathered that the NBER feels confident in its determination.)  The PMI index did not indicate contraction on both sides of the economy until October 2008, seven months after the signal from the CWPI.  During that time, from January to October 2008, the SP500 index lost 30% of its value.

The CWPI unsmoothed index showed expansion in June 2009 and the smoothed index confirmed that the following month. The PMI did not show a consistent expansion till August 2009.  The NBER later called the end of the recession in June 2009.

The Current Trend

Despite the weak numbers, the smoothed CWPI continues to show expansion but we can see that there is a definite shift from the wave like pattern that has persisted since the recovery began.

With a longer view we can see that an up and down wave is more typical during recoveries.  A flattening or slow steady decline (red arrows) usually precedes an economic downturn.  The red arrows in the graph below occurred a year before a recession.  The left arrow is the first half of 2000, a year before the start of the 2001 recession.  The two arrows in the middle of the graph point to a flattening in 2006, followed by a near contraction.  A rise in the first part of 2007 faltered and fell before the recession started in December 2007.  The current flattening (right arrow) is about six months long.

New Orders and Employment

Focusing on service sector employment and new orders, we can see the weakness in this year’s data.

With a long view, a smoothed version of this-sub indicator signals weakness before a recession starts and doesn’t shut off till late after a recession’s end.  The smoothed version has been below the 5 year average for seven months in a row.  If history is any guide, a recession in the next year is pretty certain.

The 2007-2009 Recession

 In August 2006 this indicator began consistently signaling key weakness in the service sectors of the economy (big middle rectangle in the graph below). Stock market highs were reached in June 2007 and the recession did not officially begin till December 2007, a full sixteen months after the signal started.  That signal didn’t shut off till the spring of 2010, about eight months after the official end of the recession.

The 2001 Recession, Dot-Com Bust and Iraq War

The recession in 2001 lasted only six months but the downturn in the market lasted three years as equities repriced after the over-investment of the dot-com boom.  The smoothed version of this indicator first turned on in January 2001, two months before the start of the recession in March of that year.   Although, the recession officially ended in November 2001, the signal did not shut off till June 2003 (left rectangle in the graph above).  Note that the market (SP500) hit bottom in September 2002, then nosedived again in the winter.  Weak 4th quarter GDP growth that year fueled doubts about the recovery.  Concerns about the Iraq war added uncertainty to the mix and drove equity prices near that September 2002 bottom.  In April 2003, two months before the signal shut off, the market began an upward trajectory that would last over four years.

No one indicator can serve as a crystal ball into the future, but this is a reliable cautionary tool to add to an investor’s tool box.

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Stocks, Interest Rates and Employment

There are 24 branches of the Federal Reserve. This week, presidents of two of those banches indicated that they favored an interest rate hike when the Fed meets later this month (Investor’s Business Daily article).  On Friday, the stock market dropped more than 2% in response.  One of those presidents, Rosengren, is a voting member on the committee (FOMC) that sets interest rates.  I have been in favor of higher interest rates for quite some time so I agree with Rosengren that gradual rate increases are needed. However, Chairwoman Janet Yellen relies on the Labor Market Conditions Index (LMCI) to gauge the health of the labor market.

Despite an unemployment rate below 5%, this index of about 20 indicators has been lackluster or negative this year.  There are a record number of job openings but employees are not switching jobs as the rate they do in a healthy labor market.  This is the way that the majority of employees increase their earnings so why are employees not pursuing these opportunities?

The Federal Reserve has a twin mandate from Congress: “maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.” (Source) There is a good case to be made that there are too many weaknesses in the employment data, and that caution is the more prudent stance.  The FOMC meets again in early November, just six weeks after the upcoming September meeting. Although the Labor Report will not be released till three days after the FOMC meeting, the members will have preliminary access to the data, giving them two more months of employment data. Yellen can make a good case that a short six week pause is well worth the wait.

Stuck in the Mud

In 18 months, the SP500 is little changed.  A broad index of bonds (BND) is about the same price it was in January 2015.  The lack of price movement is a bit worrying.  There are several alternative investments which investors may include in their portfolio allocation.  Since January 2015, commodities (DBC)  have lost 15%, gold (GLD) has gained a meager 1%, emerging markets (VWO) are down 5%, and real estate (VNQ) is literally unchanged.  A bright note: international bonds (BNDX) have gained almost 6% in that time and pay about 1.5%.  1994 was the last time several non-correlated assets hit the pause button.  The following six years were good for both stocks and bonds.  What will happen this time?  Stay tuned.

Pickup and Letdown

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May 8, 2016

Based on ISM’s monthly survey of Purchasing Managers, the CWPI blends both service and manufacturing indexes and gives additional weight to a few components, new orders and employment.  Last month we were looking for an upward bend in the CWPI, to confirm a periodic U-shaped pattern that has marked this recovery. This month’s reading did swing up from the winter’s trough and we would expect to see further improvement in the coming few months to confirm the pattern. A break in this pattern would indicate some concern about a recession in the following six months. What is a break in the pattern? An extended trough or a continued decline toward the contraction zone below 50.

Since the services sectors constitutes most of the economy in the U.S., new orders and employment in services are key indicators of this survey.  A sluggish winter pulled down a composite of the two but a turn around in April has brought this back to the five year average.

