{"id":2391,"date":"2009-10-05T10:36:52","date_gmt":"2009-10-05T14:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/unemployment_no\/"},"modified":"2009-10-05T10:36:52","modified_gmt":"2009-10-05T14:36:52","slug":"unemployment_no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2009\/10\/unemployment_no\/","title":{"rendered":"Unemployment No Longer A &#8220;Lagging&#8221; Indicator?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m afraid this guy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601109&#038;sid=aIQSkFg5czbg\">may be correct<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mohamed El-Erian says economists are wrong to dismiss unemployment as merely a lagging indicator, a sign of where the economy has been.<br \/>\n. . .<br \/>\n&#8220;Today&#8217;s unemployment rate is much more than a lagging indicator,&#8221; said El-Erian, whose Newport, California-based Pimco manages the world&#8217;s largest bond fund, in an e-mail after the Labor Department report on Oct. 2. &#8220;It is also a signal of future pressures on consumption, housing and the country&#8217;s social safety net.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe job market tends to trail the economy in a recovery because companies hesitate to take on more workers until they are convinced the expansion will last. What&#8217;s different this time is the &#8220;large and protracted&#8221; rise in joblessness and the likelihood that it will stay high for years, according to El- Erian. That means unemployment will affect the economy going forward, not merely reflect where it has been.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;Less Credit, Fewer Jobs &#8221;<br \/>\nA couple months ago I watched Australian economics professor Steve Keen <a href=\"http:\/\/globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com\/2009\/08\/global-debt-bubble-causes-and-solutions.html\">give a convincing presentation<\/a> pointing out that over the last couple decades, the only periods of significant job growth have been accompanied by large expansions in credit\/debt (e.g., the housing and Internet bubbles).  This doesn&#8217;t bode well for us today, as we are de-leveraging record debt.<br \/>\nUnless consumers (or the government) borrows and spends more, what is going to be the driver for job growth?  I don&#8217;t see anything out there now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2009\/10\/unemployment_no\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Unemployment No Longer A &#8220;Lagging&#8221; Indicator?\"><p>I&#8217;m afraid this guy may be correct: Mohamed El-Erian says economists are wrong to dismiss unemployment as merely a lagging indicator, a sign of where the economy has been. . . . &#8220;Today&#8217;s unemployment rate is much more than a lagging indicator,&#8221; said El-Erian, whose Newport, California-based Pimco manages the world&#8217;s largest bond fund, in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}