June Jobs Report shows US economy still strong

 June’s Jobs report, from the US Labor Dept, showed a surprise jump in non farm jobs and gave economists  a smile over their morning coffee this Friday since they had expected only 278,000; so, the news of 372,000 was an even better bonus, better than a chocolate croissant on their plates.

Another boon was for those that were the prophets of doom, sounding the alarm for a pending recession, and were proved wrong, since you can’t get a recession with numbers this high; and, the fact that these numbers also came in with rising inflation was another unexpected bonus.

Despite all of the hand wringing in some markets, it’s also clear that the US economy is resilient, even in the face of interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve to tamp down inflation.

The good news gets better with an approximate gain of 380,000 job gain, on average, over the past quarter, well above pre pandemic levels, even if slower than the prior year, and even better, has replaced nearly all of the near 21 million jobs lost in the private sector that began in February 2020, with few exceptions.

Who gained? For the last few months it was leisure and hospitality, that also takes in hotels and bars, had topped the list, but this time it was professional and business services that led at 74,000, and the former at 67,000 jobs still nothing to sneeze at despite a second place showing. But, of note it still is 1.3 million down from February 2020 benchmark measures.

If you strip out the bars and restaurants you get 41,000, and for those in health care, take a breath, because your area added 57,000 jobs, but building back a loss was 29,000 jobs gained in manufacturing, and those online purchases helped push 759,000 jobs forward of its pre pandemic posts.

Taking a closer  look we can see that labor force participation, a key indicator, took a tumble from 62.3 percent in May to 62.2 for June and this can be problematic, for as The Hill noted, “If fewer Americans are seeking jobs, businesses may have to offer increasingly higher wages to compete for workers. Firms may also raise prices for their goods and services as they attempt to meet rising demand without a large enough staff, which could fuel higher inflation.”

There is still a discrepancy between Blacks and Whites, especially for Black women, perhaps related to child care, as with their white counterparts, and CNBC reported that “The unemployment rate for Black women fell to 5.6% in June, down from 5.9% in the previous month,” but all things considered, even with a slight decrease overall from May, the picture is relatively stable noted Valerie Wilson, the Economic Policy Institute’s program director on race ethnicity, and economics said: “I think the bigger picture is that all of those numbers are within the range of where they’ve been in the last three months,” she said. “It’s a signal that the recovery is stable.”

Remaining the same is the unemployment rate, the marquee figure as we call it, at 3.6 percent, the same as last month, and with no significant jobs loss then the US is even as Steven, says an old cliche.

According to The New York Times, “We’ve essentially ground our way back to where we were pre-Covid,” said Christian Lundlad, a professor of finance at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina. “So this doesn’t necessarily look like a dire situation, despite the fact that we’re struggling with inflation and economic declines in some other dimensions.”

As many observers have noted, these gains may not last, and especially with the recession tools that the Fed has chartered, and as Sen. Elizabeth Warren said last month, with these rate increases comes unemployment.

The Times also observed that with 11.3 million workers in May, a record high,  “any workers laid off as certain sectors come under strain are likely to find new jobs quickly, for a time at least.”

For employers that means anxiety around hiring, especially as consumer spending is still facing bottlenecks, and some supply chain issues, those microchips are still not as plentiful. Hiring and filling new positions could be slowwalked, as they noted.

Wages did moderate to 5.1 percent, and wage increases that some employers have chosen to lure employees has also been part of the problem, for those that are concerned about inflation, the Fed included, and as the Times reported, Golddman Sachs officials have said that wages need to slow below 3.5 percent “to be consistent with the Fed’s inflation goals.”

While this would help with the historical goal of 2 percent inflation, prices have to be stable, as Chair Jerome Powell has noted because without it, “the economy’s really not going to work the way it's supposed to be.”

It’s a balancing act, of course, and with inflationary prices hitting 40 year record highs, along with skyrocketing rents, and other basics, too much, is as bad as too little.

