July 03, 2010
In its article on the June job numbers the Washington Post told readers that:
“the chances of a strong, self-sustaining expansion that can significantly improve the job market — which seemed a real possibility during the spring — are now slim”
It is not clear who saw a “strong, self-sustaining expansion that can significantly improve the job market” as a real possibility in the spring. Certainly the Obama administration did not, nor did the Congressional budget office. Both projected very slow growth that would leave the unemployment rate above 9.0 percent by the end of the year. Most private forecasters had similar projections. The Post does not identify anyone who had a more optimistic assessment.
The article then asserts, with absolutely zero evidence, that ambiguity about the economic situation is responsible for the gridlock in Congress over further stimulus:
“The confused outlook is causing paralysis on Capitol Hill, since the recovery is neither strong enough to provoke a turn toward deficit reduction, nor weak enough to lend momentum to President Obama’s push for more economic stimulus. As Congress prepared to leave town for the week-long Fourth of July break, even funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was bogged down by the broader election-year squabble over spending”
This statement implies that if the data showed a weaker economy that the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats, who are currently blocking stimulus spending, would somehow be more supportive of it. The article includes no statements from any of these members of Congress or anyone connected with them in any way that would support the claim that their votes on stimulus would change if the economy was weaker. The view that their votes on stimulus are responsive to the state of the economy is entirely an invention of the Post.
The article then presents events that were 100 percent predictable as surprises:
“In recent weeks, every pillar of the economic recovery that started a year ago has showed signs of weakening. Manufacturers had been cranking up production — but now their inventories are largely rebuilt, and they are expanding more slowly. The housing market was recovering as well — until the end of a federal tax credit for home buyers this spring.”
Economists knew that the cycle of inventory rebuilding would come to an end. That happens in every recovery. They also knew that housing demand would fall after the expiration of the tax credit. The tax credit pulled purchases forward meaning that there would be fewer homes bought after it expired than the underlying trend and many fewer than during the period where the credit was in place. No remotely competent analyst could have been surprised by this falloff.
The article goes on to explain the lack of hiring as being due to a lack of confidence on the part of businesses:
“Increasingly, it appears that those months were an aberration and that businesses are too fearful to begin a hiring binge.
‘People are still really cautious, and we haven’t seen small businesses engage in any substantial way,’ said Roy Krause, chief executive of SFN Group, a large employment-services company. ‘I don’t have any real indicator that would tell you things are going to accelerate faster than they’re currently going.'”
A major problem with the fearful business explanation for the lack of hiring is that the average workweek fell in June (as noted in the article). Presumably firms are not cutting hours out of fear, but rather due to a lack of demand. If firms were not hiring because of fear, then we would expect to see hours per worker increase, as firms worked their current workforce harder in order to avoid hiring more workers. Since the opposite is happening, we can assume that the explanation for weak hiring is lack of demand, not fearful employers.
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