Rising oil prices have certainly been a major contributor to the surge in the prices component of the manufacturing sector survey. The BLS monthly labor report (below) indicates some labor cost increases as well.  Each month the ISM publishes selected comments from their respondents.  An employer in the construction industry noted a severe shortage of non-skilled labor, a phenomenon we haven’t seen since 2006, at the height of the housing bubble.

Last week the BEA released a first estimate of almost zero growth in first quarter GDP, confirming expectations.  Oddly enough, the harsh winter of 2015 provided an even lower comparison point so that this year’s year over year growth, while still anemic, is almost 2%.

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Employment

April’s employment data from the BLS was a bit disheartening.  Earlier this week, the private payroll processor ADP reported job growth of 150,000 in April and lowered expectations for the BLS report released on Friday.  While the BLS estimate of private job growth was slightly better, the loss of about 10,000 government jobs, not included in the ADP estimate, left the total estimate of jobs gained at 160,000. The loss of government jobs is slight compared to the total of 22 million employed at all levels of government but this is the fourth time in the past eight months that government employment has declined.

A three month average of job growth is still above 200,000, a benchmark of labor market health that shows job growth that is more than the average 1% population growth  With a base of 145 million employees in the U.S, a similar 1% growth rate in employment would equal 1.5 million jobs gained each year, or about 125,000 per month.  To account for statistical sampling errors, the churn of businesses opening and closing, labor analysts add another 25,000 to get a total of 150,000 minimum monthly job gains just to keep up with population growth.  The 200,000 mark then shows real economic growth.  In March 2016, the growth of the work force minus the growth in population was 1.2%, indicating continued real labor market gains.

Job growth in the core work force aged 25 -54 remains above 1%, another good sign.  It last dipped briefly below 1% in October.  This core group of workers buys homes, cars, and other durable goods at a faster pace than other age groups; when this powerhouse of the economy weakens, the economy suffers. In the chart below, there is an almost seven year period, from June 2007 through January 2014 where growth in this core work force group was less than 1%.  From January 2008 through January 2012, growth was actually negative.  The official length of the recession was 17 months, from December 2007 through June 2009.  For the core work force, the heart of the economic engine, the recession lasted much longer.

In 2005, a BLS economist estimated that the core work force would number over 105 million in 2014.  In December 2014, the actual number was 96 million, a shortage of 9 million workers, or almost 10% of the workforce.  In April 2016, the number was almost 98 million, still far less than expectations.

Some economists and pundits mistakenly compare this recovery from a financial crisis with recoveries  from economic downturns in the late 20th century.  For an accurate comparison, we must look to a previous financial, not economic, crisis – the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The unemployment rate in April remained the same, but more than a half million people dropped out of the labor force, reversing a six month trend of declines.  It is puzzling that more people came back into the labor force during the winter even as GDP growth slowed.

Average hourly earnings increased for the second month in a row, upping the year over year increase above 2.5%.  For the past ten years, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings of production and non-supervisory workers have grown an anemic .75% per year.  In the sluggish winter of January and February 2015, earnings growth notched  a recovery high of 3%, leading some economists and market watchers to opine that lowered oil costs, on the decline since the summer of 2014, would finally spur worker’s pay growth in this long, subdued recovery.  A year later, earnings growth is about 1.2%, a historically kind of OK level, but one which causes much head scratching among economists at the Federal Reserve.  When will worker’s earnings begin to recover?

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Hungry

A reader sent me a link to a CNBC article  on food insecurity in the U.S. The problem is widespread and not always confined to those who fall below the poverty benchmark. Contrary to some perceptions, food insecurity is especially prevalent in rural areas, where food costs can be 50% higher than urban centers.  How does the government determine who is food insecure? The USDA publishes a guide with a history of the project, the guidelines and questions.  To point out the highlights, I’ll include the page links within the document. The guidelines have not been revised since this 1998 revision.

In surveys conducted by the Census Bureau, respondents are asked a series of questions.  The answers help determine the degree of household food insecurity.  The USDA repeatedly emphasizes that it is household, not individual, insecurity that they are measuring.  The ranking scale ranges from 0, no insecurity, to 10, severe insecurity and hunger. An informative graph of the scale, the categories and characteristics is helpful.

In 1995, a low .8 percent were ranked with severe food insecurity (page 14) . To be considered food insecure, a household must rank above 2.3 (household without children), or above 2 .8 (with children) on the scale.  Above that are varying degrees of insecurity and whether it is accompanied by hunger. (Table)

The USDA admits that measuring a complex issue like this one can provoke accusations that the measure either exaggerates or understates the number of households.  What are they measuring?  Page 6 contains a formal definition, while page 8 includes a list of conditions that the survey questions are trying to assess, and that a condition arose because of financial limitations like “toward the end of the month we don’t have enough money to eat well.”

Page 9 describes the rather ugly pattern of progressively worse food insecurity and hunger.  At first a household will buy cheaper foods that fill the belly.  Then the parents may cut back a little but spare the kids the sensation of hunger.  In its most severe stage, all the family members go hungry in a particular day.

Those of you wanting additional information or resources can click here.