Fed Chair Powell on the hot seat as inflation swells in US

It’s certainly not a secret that in the United States inflation is at a forty year high and that from Main Street to Wall Street there are fears and concerns about the increased cost of gasoline, groceries, and nearly everything else. Chicago has seen gas at $6.00 a gallon not far from Los Angeles, and filling the tank, for some vehicles can get to three figures.

The dollar stores are seeing huge influxes of shoppers eager to avoid the high prices at the local chain supermarket, and people are eager to spend less to make sure that meat and eggs can reach the breakfast table. 

In Washington the White House has said that the Federal Reserve with its twinned mandate of keeping inflation at 2 percent, and full employment, has the lead, but it has struggled to gain a foothold on the problem, and last week they raised the interest rates to three quarters of a point, the highest hike in 28 years.

At the September meeting there was another similar rate increase at the same 75-basis points and it seems that rate increase are here to stay until inflation is conquered, with some opining that this will continue at least into 2024, with predictions for 2023 from 4.24 percent to 5 percent.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell, backed into the corner by the Biden administration, was forced to admit that as CNN reported there are external factors that will make it harder to turn the corner, from that “soft landing” that we reported on earlier, and that mitigating forces such as the war in Ukraine, supply chain woes, caused by the coronavirus, were still taking its toll on the US economy.

He is supported by Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, who has said,  "The primary culprit [of inflation] was higher energy prices, particularly gasoline, and a lot of that can be traced back to Russia's invasion of Ukraine that caused global oil prices to spike," he said in a recent episode of his podcast, Moody's Talks. Inflation should ease, when the pandemic subsides and the market adjusts to new sanctions against Russia.”

While gasoline prices have decrease with an average nationwide tag of $4.50 dollars, rents and food remain sky high.

"So much of it is really not down to monetary policy," said Powell at a press conference last week that those supply chain problems had lasted longer than he anticipated

.

In a recent mandated appearance before the Senate Banking Committee, he added, notably, and perhaps defensively, “We’re not trying to provoke, and don’t think that we will need to provoke, a recession,”  he stressed, “But we do think it’s absolutely essential that we restore price stability, really for the benefit of the labor market, as much as anything else.”

Writing in The Guardian, Clara Mattei, an economics professor at The New School for Social Research, opined that shared pain of rising interest rates will hurt a lot pf people, and to that affect there is truth, if restrictions, such as last week’s surge in interest rates cuts cools down the economy, it will also cause many workers a job loss especially on the lower end, where their jobs will be low hanging fruit, to be quickly cut.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren told Powell at a recent congressional hearing, “Rate increases make it more likely that companies will fire people and slash hours to shrink wage costs,” 

“The cost of borrowing will also increase government expenses for public works and social services, forcing states to further cut their budget, hurting the most precarious parts of society that rely most on these services,”  Mattei stressed, and some other economists have said that intervention measures like more food stamp benefits might help mitigate some of these fallouts.

Mattei added a final warning saying that while, “Higher inflation is eating away at wage increases, but this does not mean lower costs for employers: compensation for private industry workers increased 4.8% over the year. By comparison, in March 2021, employers faced an increase of only 2.8%.”

Powell himself has acknowledged that these compensatory measures such as “lowering incentives for businesses to invest will produce unemployment,” and we see the risk involves planning to determine the correct balance to stem much of the expected  blood letting.

If it seems that the chair is being backed into a corner, his answers seem to make that even clearer. But, there are others that want to look to the future, and take a look down the tunnel for a possible gearing towards a recession.

Federal Reserve Bank President Loretta Mester said regarding both inflation and [a] later recession that, “It isn’t going to be immediate that we see 2% inflation. It will take a couple of years, but it will be moving down,” Mester said in an interview with CBS News this past Sunday.

According to CNBC, Mester also said she was not predicting a recession despite slowing growth; “We do have growth slowing to a little bit below-trend growth and we do have the unemployment rate moving up a little bit. And that is OK, we want to see some slowing in demand to get it in line with supply,” Mester added, referring to forecasts submitted in the past week by participants of the Federal Open Market Committee’s meeting.”

