Job Growth: Sign Of Economic Strength Or Desperation?

Prior to the disappointing March report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics last week, the recent gains in employment had suggested to many mainstream analysts that the economic recovery was gaining strength. However, upon closer examination, a troubling demographic trend suggests that recent employment growth may reflect the difficult environment facing older Americans. Fund manager John Hussman reviewed the situation and underlying data in his latest weekly commentary.

How can we say that quantitative easing has such weak effects on the economy when we’ve clearly enjoyed a significant amount of job creation since mid-2009? Isn’t that clear evidence that Fed policy is working? Well, that depends on what one means by “working.”

Last week, we observed “Real income declined month-over-month in the latest report, which is very much at odds with the job creation figures unless that job creation reflects extraordinarily low-paying jobs. Real disposable income growth has now dropped to just 0.3% year-over-year, which is lower than the rate that is typically observed even in recessions.” It wasn’t quite clear what was going on until I read a comment by David Rosenberg, who noted that much of the recent growth in payrolls has been in “55 years and over” cohort. Suddenly, 2 and 2 became 4.

If you dig into the payroll data, the picture that emerges is breathtaking. Since the recession “ended” in June 2009, total non-farm payrolls in the U.S. have grown by 2.32 million jobs (establishment survey, or 2.03 million using Household survey figures). However, if we look at workers 55 years of age and over, we find that employment in that group has increased by 3.04 million jobs. In contrast, employment among workers under age 55 has actually contracted by nearly one million jobs, regardless of which survey you use. Even over the past year, the vast majority of job creation has been in the 55-and-over group, while employment has been sluggish for all other workers, and has already turned down.

For most of history prior to the late-1990′s, employment growth in the 55-and-over cohort was a fairly small and stable segment of total employment growth. Undoubtedly, part of the recent increase has simply been a change in the classification of existing workers as they’ve aged (1945 + 55 = 2000, so the we would have expected to see some gradual bulge in this bracket since 2000 due to aging baby boomers). But the shift is too large to be explained simply by reclassification. Indeed, while the civilian labor force participation rate has declined significantly for virtually every class of worker since mid-2009, the participation rate for workers over the age of 65 has hit new highs. The over-55 and over-65 cohorts have a reservoir of skills and experience, but real income is growing much slower than employment, which means that they are not being fully compensated for it. And despite the much-vaunted uptick in hourly wages, real after-inflation wages have been falling. Something more troubling has been underway.

Beginning first with Alan Greenspan, and then with Ben Bernanke, the Fed has increasingly pursued policies of suppressing interest rates, even driving real interest rates to negative levels after inflation. Combine this with the bursting of two Fed-enabled (if not Fed-induced) bubbles – one in stocks and one in housing, and the over-55 cohort has suffered an assault on its financial security: a difficult trifecta that includes the loss of interest income, the loss of portfolio value, and the loss of home equity. All of these have combined to provoke a delay in retirement plans and a need for these individuals to re-enter the labor force.

In short, what we’ve observed in the employment figures is not recovery, but desperation. Having starved savers of interest income, and having repeatedly subjected investors to Fed-induced financial bubbles that create volatility without durable returns, the Fed has successfully provoked job growth of the obligatory, low-wage variety. Over the past year, the majority of this growth has been in the 55-and-over cohort, while growth has turned down among other workers. Meanwhile, broad labor force participation continues to fall as discouraged workers leave the labor force entirely, which is the primary reason the unemployment rate has declined. All of this reflects not health, but despair, and helps to explain why real disposable income has grown by only 0.3% over the past year.