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Earnings

Almost a month ago the giant aluminum manufacturer Alcoa kicked off the first quarter earnings season.  87% of companies in the SP500 have reported so far and FactSet calculates a 7% decline in earnings.  They note “the first quarter marks the first time the index has seen four consecutive quarters of year-over-year declines in earnings since Q4 2008 through Q3 2009.”  Automobile manufacturers have been particularly strong while the Energy, Materials and  Financial sectors declined.  Although the energy sector gets the headlines, there has also been a dramatic decrease in the mining sector.  The BLS reports almost 200,000 mining jobs lost since September 2014.

The bottom line for long term investors: the economic data supports an allocation that favors equities.  The continued decline in corporate earnings should caution an investor not to go too heavily toward the equity side of the stock/bond mix.

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(Edited May 11th in response to a reader’s request to clarify a few points.)

Oh My Gawd!

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November 8, 2015

There is the famous Tarzan yell by Carol Burnett and the iconic “Oh my Gawd” exclamation of Janice Lipman in the long running TV series “Friends.”  That’s what Janice would have said when October’s employment report was released this past Friday.

Highlights:

271,000 jobs gained – maybe. That was almost twice the number of job gains in September (137,000).  Really??!! ADP reported private job gains of 182,000.  Huge difference.  Job gains in government were only 3,000 so let’s use my favorite methodology, average the two and we get 228,000 jobs gained, awfully close to the average of the past twelve months.  Better than average gains in professional business services and construction.  Both of these categories pay well.  Good stuff.

At 34.5 hours, average hours worked per week has declined by 1/10th of an hour in the past year.  The average hourly rate rose 2.5%, faster than headline inflation and giving some hope that workers are finally gaining some pricing power in this recovery.

For some historical perspective, here is a chart of monthly hours worked from 1921 to 1942.  Most of those workers – our parents and grandparents – have passed away.  At the lows of the Great Depression people still worked more hours than we do today.  They were used to hard work.  There were few community resources and social insurance programs to rely on.

The headline unemployment rate fell slightly to 5%.  The widest unemployment rate, or U-6 rate, finally fell below 10% to 9.8%, a rate last seen in May 2008, more than seven years ago.  This rate includes people who are working part time because they can’t find a full time job (involuntary part-timers), and those people who have not actively looked for a job in the past month but do want a job (discouraged job seekers).  Macrotrends has an interactive chart showing the three common unemployment rates on the same chart.

The lack of wage growth during this recovery, coupled with rising home prices, may have made owning a home much less likely for first time buyers.  The historical average of new home buyers is 40%.  The National Assn of Realtors reported that the percentage is now 32%, almost at a 30 year low.

2.5% wage growth looks a bit more promising but the composite LMCI (Labor Market Conditions Index) compiled by the Federal Reserve stood at a perfect neutral reading of 0.0 in September.  The Fed will probably update the LMCI sometime next week.  This index uses more than twenty indicators to give the Fed an in-depth reading of the labor market.

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Bonds and Gold

The strong employment report increased the likelihood that the Fed will raise interest rates at their December meeting and this sent bond prices lower.  A key metric for a bond fund is its duration, which is the ratio of price change in response to a change in interest rates.  Shorter term bond funds have a smaller duration than longer term funds. A short term corporate bond index like Vanguard’s ETF BSV has a duration of 2.7, meaning that the price of the fund will decrease approximately 2.7% in response to a 1% increase in interest rates.  Vanguard’s long term bond ETF BLV has a duration of 14.8, meaning that it will lose about 15% in response to a 1% increase in rates.  In short, BLV is more sensitive than BSV to changes in interest rates. How much more sensitive?  The ratio of the durations – 14.7 / 2.7 = 5.4 meaning that the long term ETF is more than 5 times as sensitive as the short term ETF.

What do we get for this sensitivity, this higher risk exposure?  A higher reward in the form of higher interest rates, or yield.  After a 2.5% drop in the price of long term bond funds this week, BLV pays a yield close to 4% while BSV pays 1.1%.  The reward ratio of 4 / 1.1 = 3.6, less than the risk ratio.   On September 3rd, the reward ratio was much lower, approximately 3.27 / 1.3 = 2.5, or half the risk ratio.

Professional bond fund managers monitor these changing risk-reward ratios on a daily basis.  Retail investors who simply pull the ring for higher interest payments should be aware that not even lollipops at the dentist’s office are free.  Higher interest carries higher risk and duration is that measure of risk.

The prospect of higher interest rates has put gold on a downward trajectory with no parachute since mid-October.  A popular etf  GLD has lost 9% and this week broke below July’s weekly close to reach a yearly low.  Investors in gold last saw this price level in October 2009.  Back then  gold was continuing a multi-year climb that would take its price to nosebleed levels in August 2011, 70% above its current price level.

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CWPI (Constant Weighted Purchasing Index)

Manufacturing is hovering at the neutral 50 mark in the ISM Purchasing Manager’s Index but the rest of the economy is experiencing even greater growth after a two month lull.  No doubt some of this growth is the normal pre-Christmas hiring and stocking of inventories in anticipation of the season.

The CWPI composite of manufacturing and service sector activity has drifted downward but is within a range indicating robust growth.

Employment and New Orders in the non-manufacturing sectors – most of the economy – rose up again to the second best of the recovery.

Economists have struggled to build a mathematical model that portrays and predicts the rather lackluster wage growth of this recovery in a labor market that has been growing pretty strongly for the past few years.