Added to the mix was this from The New York Times: “The Fed needs to hike policy rates more aggressively if it has any hope of bringing inflation down,” said Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Global Investors. “If it’s going to have to tighten even more, then the chance of a recession is higher.”

These were pressures before as we noted in the March Jobs report, when we reported that “Many observers are mentally pushing Powell to increase the interest rate even further than the one-half point anticipated in early May,"

“The tightening from higher policy rates filters through the economy to make borrowing of all kinds — from mortgages to business debt — more expensive. That slows down the housing market, keeps consumers from spending and discourages corporate expansion, “ Shaw added.

But balance is needed since these moves are a ‘’blunt tool”‘ to use Powell’s terminology, and knowing when, and how to calibrate, is very tricky as many economists and academics note.

There are naysayers: “By the time you start to catch it and realize you did too much, you’re going to be deep in a trough,” said Dan Genter, the chief executive of Genter Capital Management, an investment advisory firm. “It’s going to take nine to 12 months before you see the total effects, and it takes that long to get out of it.”

 “All the talk of recessions and bear markets could also — at the margins at least — add to the economic pressure, in part because people see their investment, retirement or college savings accounts shrink and start to pull back on spending,” and with no sign of abatement in college tuition, many families are now becoming increasingly worried.

“The behavioral effect is that people will start to slow down on spending, become much more cautious, start to save more,” said Beth Ann Bovino, the chief U.S. economist at S&P Global. “That’s not a good outcome for the economy. It slows growth.”

The CPI report for July indicated that there was some relief with lowered prices on gas, airfares and used cars, to an increased rate of 8.5, lower compared with 9.1 the month before. And, while this offers some relief it is not the end, say most economists, which much more work to do, and that work is the domain of the Federal Reserve and expectations are for a less aggressive rate of half a point, versus the prior three-quarters.

One source of relief is the detangling of the bottle neck of the supply chain issues that so beleaguered world economies for so long, mostly attributable to problems in transportation and warehousing and shuttered factories, due to Covid.

We are not out of the woods on inflation, and Boston Fed president Susan Collins said, with great understatement, "at the moment, inflation remains too high."

Updated Sept. 27, 2022 at 2:04 p.m.CDT

US Job market slows but shows cautious optimism

The good news from the US Dept. of Labor came on Friday with 390,000 non farm labor jobs setting a 17th month straight streak of job gains, giving a 96 percent gain towards the job losses from the Covid pandemic giving a huge relief to economists, the White House and Main Street, it also, just added more people back to work to give some confidence in the labor force participation number, one that is closely watched in this hot job market, and might, if continued, cool things down a bit and avoid an increase in inflation, and the dreaded specter of a recession.

While the numbers slowed a bit from last month, the consistent gains, over that period do show the US economy is humming along, and the slowdown is welcome, and with the dial moving upward for labor force participation, the  Fed is also keeping a close eye on the number, as we have noted before, to set any needed actions and consist of hikes in the interest rate, actions that have to be carefully calibrated, since too much is just as bad as too little.

The banner rate of unemployment expected to be reduced by 3.5 remained at 3.6 percent, but as we’ve outlined previously, consumer behavior, after the lockdown has seen a swift transition to services rather than goods, and nowhere has this been seen most is in leisure and hospitality which shot up to a whopping 840,000, with 21,000 of that figure in hotels and resorts as Americans who have received the vaccine jab, are jetting away to see families, friends and resorts for a holiday.

While the pandemic is not over, many people feel that it is, and the psychological pull, coupled with more cash in their checking accounts, since 2019 has prodded them to think that the worse may yet be over; and, while virologists and, biologists try to counter this optimism, the cash registers are ringing.

An added impetus are higher wages as employers continue to try and fill slots with qualified people, something they have complained about for months, and offering higher wages and bonuses, has also caused some anxiety among Fed officials who feel that a hot job market coupled with even higher salaries has to be tempered lest inflation become runaway.

