HERE WE GO AGAIN? ‘Bidenflation II: Fiscal Boogaloo’ Another Sequel Nobody Asked For.
Just when wages were finally starting to catch up with Biden’s first round of inflation, too.
If there’s any good news to be found in this mess — and you really have to squint to see it — it’s that the job market seems to be drying up already. “A very careful look at the labor market now will suggest that hiring has just ground to a halt,” Brevan Howard’s chief economist Jason Cummins told Bloomberg’s “Odd Lots” podcast earlier this week. The only reason, he said, the unemployment rate didn’t jump to 4% last month is that the labor participation rate — the number of people working or actively looking for work — dropped again “by a huge amount.”
If you aren’t looking for work, the government doesn’t count you as unemployed. That helps keep Ms. Rosy Scenario employed at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“So,” I can hear you ask me, “How the hell is a weakening labor market good news?”
Well, if we’re already entering a recession, the decrease in demand ought to help tame inflation. So maybe we won’t have to sit through a $24 matinee showing of “Bidenflation II: Fiscal Boogaloo.”
Look, I told you that you’d really need to squint to see the good news.