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Social Security

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, passed and signed into law this past week, curtails or eliminates a Social Security claiming strategy that has become popular.  (Yahoo Finance – can pause the video and read the text below the video).  These were used by married couples who were both at full retirement age.  One partner collected spousal benefits while the “file and suspend” partner allowed their Social Security benefits to grow until the maximum at age 70.  On the right hand side of this blog is a link to a $40 per year “calculator” that helps people maximize their SS benefit.

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Tax Cuts Anyone?

Former Senator, Presidential contender and actor Fred Thompson died this past week.  The WSJ ran a 2007 editorial by Thompson arguing that the “Bush tax cuts” that the Republican Congress passed in 2001 and 2003, when he was a Senator, had spurred the economy, causing tax revenues to increase, not decrease, as opponents of the tax cuts claimed.  Like others in the tax cut camp, Thompson looked at a rather small slice of time to support his claim: 2003 -2007.

Had tax cut advocates looked at an earlier slice of time – also small – in the late 1990s they would have seen the opposite effect.  Higher tax rates in the 1990s caused greater economic growth and higher tax revenues to the government, thereby shrinking the deficit entirely and producing a surplus.

Tax cuts decrease revenues.  Tax increases increase revenues.  That tax cuts or increases as enacted have a material effect on the economy has been debated by leading economists around the world for forty years.  At the extremes – a 100% tax rate or a 0% tax rate – these will certainly have an effect on people’s behavior.  What is not so clear is that relatively small changes in tax rates have a discernible impact on revenues.  A hallmark of belief systems is that believers cling to their conclusions and find data to support those conclusions in the hopes that they can use that to help spread their beliefs to others.

The evidence shows that economic growth usually precedes tax revenue changes; that tax policy advocates in either camp have the cart before the horse.  A downturn in GDP growth is followed shortly by a decline in tax revenues.

Thompson’s editorial notes a favorite theme of tax cut advocates – that the “Kennedy” tax cuts, initiated into law in memory of President Kennedy several months after his assassination in November 1963, spurred the economy and increased tax revenues. Revenues did increase in 1964 but the passage of the tax act occurred during that year so there is little likelihood that the tax cuts had that immediate an effect.  Revenues in 1965 did increase but fell in subsequent years.  A small one year data point is all the support needed for the claims of a believer.

The question we might ask ourselves is why do tax policy and religion share some of the same characteristics?

October Surprise

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October 11, 2015

A good week for stocks (SPY), up over 3%.  Emerging markets (VWO) were up over 5%, but are still down 18% from spring highs and are on sale, so to speak, at February 2014 prices.

On news that domestic crude oil production had fallen 120,000 barrels per day, about 15%, in September, an oil commodity ETF (USO) rose up 8% this week.  On fears, and confirmations of fears, of an economic slowdown in much of the world, commodities have taken a beating in the past year, falling 50% or more.  A broad basket of commodities (DBC) was up 4% this week but are still at ten year lows.  An August 2010 Market Watch commentary recounted the evils of commodity ETFs as a place where the pros take the suckers’ money.  Not for the casual investor.

The Telegraph carried a brief summary of the latest IMF assessment of credit conditions around the world.  There is an informative graphic of the four stages of the macro credit cycle and which countries are at what stage in the cycle.

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Social welfare

Some people say they dislike redistribution schemes on moral grounds.  The government takes money from some people based on their ability and gives it to other people based on their need, a central tenet of Communism.

In a 2014 paper IMF researchers have found that redistribution is a hallmark of developed economies.  Why?  Because advanced economies have the most income inequality.  Why?  Developed economies have greater income opportunity and opportunity breeds inequality.  A sense of human decency prompts the voters in these developed countries to even the playing field a bit.

In countries with greater equality, living standards and median income are lower.  There is less income to redistribute.  In the real world where the choices are higher income and redistribution vs an equality of poverty, I’ll take the more advanced economies.

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CWPI

Since the beginning of this year the manufacturing component of the Purchasing Managers’ Index has continued to expand.  The strong dollar has made U.S. products more expensive around the world and this has hurt domestic manufacturers.  Growth has slowed from the strong expansion of the last half of 2013 and all of 2014.  September’s survey of manufacturers is right at the edge between expansion and contraction.  The CWPI weights the new orders and employment portions of each index more heavily.  Using this methodology, the manufacturing side of the equation looks stronger than the headline index indicates.

The services sector, most of the economy, is still enjoying robust growth and this strength elevates the combined CWPI.

How much will the substandard growth in the rest of the world affect the U.S. economy?  Industrial production in Germany declined last month.  China’s growth is slowing.  GDP growth in the Eurozone is barely positive.  Emerging markets are struggling with capital outflows.  Developed economies that are dependent on natural resources – Canada and Australia – are struggling.  The GDP growth rate of both countries is very slightly negative. The U.S. is probably the one economic ray of hope.  September’s lackluster labor report and the Fed’s decision to delay a rate increase has attracted capital back into the stock market. This past Monday, volatility in the market (VIX – 17) dropped down below its long term historical average of 20 but is a tiny bit above its 200 day average.  I’d like to see another calm week before I was convinced that the underlying nervousness in the market has abated.  Third quarter earnings season is here and estimates by Fact Set  are for a 5% decline in earnings, the second consecutive quarter of declines since 2009.

Which Way Sideways?