Wages are indeed up, and as The New York Times reported, “Economists are also closely watching wage growth, which many say needs to slow in order to bring inflation under control. Average hourly earnings rose 0.3 percent in May, and are up 5.2 percent over the past year. The pace of wage growth has slowed a bit in recent months, although it remains simultaneously slower than inflation and faster than many economists consider sustainable.”

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell noted last month, ““Everyone loves to see wages go up and it’s a great thing, but you want them to go up at a sustainable level,” and furthermore, “These wages are, to some extent, being eaten up by inflation.”

If this feels unfamiliar, or even undesirable, the past is past and the White House has taken an optimistic tone: ““Where we are going to is a period of more stable growth, more resilient growth, that should look different than that historically fast recovery,” Brian Deese, a top economic adviser to Mr. Biden, said in an interview. The administration’s goal, he added, is a more sustainable recovery “that generates more economic opportunities and more economic security for middle-class families than the prepandemic economy did.”

Labor participation came in at “62.3 percent last month, the Labor Department reported — an increase from 62.2 percent in April, but still well beneath its prepandemic level of 63.4 percent,” but also gave push to prime age workers, those from 25 to 54, at 62.2 but still hovering below the prepandemic benchmark of 63.4 percent, they added.

For Blacks, in May, the participation rate grew to 63 percent, but this has pros and cons for job seekers, since as the workforce increases, employers can pay what the market bears and not exceed the budget to lure workers from the sidelines; but, this is a double edged act, and as an old adage in the Black community commonly goes, “the last to be hired the first to be fired.”

For Black women over the age of 20 their employment rose to 5.9 percent, and 4.7 for Hispanic women giving some increased hope despite the timeout on the child tax credit that gave between $150 and $300 to older and younger children.

While the increase was welcome, for white women the unemployment was one half of that at 0.1 percent and “These inequities absolutely existed before the pandemic,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute to CNBC.com, and added,. “When we talk about returning to prepandemic levels, sure, we’re getting pretty close to that, but that just bakes in the disparities we had in the prepandemic labor market, and that’s just not good enough.”

“This growth and recovery is not reaching everyone, and it’s not going to reach everyone unless we improve our systems and policies to address those gaps and support these workers,” said Kathryn Zickuhr, a labor market policy analyst at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. “Really, the time to do that is now because we are in this period of recovery. When things are going is when it’s time to plan for the next period of upheaval.”

Court decision on Roe might help Biden in midterms

 

Now that that the dust has somewhat settled after the leak of a draft by the US Supreme Court with its intention to rescind the 1973 ruling establishing precedent for abortions in the country, and the backlash from pro choice supporters, and praise from antiabortionists, the verified document will send abortion rights back to the states, and will undoubtedly create a patchwork of laws affecting over 60 million American women.

The 6 to 3 conservative majority has also become a political beast of its  own with the legacy of three Trump appointed justices, and a conservative chief justice, and along with their majority they are also Roman Catholic, whose church is famously opposed to abortion.

The country has been rolling over what a post-Roe America will look like, but it also provides a window of hope for the Biden administration in the upcoming midterms, as his unexpected presidential agenda, includes a land war in Ukraine, without boots on the ground, but with considerable US financial aid; and, a continuing pandemic, which despite appearances, is still present, and battered by foreign policy flubs such as the bypass with France, to favor a deal with Australia over submarine contracts, and now another racially motivated mass shooting, that has the president pockmarked with bad poll numbers: 54.5 disapproving and 41.0 according to fivethirtyeight.com.

While perhaps not a stage for a counter revolution, seeing the country’s women face down a barrage of statewide trigger laws outlawing abortion, that alone, might galvanize abortion rights supporters, including independents to the November polls, or at least enough voter escalation to sustain the current slim majority by the Democrats in the Senate.

For those of a certain generation, the appeal to states rights is a familiar refrain of “rights history'', and was infamously used, more than fifty years ago, to fight civil rights laws for Black Americans, against the stronger teeth of federal legislation.

