Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bryanlarsen 1351 days ago
Huh? nonfarm payroll growth is up 263,000 in September.

The most predictive indicator is the unemployment ratio, and it's very low right now.

Perhaps inflation is a better predictive indicator, but we really don't know since we haven't had any for ~40 years. As I said, it's the uncertainty depressing markets IMO, not necessarily the outlook.
1 comments
_heimdall 1351 days ago
Unemployment really needs to be paired with the Labor Force Participation Rate. Unemployment is low, but LFPR is down as well. 10 years ago it hovered steadily around 63.5-64%. The pandemic crushed it, but we're still only back up to around 62.5%.

That's a lot of people not working that simply aren't in the market anymore, unemployment would look a lot worse if they were included.

link
bryanlarsen 1351 days ago
LFPR is above the level it was pre-pandemic. Immigration is the best way of driving up the LFPR, but that was essentially nil during the pandemic and is still way down. Combine that with the aging population, and a slight increase in LFPR over the last 3 years is much better than could be expected.
link
_heimdall 1340 days ago
Sorry, missed this reply! Here's my source for the LFPR stats I mentioned above, we haven't recovered from early 2020 yet (and are way off from the rates pre-housing crash)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

link