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August 9, 2015

As we all sat around the Thanksgiving table last November, the SP500 was about the same level as it closed this week.  Investors have pulled off the road and are checking their maps to the future.  After forming a base of good growth in the past few months, July’s CWPI reading surged upwards.

Despite years of purchasing managers (PMI) surveys showing expanding economic activity, GDP growth remains lackluster.  Every summer, in response to more complete information or changes to statistical methodologies, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) revises GDP figures for the most recent years.  A week ago the BEA revised real annual GDP growth rates for the years 2011 – 2014 from 2.3% to 2.0%.  “From 2011 to 2014, real GDP increased at an average annual rate of 2.0 percent; in the  previously published estimates, real GDP had increased at an average annual rate of 2.3 percent.”

A composite of new orders and rising employment in the service sectors showed its strongest reading since the series began in 1997.  The ISM reading bested the strong survey sentiments of last summer. We can assume that the PMI survey is not capturing some of the weakness in the economy.

This level of robust growth should put upward pressure on prices but inflation is below the Federal Reserve’s benchmark of 2%.  Energy and food prices can be volatile so the Fed uses what is called the “core” rate to get a feel for the underlying inflationary pressures in the economy.

The stronger U.S. dollar helps keep inflation in check.  There is less demand from other countries for our goods and the goods that we import from other countries are less expensive to Americans. .  Because the U.S. imports so much more than it exports, the lower cost of imported goods dampens inflation.  In effect, we “export” our inflation to the rest of the world.

When the economy is really, really good or very, very bad we set certain thresholds and compare the current period to those benchmarks.  When the financial crisis exploded in late 2008, the world fled to the perceived safety of the dollar in the absence of a exchange commodity of value like gold.  Because oil is traded in U.S. dollars and the U.S. is a stable and productive economy and trading partner, the U.S. dollar has become the world’s reserve currency.  The conventional way of measuring the strength of a currency like the dollar has been to compile an index of exchange rates with the currencies of our major trading partners.  This index, known as a trade weighted index, does not show a historically strong U.S. dollar.  In fact, since 2005, the dollar has been extremely weak using this methodology and only recently has the dollar risen up from these particularly weak levels.

As I mentioned earlier, a strong dollar helps mitigate inflation pressures; i.e. they are negatively correlated. When the dollar moves up, inflation moves down.  To show the loose relationship between the dollar index and a common measure of inflation, the CPI, I have plotted the yearly percent change in the dollar (divided by 4) and the CPI, then reversed the value of the dollar index.  As we can see in the graph below, the strengthening dollar is countering inflation.

What does this mean for investors?  The relatively strong economy allows the Fed to abandon the zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) of the past seven years and move rates upward.  A zero interest rate takes away a powerful tool that the Fed can employ during economic weakness: to stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates.

The strong dollar, however, makes Fed policy makers cautious. Higher interest rates will make the dollar more appealing to foreign investors which will further strengthen the dollar and continue to put deflationary pressures on the economy.  The Fed is more likely to take a slow and measured approach.  Earlier this year, estimates of the Effective Federal Funds Rate at the end of 2015 were about 1%.  Now they are 1/2% – 3/4%.  In anticipation of higher interest rates, the price of long term Treasury bonds (TLT) had fallen about 12% in the spring.  They have regained about 7% since mid-July.

DBC is a large commodity ETF that tracks a variety of commodities but has about half of its holdings in petroleum products.  It has lost about 15% since May and 40% in a year.  It is currently trading way below its low price point during the financial crisis in early 2009.  A few commodity hedge funds have recently closed and given what money they have left back to investors.  Perhaps this is the final capitulation?  As I wrote last week, there is a change in the air.

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Labor Report

Strong job gains again this month but labor participation remains low.  A key indicator of the health of the work force are the job gains in the core work force, those aged 25 – 54.

While showing some decline, there are too many people who are working part time because they can’t find a full time job.  Six years after the official end of the recession in the summer of 2009, this segment of the work force is at about the same level.

In some parts of the country job gains in Construction have been strong.  Overall, not so much.  As a percent of the work force, construction jobs are relatively low.  In the chart below I have shown three distinct phases in this sector since the end of World War 2.  Extremes are most disruptive to an economy whether they be up or down.    Note the relatively narrow bands in the post war building boom and the two decades from 1975 through 1994.  Compare that to the wider “data box” of the past two decades.

For several months the headline job gains have averaged about 225,000 each month.  The employment component in the ISM Purchasing Managers’ Index (on which the CWPI above is based) is particularly robust.  New unemployment claims are low and the number of people confident enough to quit their jobs is healthy.  The Federal Reserve compiles an index of many factors that affect the labor market called the Labor Market Conditions Index (LMCI).  They have not updated the data for July yet but it is curiously low and gives more evidence that the Fed will be cautious in raising rates.

Growing Signs

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February 8, 2015

Employment

Employment gains in January were at the midpoint of expectations but revisions to the gains of November and December were significant, adding about 70,000 jobs in each month.  After a decline in December, average hourly earnings rose to $24.75, for a year-over-year gain of 2.2% and a good 1% above inflation.

In a sign that people are becoming more optimistic about job prospects, the Participation Rate increased 2/10ths of a percent in January.  After 5 years of decline, this rate may have found a bottom over the past year.