Extended to its most grievous aspects, the fear, of such legislation, is that it will be used to prevent women from accessing birth control information on their personal electronic devices, such as personal computers, or smartphones, but, also to the imprisonment of doctors, and even family members, who might assist in any manner to aid a woman in obtaining an abortion, even, as we’ve recently learned, crossing state lines to obtain one.

This has its roots in the the Texas law that saw an abridgement of these  freedoms which prompted Vice President Kamala Harris to state:

“All Americans should realize that this is a direct assault on the freedom of women, and it is an attack that can affect all Americans.”

Those fears also face the possible roll back of same sex marriage, and other key social legislation that has been passed, and as Harris continued, “When you look at the privacy rights that are in jeopardy, it could very well include the right to marry someone of the same sex.”

These fears can be seen, say some pollsters and academics, as a path to harness the needed votes for the Democrats to hold onto not only current majorities, but also to redefine the Biden administration.

The president has also called out the radicalism of the MAGA crowd, and while not mentioning the name of former President Trump, whose support for primary candidates may have splintered in some areas, (but certainly not all), still resonates with a radicalized and conservative crowd, even in a reliably blue city like Chicago, there are many residents that revere his name, and want him back in the Oval Office.

“Let me tell you about this ultra MAGA agenda,” Biden said, using former president Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan — “Make America Great Again” — as a pejorative. “It’s extreme, as most MAGA things are.”

Then, in the subsequent days, Biden and his team continued to hammer Republicans in aggressive terms, attacking them as “MAGA” and “ultra MAGA.” Biden even dismissed his predecessor at one point as “the great MAGA king,” reported The Washington Post.

A rallying call of sorts, was a coda issued by the vice-president who added, “I also believe strongly there is another fundamental right that is at stake, the right that all should be entitled to self determination.”

The problem is that in midterms of the past the Dems have taken a shellacking, Clinton in 1994 with 54 seats lost in the House of Representatives and Obama in 2010 and 2014, of 77; with a regain of 12, and with stakes at their highest for a denouement with Biden. 

Presidential historians show that midterm losses, the report card if you will, by the electorate, is now considered a given, as well as a travesty, by the standards of 2010.

To try and change that pattern Harris has used the New Frontier rhetoric of the Kennedy administration, when she said, “There is, at this moment, a time for education, a time for communication, a time for mobilization.”

What will be necessary for this to come together is a calculated campaign with all hands on deck, to show that the calculated politicization of the court: the assault on women's rights is something that is of utmost importance.

Doug Sosnik, a senior political advisor to Bill Clinton, told the Los Angeles Times, earlier in May, that after the ruling, in June could show “the impacts of the court’s actions will affect the lives of more voters, providing Biden with a further opening to sharpen his political narrative.”

Also, from veteran pollster Celinda Lake in that same forum , “This could be game changing in the midterm elections, and changing what happens in the midterms could have a profound effect on how people view the Biden presidency.”

April US Jobs report brought showers of joy

 In one of the more dramatic moments in US job history, the Labor Dept. on Friday announced in the April Jobs Report, that there was a gain of non farm jobs to 428,000, helping to narrow the total jobs lost to the pandemic to a near return of 95 percent, and giving solace to not only the White House, but also to the sagging polls of President Joe Biden as he struggles to gain momentum, after being battered, albeit unfairly, for high inflation, crime, and other social and economic problems.

Unemployment, the marquee number, as we prefer to call it, held steady at 3.6 percent, but the fly in the ointment was the low, nearly unchanged labor force participation, that hung in at  62.2  percent, with a loss of participation of 363,000.

That aside, the report was solid, providing solace to many, ,and an assurance that the US economy, at least for replacing jobs lost to the Covid pandemic, was faster than expected.

Wages were up by 5.5 percent, but those rising wages, while needed to cover inflated costs for the consumer, might also threaten the already fragile inflationary surge that is felt from Main Street, to Wall Street.

