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December 6, 2008
Macro Man had a new experience yesterday, playing golf on what can only be termed an ice rink. Never before has he shanked a fairway iron because his right foot slid on the ice (there are normally more prosaic reasons) or seen a beautifully-arced eight iron shot hit the front of the green and bounce like a ping-pong ball off the back.
Macro Man and his companions weren't the only frozen things in the market, however. Friday's US employment report confirmed that hiring across businesses has been well and truly frozen, as November job losses were the worst since December 1974, when Macro Man was but three years old.
Unsurprisingly, the lowest stratum of the labour force is suffering the worst. One of Macro Man's favourite indicators is looking at US unemployment rates by educational cohort. The u-rate for those workers who failed to complete high school has now breached 10%, well in excess of the peak during the last recession. That rate troughed in late 2006, providing an early warning of the waning momentum of US growth. Somewhat curiously, the unemployment rates for the two lowest educational cohorts remain below their peaks in the early 90's recession, despite the fact that these workers are ostensibly those who are competing with Chinese labour. The moral of the story? There's probably more pain in the pipeline.
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