The health or frailty of the core work force aged 25 – 54 years is  a snapshot of the underlying strength of the labor market.  This age band constitutes our primary working years.  In the first half of this thirty year period we build job skills, work and social connections, establish credit, and accumulate relationships and stuff.  Year-over-year growth in the 1 to 2% zone is the preferred “Goldilocks” growth rate.

As the graph below shows, the growth rate has been above 1% for most of the past year.

Monthly gains in construction employment have overtaken professional business services and the health care industry.

The construction industry accounts for less than 5% of employment but each employee accounts for a total of $160,000 in spending so changes affect other industries.  As you can see in the graph below, real or inflation-adjusted construction spending per employee was relatively stable during the 1990s.  As the housing market boomed, spending per employee rose dramatically in the 3-1/2 years from late 2002 to early 2006.  In the worst throes of the recession when the industry shed almost a quarter of its employees, per employee spending stabilized at the same level as the 1990s.

Stimulus spending and Build America projects helped cushion the decline in construction spending but as those programs concluded, spending fell to a multi-decade low in the spring of 2011.  Despite historically low interest rates and increasing state and municipal tax revenues, both residential and commercial construction are below the benchmark set in the 1990s.  Despite strong gains in the past two years, the industry still has room to run.

As the economy improves, those working part time because they can not get full time work has decreased significantly from the nosebleed heights of five years ago.

That total includes those whose hours have been cut back because of slack business conditions.  A subset of that total are the number of workers who are working part time because they can not find a full time job.  This segment of workers has seen little change during this recovery.

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Purchasing Manager’s Index

Each month I update a composite index of the ISM Purchasing Manager’s indexes (PMI) first introduced by economist Rolando Pelaez in 2003.  This composite, the Constant Weighted Purchasing Index, or CWPI, reached record highs in October 2014.  It is no surprise that, this month, the BLS revised November’s employment gains upwards by 70,000 to over 420,000.  As expected, the composite has declined but remains robust.

The wave like pattern of present and anticipated industrial activity has quickened since early 2013, the troughs and crests coming closer together.  If this pattern continues, we should expect gradual declines over the next two months before rising up again.  A combination of employment and new orders in the service sectors continues to show healthy growth, although it has also declined from the strong growth of the past few months.

Zorro Moon

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October 12, 2014

Last Sunday, George and Mabel flew back to Denver from Portland.  They took a bus shuttle from the terminal to long-term parking and discovered that neither of them could find the parking stub which indicated which section they had parked in.  Mabel dutifully looked through her purse.  “I know you kept the stub, George, but I’ll look anyway.”  Mabel remembered details like this so George knew she was probably right. “I should have put it in my wallet and it’s not there,” George replied.  They asked to be let out at the main exit booth.  The attendant told them to go inside the office where they met a nice man with a patient look.  His English was barely accented with the round vowels of Spanish.  “My name is George.  How can I help you?” the attendant announced.  “Hey, that’s my name too,” George replied, as though each of them belonged to a brotherhood.  “Well, we seem to have lost our ticket stub and we can’t remember where we parked our car,” George told him.  “What day did you come in?” the other George asked.  “Last Monday, about 7:30 in the morning.”  The attendant’s face adopted an odd stillness, his eyes looking far away. “That was a busy morning.  We were parking in GG and HH at the far end of the lot.”  Both George and Mabel were amazed at the man’s memory and said so.  The attendant smiled graciously.  He pulled a set of keys from a hook on a key board, picked up two of their bags and led them to an idle shuttle parked near the office.  At the far end of the lot, the attendant drove slowly down one row until they reached the edge of the lot, then drove down the next row.  Mabel was the first to see their car. “There it is!” she exclaimed.  George gave the attendant a $10 bill, thanking him for his help.  The attendant nodded graciously, then drove back toward the office.  “There’s someone with  a remarkable talent working at a parking lot,” Mabel remarked.  “I think our schools do a terrible job of helping students discover their own talents.   The structure of our society, our economy – it could uncover and use these talents better.”

Sitting at his desk Sunday night, George mulled over the same thought that had distracted him on the flight from Portland.  Should he sell some or all of their stock holdings?  Two indicators said yes, another said maybe, one said this was temporary.  While on vacation, he had not compiled his makeshift index based on the monthly Purchasing Managers Index.  ISM, the publishers of the index, had released the services sector figures that past Friday.  He pulled up the latest report, then input the figures into his spreadsheet.  The index seemed to have peaked in September at a very robust reading near 70, rising up a few points from an already robust reading in August.

This composite of economic activity was a “stay out of trouble” indicator, giving buy and sell signals when the index rose above and below 50.  The last signal had been a buy signal in August 2009 when the SP500 was about half its current value.  Before that, the previous cue had been a sell signal in January 2008, a month after the official start of the recession.  Because employment and new orders were the largest components of the index, a chart of just these two components of the services sector reflected the larger composite.

So, the American economy was strong and Friday’s employment report had been a positive surprise. What seemed to be worrying investors was weakness over in Europe.  But Europe had been nearing recession for a few quarters now and that had not worried investors during the past year and a half.  Yes, no, yes, no decisions swirled around in George’s head.  Should he wait till the market opened Monday morning and see what the mood was?  Well, what if it was rather flat?  What would that tell him?  As Yogi Berra said, when you come to a fork in the road, take it.  So George did.  He put in an order to sell half of their stock holdings, essentially taking both forks of the road.

