Five quick takeaways from the eurozone GDP numbers
You still need a strong constitution or a taste for gallows humour to read most eurozone economic statistics, as today’s release of the preliminary Q1 gross domestic product growth contraction data shows.
The bloc is now in its longest recession since the birth of the single currency, beating the post-Lehman Brothers slump in duration, though not in the depth of the downturn. Read more
Boston Fed: Labour force participation
The Boston Fed’s annual economic conference has opened with a paper on labour force participation, presented by two senior Federal Reserve Board economists Christopher Erceg and Andrew Levin, that has pretty dovish implications for monetary policy.
Like most other research on this subject, they find that the big decline in labour force participation since 2007 is mainly cyclical, not structural. More interestingly, they split the “employment gap” — the gap between current employment and maximum possible employment — into an “unemployment gap” and a “participation gap”.
Will unemployment continue to fall fast?
One of the most surprising US economic developments in recent months is the sudden decline in the unemployment rate from 9.8 per cent in November to 8.8 per cent in March. The reasons for it have profound implications for monetary policy. If you think this rate of decline is sustainable, than you quickly reach levels where monetary policy needs to tighten.
Payroll perplexity
I’ve done about 1,000 words for tomorrow’s paper about today’s payrolls numbers, the seasonal and statistical effects that Wall Street economists are arguing about, and the second month of divergence between the household and establishment surveys.
I don’t know what it all means and I think that’s the point: the Fed still has no clear steer on the labour market and will have to hope that it gets one by April.
Today also saw the annual benchmark revisions to the establishment survey. We already knew that it would show still lower employment as the US came out of the recession: Read more
Deteriorating UK employment picture
In a mixed set of British labour market figures today, unemployment was up, the claimant count was down, and earnings growth was rather flat. There was nothing in the figures to suggest inflation is getting out of control and when you look at the details of the Labour Force Survey data, it becomes clear that the employment picture will worsen over the next two releases.
How can I be so sure? Because the official employment and unemployment figures are based on a rolling three-month average, but the Office for National Statistics also publish monthly data for transparency. November was a shocker. The charts show this, with the employment rate falling to its lowest level since the crisis started offset by a spike in inactivity not unemployment. Read more
Has the UK labour market turned?
Unemployment has risen for the first time in six months, the Office for National Statistics said this morning, calculating that the rate rose by 0.1 percentage points to 7.9 per cent between August and October compared with the May to July quarter. This rise translates to a 33,000 increase in unemployment and an almost identical decrease in employment.
The trouble with the numbers, however, is that they are seriously distorted by an apparently rogue survey month in July which showed very strong employment levels and low unemployment. A month ago, July was part of the latest three months and now it is in the base for the comparison. Read more
The latest twist in the NEC race
An Ivy League handover may be in the cards for the post of National Economic Council director, president Barack Obama’s top economic adviser. Departing the White House is Larry Summers, former head of Harvard University, who will be returning to the famed Boston institution to teach, after delivering his farewell speech at the Economic Policy Institute on Monday. Potentially arriving is Rick Levin, an industrial economist – and president of Yale University since 1993 - who has already been active in Washington and is being considered for the job.
Mr Levin is facing competition from at least two other potential candidates – Roger Altman, the investment banker and former deputy treasury secretary who chairs Evercore Partners, and Gene Sperling, an adviser to the treasury department who recently played a big role in forging the deal with congressional leaders on the Bush tax cuts. There may be others in the mix too. ”The president is interviewing a number of qualified candidates and no decision has been made,” an administration official said on Tuesday.
Mr Levin would make a good choice for Mr Obama on several levels. Read more
Latest Fed projections for the US economy are expected to have worsened considerably from last quarter. Robin suggests the 2011 growth forecast, due for release tomorrow, will fall to 3-3.5 per cent for next year. Unemployment might rise above 8 per cent in 2012, with long-term unemployment rising by more than a percentage point to 6 per cent. Below is a summary of recent projections with Robin’s figures added to the November row:
It might only be 0.1 per cent, but the aggregate rise in euro area unemployment in September masks wildly different experiences among the 16 member states. Only Germany and the Netherlands saw unemployment fall during September, both by 0.1 per cent. Most saw no change or a slight rise. The biggest rises in unemployment were Spain, Italy, Ireland, and – perhaps surprisingly – Austria.
So the headline change – of rising unemployment – is generally representative. It’s the levels that are misleading. Unemployment in euro member states ranges from 4.4 (Netherlands) to 20.8 per cent (Spain). Spanish unemployment continues to be worrying: it is high and it is climbing, steadily and quickly, month on month. Spanish unemployment has climbed an average of 0.2 percentage points in each of the past 10 months. Slovakia is also a concern in this regard, with unemployment now standing at 14.7 per cent, up 0.9pp on the year. (If we had recent numbers for Greece, they might also be on this list.) Read more
US labour market mobility keeps declining
One of the key debates within the Federal Reserve and US economic policy circles in recent months has been whether the high unemployment rate is mainly due to structural or cyclical factors.
In the end, the prevailing view is that although there are some mismatches in skills and geography in the US labour market, the main problem is a broad-based lack of demand, which will hopefully be aided by even lower borrowing costs – hence next week’s likely move towards a second round of quantitative easing.
But a survey out today by Challenger Gray & Christmas, may, on the margins, challenge that certainty. A quarterly poll by the Chicago-based employment group found that the “relocation rate” of American workers – or the percentage of job seekers who found a new position and moved to a different region as a result – hit a record low of 6.9 per cent in the third quarter (the survey started in the 1980s).
To be sure, US labour market mobility – traditionally one of the strengths of America’s economic structure – has been on the decline. The annual average relocation rate in 1990 was 30.5 per cent, sliding to 22.9 per cent in 2000 and 13.3 per cent in 2009. But it has taken a plunge this year, with the average for 2010 now at 7.3 per cent. Read more
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Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS
Michael Steen, Frankfurt bureau chief, covers the ECB and the eurozone's economies. He joined the Financial Times in 2007 as Amsterdam correspondent and later worked as a front page news editor in London. Before joining the FT, he spent nine years as a correspondent at Reuters, mostly in foreign postings that included a previous stint in Frankfurt, as well as Moscow, Kiev and central Asia. He read German and Russian at Cambridge.RSS
Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS
Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS
Claire Jones is Money Supply economics team writer, based in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal and CentralBanking.com. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS
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