President Biden, has noted that “Fighting inflation is a top priority,” for his administration and bolstered by the rate increase by the Federal Reserve Board, might make a difference, as it attempts to cool down the economy, and avoid further inflation, and the recent increase by half a percentage point, is only a path toward more.

The New York Times reported that, “President Biden pointed to the latest data as evidence of “the strongest job creation economy in modern times,” a message the White House is increasingly amplifying ahead of the congressional elections.”

All things being political and with the looming November midterms, the Times also said that, “After the Labor Department report on Friday, Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, put the spotlight on inflation rather than jobs. “Families can’t afford food and groceries, wages can’t keep up with inflation, and Biden’s agenda is only going to make it worse,” she said in a statement.`

Going even further the Times noted that, “Job creation will eventually settle into a slower pace as businesses feel the pinch of soaring inflation and tighter financial conditions, but gains will stay healthy,” said Oren Klachkin, a lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. He forecast that the economy, which has added two million jobs in 2022, would add another two million by year’s end.”

Taking this as good news, at least on the periphery, it’s easy to see that the delicate balance between the Feds, on one hand, trying to pry loose the levers of inflation, is like a house of cards, with only a good gust of wind from an open window, or door, to send it all sailing downward.

Fed Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, said on Wednesday at a press conference,:"So we think through our policies, through further healing in the labor market, higher rates, for example of vacancy filling and things like that, and more people coming back in we'd like to think that supply and demand will come back into balance,". 

Wages were very much on his mind and the 0.3% increase, can be problematic as we said in March,with fears of further fueling inflation, and he added, "And that, therefore, wage inflation will moderate to still high levels of wage increases, but ones that are more consistent with 2% inflation. That's our expectation."

Meanwhile the American consumer, the driver of the US economy is in a party mode, and is spending and traveling, (at least those that can),and the increase in spending on  goods, versus services from the lockdown, can be felt, and major US air carriers are saying “get your tickets now folks, before the prices go up,and up.”

Then there is that pesky crowd of 23 million workers who don’t seem to want to fill employers needs for trained workers, some of who are maybe afraid of covid, or remain unvaccinated, or even those that are still looking for a better opportunity, that they pondered during the lockdown,and business closures. But, whatever the reason, they are not there and don’t seem to want to be there.

Yahoo Finance noted that, “Almost 500,000 workers decided to leave the workforce in April. The large decline is a concerning prospect for businesses that are facing one of the tightest labor markets in decades," Peter Essele, Head of Portfolio Management for Commonwealth Financial Network, said in an email Friday morning.” 

For the record there are 1.9 vacancies for every unemployed worker, but in a report where economists predicted a 300,000 increase the dilemma remains.

Among the higher numbers was that the job gains were led by leisure and hospitality at 78,000, and employment in restaurants and bars rocketed up to 44,000.

Transportation and warehousing shot up to 52,000 to keep up with demand, in an area that was worrisome to many, a few months ago.

The old adage of time healing all wounds may be true, but for the American economy, it’s good news, for now.

March Jobs Report show resiliency but worries of inflation

Resilience has proven to be the key component of the recovery of the US economy from the ravages of the Covid pandemic and Friday’s Jobs Report for March, underscores this, but the fly in the ointment is inflation, and more inflation, buoyed up by higher wages, that have continued to climb higher and higher, than in 40 years, bringing the matter to both a political, and an economic problem.

For those watchers of the marquee number, unemployment fell to 3.6, but again this was accompanied by higher wages, but with a robust increase is leisure and hospitality, retail and manufacturing, which hit, 112,000, 49,000, and 35,000; and, for the latter, a sizeable increase in a field that had been wobbly for some time, has given hope to many observers.

Much of the increase can be attributed to the increase in vaccination availability, if not always increased vaccinations, but enough to bring those who were worried in working in close quarters with others, and this can be attributable to the rise in retail jobs, but also the higher wages that employers are offering to meet demand.