On Monday the market opened up above Friday’s close, indicating that a number of investors had put their buy orders in over the weekend after the positive employment report.  Active traders took the market back down below the level of Friday’s close.  In 1970s lingo, it was “negative vibes,” or negative sentiment in normal speak.

The Federal Reserve announced that they would begin publishing a labor market index that compiled 19 different labor market indicators to give an overall report card on employment.  The index was first proposed in a working paper published in May and the Fed was cautioning that the index was not “official.”

A chart of the various components of the index showed the correlations of each component with overall economic activity in the country.

The Fed provided a permanent link to a spreadsheet that they would update each month.  It was  a zero-based index.  Readings above zero meant overall conditions were improving; below zero, conditions were deteriorating.

The market opened up Tuesday with the news that Germany’s industrial output had dropped 4% in August.  A key leader and consistent performer, Germany was the Derek Jeter of the Eurozone.  As every baseball fan knows, if Derek was not producing, the whole team was in trouble.  The whole team in this analogy was the world.  The IMF revised their global growth rate for 2014 from 3.4% to 3.3%.  Quelle horreur!  Never mind that Tuesday’s JOLTS report showed the most job openings since 2001 when China was admitted to the World Trade Organization and started sucking jobs from the U.S.

Tuesday evening, George and Mabel watched the full moon, the Hunter’s moon, when it was about 30 degrees above the eastern horizon.  Clouds had obscured the moon when it was first rising and really big.  Wisps of clouds still drifted across the pale disk.  “It’s a Zorro moon,” George remarked.  “Zorro would go out on a night like this and undo the oppressive plans of the evil comandante.”  Mabel laughed.  “We’ll rename it the Zorro moon, then.  All those calendars we get each year will have to be changed.”  “Yeh, what’s with that?” George asked.  “No one ever sends a pamphlet of favorite quotes or prominent dates in history.  Just calendars.”

Mabel set her alarm to get up at 4:15 AM so she could watch the lunar eclipse.  She woke up about 7:30 that morning, disappointed that her sleeping self had turned off the alarm without even bothering to notify her lunar eclipse watching self.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Federal Reserve released the minutes of the September meeting of the Open Market Committee, the group within the Fed that that determined interest rate policy.  The sentiment of the Committee was rather dovish, and the stock market rallied up sharply in the last two hours of trading.  Still, the close was not as high as the opening price on Monday, two days earlier.  Volume was the highest it had been since August 1st and should have been confirmation that sentiment had reversed to the positive.  George was still cautious.

The market is essentially an argument over value.  The difference between each day’s high and low price indicates how much investors are arguing. The 5-day average of that difference was now double the 200 day average and rising.  George had learned that bigger arguments usually led to lower prices.  He had enjoyed a nice run up in 20-year Treasuries during the summer but then got out in mid-September.  Now two thirds of his investing stash was sitting on the sidelines in cash.  Treasuries had rallied, proving that it was difficult, if not impossible, to time the market.  Something George didn’t like was the relatively small movement in the price of Treasuries as the stock market rallied.

On Thursday, the market dropped quickly on news that German exports had dropped almost 6% in August. By the end of the day, the SP500 index had lost about 2%.  Bears saw an opportunity to hawk their books warning of the coming collapse of the global economy.  “Is the end near?  Next we go to Doug Munchie of Funchee Crunchie Capital.  Doug, tell our audience some companies that you think will do well as the coming global meltdown approaches.” Doug is looking sharp in a $300 white shirt and a $200 blue and red tie. “Good morning, Megan.  For our cautious clients, we recommend gold Lego blocks.  Our clients can construct many creative projects with their gold while they sit out the collapse.” “Thanks, Doug.  When we come back, we’ll talk to a priest who claims that holy water can cure Ebola.”

By the time he died, George thought, he will have heard at least 1 million hustles.  “Doctor, do you know the cause of Mr. Liscomb’s death?”  “Yes, he suffered from Bullshitis, the accumulation of a lifetime of blather.  A person’s brain becomes clogged and shuts down.”

The decline continued on Friday, bringing the SP500 back to the price levels of late May.  The closing price touched the 200-day average.  For long term investors, the next week might be a good  opportunity to move some idle cash into stocks. If the downturn became a serious decline, the 50 day average would cross below the 200-day average in a few weeks or so.  That crossing was called the Death Cross, a serious shift in sentiment.

Watching the news later that evening, Mabel asked, “We’re fine?”  “We’re fine,” George replied. Then he changed the subject to their recent visit to Oregon.  “I wish could be close to the ocean and yet not have all the dampness.”  “It’s called southern California,” Mabel quipped.

Labor Trends

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June 8th, 2014

This week I’ll look at some long term trends in the labor market, short term economic indicators and an unusual move by the European Central Bank.

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May Labor Report

On Friday, the BLS reported job gains of 217K, in line with expectations.  The big headline is that we have finally recovered all the jobs that were lost during the recession.

That headline obscures the weakness in the recovery of the labor market.  The number of jobs gained comes from the monthly survey of businesses.  The household survey shows that the economy is still short about 1 million jobs from its mid-2007 high.  A million jobs is less than 1% of the workforce but we’ll see in a minute that the household survey may be giving us a truer sense of the labor market.  Like a fighter who has been knocked down a few times, the labor market is back on its feet but still maintains a defensive posture.

