Now that the Election is Completed, Can we Talk about the Economy?

This week was a rough week for all of us. There were those pulling for the first woman President of the United States of America. There were those pulling for the Improbable Republican candidate, the candidate who could not be taken down by the "Never Trump" crowd, the media, or the Democrats. There were those pulling for the underdog former Republican Governor, now Libertarian Candidate for President. The end result was that at 3  AM Wednesday Morning a new President had been elected  even with multiple states being undecided. This Saturday, Michigan is still counting. A week ago Friday we received the Jobs report data. This column worked hard to generate 6 days of columns before the Tuesday election. The media made comments regarding the report and not regarding the data. This column dug into the data and found some interesting things.

(Nov 5) We saw the release of the jobs report on November 4th. The data was week. The Seasonally adjusted data could have been reported at 25,000 workers added instead of  142,000. The effective unemployment rate, when factoring in the non-participants, could have been reported between 9.74% and 12.01%. Neither of those stories were reported elsewhere. Another issue that has been ignored is that we have "Five Sectors with Fewer Jobs than October 2008." We have fewer people working in Mining and Logging, Construction, Manufacturing, IT, and Government than we had working during October of 2008. We had peak employment during July 2007.

(Nov 5) The jobs report also revealed that fewer men are working full-time jobs than during July 2007. Men lost  10.6 million full-time jobs at the depth of the recession. Most of those jobs have returned. "Female Workers Winning Jobs Battle" digs into the full-time job data, part-time job data, and unemployment data. It examines the unemployment rates and participation rates for men and women.  The female workforce has expanded during the recovery more than the male workforce.

(Nov 7) Sunday was spent crunching data. Monday the column writing continued. This year we have seen record monthly  levels of people working multiple part-time jobs more often than not. "More People Working Two Part-time Jobs, Again"looked at the data for people working a full-time job and a part-time job, two part-time jobs, two full-time jobs, as well as a primary part-time job and a secondary full-time job. The weekly unemployment claims data is being skewed by the situation that when people lose a job, even a full-time job, and still have a second job, they do not qualify for unemployment benefits.

(Nov 8)  There has been conjecture that the drop in the participation rate since 2007 is based upon the FACT (False Assertion Considered to be True) that Baby Boomers are retiring. The data does not show that trend."Older Workers Working Longer (Oct)"  shows that the employment levels are down for those 35-49 years of age, that the workforce population is down for those from 40-54 years of age, and that unemployment is up for those 50 years and older. Sixty is the new forty.

(Nov 9) The workforce is growing slower than it has since 2011. We are adding workers at a slower pace through October than we did during 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Worker addition slows down as we head into a recession. Does the threat of a recession cause employers to hire fewer workers or does the hiring of fewer workers lead to a recession? "Has the Worker Fade Begun"details how when the annual Non-Seasonally Adjusted  Current Employment Statistics data grows at a rate less than 2% that we see the start of a recession.

(Nov 11) There are millions of people asking "what the heck just happened?"  How did Hillary Lose the election. Simply, it was hers to lose. The column "9.9 Million Reasons Why Hillary Lost the Election" places the blame of the 9,886,857 fewer Democrats that voted during 2016 as compared to the election of 2008. It also explains that Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson swung the vote in ten states, including Florida, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.  Also.....

It's the Economy. It was the economy. It is the Economy. It will be the Economy.