Bringing some people from the sidelines also increased the payrolls, as much as the dollars behind them, and there has been grave concern that increased wages will be passed onto consumers with higher prices, and as we noted last month, many households are finding that they have eaten into their paychecks, especially by working families.

Add the lack of affordable housing in America’s large cities and the problem can become acute, for even high earning families as they face restrictions from established communities preventing expansions into existing housing stock.

The Brookings Institution noted in a recent report the lack of housing being built in certain areas that affects even those with higher wages, and holding professional degrees, and an added strain on the household budget.

For Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, wage increase is very much on his mind, and with some reservation earlier said, “The promise of wages moving up is a great thing,” after last month’s interest climb, but noted that they are “running at levels that are well above what would be consistent with 2 percent inflation — our goal — over time.”

Since then wages have shot up to 5.6 percent, over the past twelve months, higher than what Powell said at that time. And, while some economists in the past have suggested winnowing wages as a leveling tool, for inflation, those are not on the horizon with many employers leaning hard to find the right employee.

This is a hot labor market, say most , and, as The Wall Street Journal noted, "service costs, including rent and other housing expenses, are increasing rapidly."

Digging deeper, continued inflation, as a core problem, as well as recession, are also concerning, with continued demand by more affluent families for services, as well as goods, despite  a continuing problem with bottlenecks still  causing rifts.

This Thursday's CPI report, nervously anticipated by the White House and others with its figure of 8.5% increase made everyone nervous, and the measure of what people will pay for goods and services will hit those larger paychecks even harder, especially for lower income households.

Many observers are mentally pushing Powell to increase the interest rate even further than the one-half point anticipated in early May,

While President Biden extolled the virtues, and benefits of the March Report, noting, “Over the course of my presidency, our recovery has now created 7.9 million jobs — more jobs created over the first 14 months of any presidency in any term ever.  And that’s striking.,” and added, “In fact, there have been only three months in the last 50 years where the unemployment rate in America is lower than it is now.”

Those higher wages, as we have seen are contributors to increased inflation, by some, and for others a cut in their spending lowers the drive of the American economy, creating a conundrum, or a perfect storm for a recession.

Biden’s polls, now in the 40s, are as much a political concern, as an economic one, and with the Republicans nipping at his heels, before the November midterms, Biden is trying to broaden his efforts, in the eyes of the public, and the recent release of oil reserves has been one.

The Hill reported that “The White House on Thursday announced plans for the largest-ever release of oil from the United States’ strategic reserves. 

It said in a fact sheet that it would release an average of 1 million barrels per day for the next six months, resulting in a total release of about 180 million barrels.

In remarks on the plan on Thursday, President Biden called on the oil industry to produce more, while also criticizing industry profits. 

“Enough of lavishing excessive profits on investors and payouts and buybacks when the American people are watching, the world is watching,” Biden said. 

“This is not the time to sit on record profits. It’s time to step up for the good of your country, the good of the world, to invest in immediate production that we need to respond to Vladimir Putin, to provide some relief for your customers, not investors and executives,” he added.

Lael Brainard a Federal Reserve governor and candidate for the position of vice-chair, in remarks before a recent Wall Street Journal panel said, "Inflation is too high, and getting inflation down is going to be our most important task.

Meanwhile the March report also showed a negligible increase in labor force participation at 62.4 percent; and, equally the employment population ratio inches to 0.2 percent, which showed that while some did come from the sidelines, in certain industries, but not enough to move the dial, despite some economist’s assertions.

Black employment was at 6.2, lower than it was a year ago, but still higher than that of whites at 3.2, ,and adult women over age 20, was 3.3, little changed from last month, but better than 5.1 a year ago, with lack of child care, still the reason, for many..

For those with less than a high school degree, it was 5.2 versus 4.3 in February.

For those that were able to complete bachelor’s and professional degrees, many are loaded with debt, and with inflation added to debt repayment, the burden is acute, and many in the Democratic party are urging loan forgiveness, especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer to extend the pause beyond the looming May deadline, and ultimately provide loan cancellation

In a letter to Biden, they along with other lawmakers, said, "The payment pause has been a significant federal investment throughout the pandemic, providing essential relief to millions of families during the economic and public health crisis and saving them an average of $393 per month," the letter asserted, later adding that most borrowers "are not financially prepared to shoulder another bill as they face skyrocketing costs for necessities like food and gas."