The number of involuntary part-time workers, those who want full time work but can’t find it, has declined in small increments over the past few years but remains stubbornly high.  Gone are the upward spikes in part-time employment, indicating that the labor market is at least more predictable.

7.3 million involuntary part-timers is about 2.3 million more than a more normal level of 5 million.  Half of that number means that there are effectively 1.2 million jobs still “missing.”  Add to that 1.2 million or more jobs needed each year just to keep up with population growth.  1.2 million x 6 years = 7.2 million.  Add in the 1.2 million jobs to reduce part-timers to normal levels and that is 8.4 million jobs still missing.  Let’s deduct a million jobs or so that were gained before the recession because of an overheated housing market and we still have a 7.5 million jobs gap, or 5% of the potential workforce.  As I will show next week, this job gap puts downward pressure on wages, on personal income, on consumer demand, on…well, just about everything.

This month marked the fourth month in a row that job gains have been higher than 200K.  Two of those four months of  consistently strong job gains came during a weak quarter of economic growth and particularly weak corporate profit growth.  More on that next week.

The narrow measure of unemployment remained unchanged at 6.3% but the widest measure, the U-6 rate, continues to decline from a high of (gulp!) 17% to a current level of 12.2%.

The number of long-term unemployed edges downward.

Although there is much variation in the monthly count of people who are classified as discouraged, the trend is downward from the hump in 2011 and 2012.

After breaking above the 95 million mark earlier this year and rising, the number of workers aged 25 – 54, what I call the core work force, has declined back toward the 95 million mark.

According to the monthly survey of businesses, half of all employees are women.  My gut instinct tells me that this is more out of necessity than desire.  Women do what they have to do to meet the needs of their families and many of those jobs may be part-time to accommodate family needs.

The decline in male-dominated employment in the manufacturing and construction sectors can be seen in the declining participation rate of men in the work force.

Earlier in the week, ADP reported private job gains of 180K, below the consensus estimate of 210K.  A graph of the past decade shows that private job growth has steadied during the past year.

We should probably keep this longer-term perspective in mind to balance out the monthly headlines. Zooming in on the past few years shows the dips, one of which was the recent winter lull.  The trick is to keep a balance between the short-term and the long-term.

The market is expecting growth this quarter that will offset the winter weakness and will probably react quite negatively if prominent indicators like employment, auto sales or housing should disappoint.

Over 10,000 boomers a day reach retirement age.   Not all of them retire but some back of the envelope estimates are that 100K or more do drop out of the labor force each month.  For the past eight months or so, new entrants and re-entrants into the job market has offset these retirees and the number of people not in the labor force has leveled off in the range of 91 to 92 million.

Construction employment finally crossed the psychological 6 million mark this month and for the past year or so has been on the rise from historic lows.  As a percent of the work force, however, employment in this sector is near all-time lows.  Let’s zoom out and look at the past fifty years to get some perspective on this sector.  A more normal percentage of the work force would be about 5%.  The difference is 1 to 1.2 million jobs “missing” in a sector which pays better than average.

In summary, there is a lot to like in the labor reports of the past few months.  But we should not kid ourselves.  The long-term trends show that the challenges are steep.  The question is not whether the glass is half empty or half full.  The question is how many small holes there are in the bottom of the glass.

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Central Banks

Helping to fuel the upward climb in the market this week was the message that central banks are willing to adopt whatever policies they can to support the economy.  In response to the threat of deflation in the Eurozone, the European Central Bank (ECB) made an unprecedented move this week, charging banks 1/10% to park their excess reserves with the central bank.  What does this mean?  Customary policy is that member banks must keep on deposit with the central bank a certain percentage of their outstanding loans and other securities to guard against losses.  For larger banks, this is about 10%.  In a simple example, let’s say that a bank makes another loan for $100.  It must keep an additional $10 on deposit with the central bank.  Let’s say it already has $12 extra on deposit with the central bank.  The central bank would then pay interest to the bank for the extra $2.  The policy change this week by the ECB reverses that policy:  member banks must now pay the central bank for any excess reserves.  Essentially the central bank is charging banks for not making more loans,  a policy which some monetary economists have encouraged the Federal Reserve to adopt.

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CWPI (Constant Weighted Purchasing Index)

On Monday, the Institute for Supply Management released their monthly survey of purchasing managers, then revised it shortly after the release, then revised it again later in the day.  This should remind us that economic gauges are not  like measuring a 2×4 stud with a tape measure.  Seasonal adjustments and other algorithms are applied to most raw data to arrive at a published figure.

The CWPI index I have been tracking for about a year showed further gains in May, rising up from the winter doldrums.  The composite index of the manufacturing and services sectors stands at a bit over 57, solidly in the middle of the strong growth range of 55 to 60.  If the pattern holds, we should expect to see this economic gauge rise during the next few months, peaking at the end of the summer.

An average of two key components of the economy, employment and new orders in the services sector, rose back above 55 this month, a level that hasn’t been seen since last October.

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Key Takeaways

The numbers from the labor market are cause for optimism – job gains are rising while new claims for unemployment are falling.  Auto sales are strong, an indication that consumers have more confidence.  New orders and employment are rising.  Weakness in the housing market bears a close watch.