💾 Archived View for tilde.cafe › ~stack › gemlog › 2022-07-29.economy.gmi captured on 2024-08-31 at 13:05:15. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

What's up with this recession? (Unemployment)

There seems to be a lot of arguing in the mainstream news about what we are experiencing.

Is this a recession? Macro numbers seem to indicate yes. And yet, unemployment is not going through the roof, as it should. In fact, businesses of all kinds cannot hire enough employees. Salaries and wages are going through the roof too, contributing to the final, more obvious stages of monetary inflation (started with the massive money-dump directly into billionaires' pockets). And yet, the world is running out of employees.

So some are saying "no, this is not a recession -- look at unemployment numbers". I don't think this is a valid argument, as mainstream statistics are completely off-mark.

In the US, the numbers come from those claiming unemployment benefits from the government. After a while, many give up and are no longer counted. What do these people do? They don't crawl under a rock and die, right?

They find a way -- a way which is not counted by the outdated economic indicators.

They are still living off extended pandemic benefits that just ran out;
They participate in the gig economy by driving, delivering, dog walking, or otherwise earning subsistance pay by major companies who pretend their employees are 'contractors'.
They rent out their houses and apartments to often-foreign tourists, providing billions to airbnb and others.
They refinance their overinflated real estate, providing enough income to live for years.
They flip real estate, making it entirely unaffordable to anyone who just wants to live.
They cash out overinflated stocks or other investments.

So a ton of invisible unemployed are out there, some well-off, some making so little that they are actually losing money gig-working. The apparent 'help wanted' glut is masking the actual reduction of the numbers of the employed.

Oh, officially the US is creating 400,000 jobs per month. That's close to 5 million a year. How do they come up with such nonsense? Probably the same way they came up with 'no inflation' for the last few years, while I watched prices of everything double.

Is this a recession? You decide:

The yield curve is getting pretty compressed.
GDP is dropping for two consecutive quarters (some call it a recession just for that).
Consumer confidence -- I don't know, how confident are you?. How confident are you it's being computed and reported correctly? It's pretty subjective.
Sudden stock market declines -- check.
Rising unemployment -- heh, maybe.

index

home