“The majority of Americans support you taking action; recent polling shows that over 60% of likely voters support continuing to pause student loan payments and canceling student debt, with support strongest among likely voters of color,” the letter added.

Figures show that at the end of the Fourth Quarter of 2021 is 1.7 trillion dollars, much of it held by Black students who borrow more to attend college, continue to borrow more while enrolled, and have a harder time paying it back, once working.

 

Updated Feb. 14, 2022 at 4:30 p.m. CST

Jackson hearings were a GOP opening salvo for midterms

 The recent Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson had scores of critics bemoaning the severe questioning of the Supreme Court candidate, but despite assurances given to the chair, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, that they would  behave in a professional manner, nothing of the sort occurred, and has been well documented, especially the behavior of Sens. Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, and John Cornyn. 

This became obvious as they hit Jackson with a barrage of questions regarding hot button social topics, or, more accurately wedge issues, such as transgender youth, Critical Race Theory, or what they deemed as such, but this was really about the 2024 midterm election where those issues would be paramount, as the senators played to their base.

Joined by Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri who was hellbent on her so-called leniency in sentencing non-producing child phonography possessors, was a definite dog whistle to the base that Democrats were soft on crime, an old trope, but one that was resurrected by Donald Trump repeatedly during his one term presidency.

The truth was that there were two cases out of seven that bore a closer look and that involved the crucial role of judicial oversight and analysis, and were only two, not the five that Hawley described, but as Factcheck.org pointed out, “Jackson’s sentences in five of the seven cases mentioned by Hawley were consistent with, or above, probation’s recommendation. The reality was that there were two of Jackson’s sentences were below the government and probation’s recommendations.”

Moreover, this bipartisan group “compared Jackson’s average sentence in those seven cases to the government prosecutors, who on average sought a minimum of 71 months. That means Jackson’s average was more than two years below the minimum.”

Underneath the political play was a seemingly frail woman who handled the barrage of questions, accusations, and pointed fingers, in a dignified manner; one that many Black professionals have come to experience, over a lifetime of job interviews, job performances; and, by Black women in particular, who, in recognition, have rallied to her cause.

As we were told, “Watching her brought back every nightmare from my corporate life, and service to the government. My heart bled for her.”

Listening to the audio, it was also clear that Judge Jackson had some delays, hesitation and even sighs, in her answers, or multiple attempts to answer; as she was constantly interrupted, when she tried, especially with Graham and his demand to state her faith, to which she flatly replied, “Protestant.”

Graham, perhaps not realizing, or maybe intentionally not remembering, that there was no religious test for lawmakers, continued on a rampage, as he later revisited a case of sour grapes for California Sen. Diane Feinstein's prior questioning of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, and her conservative Catholicism, with the signature tagline, ‘The dogma lives loudly within you.”

Graham’s level of chicanery was the opening salvo in the battle for control of the House, and Senate in the seven months leading to the midterm elections.

The Republican party, still stinging from the loss of the White House to Joe Biden, is now at a stalemate, in their attempt to regain the presidency as well as to retake the House and overcome the Senate.

As we’ve noted before the road ahead is paved with far less good intentions, than even realized, and earlier efforts had placed abortion on the hot seat, and centered by not only antiabortionists, but wearing the robes of gerrymandering to take states like Texas who had no overwhelming opposition to abortion, as a way to leapfrog over local positions.

Now, racism a la Ted Cruz, and his “racist babies” is tilting in the much maligned and mostly misunderstood realm of Critical Race Theory, which is taught in some colleges, and graduate school programs since the 1970s, but is hardly mainstream, in elementary schools.

That torch was clearly handed off this week to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with his legislative bill, titled the  “Parental Rights in Education” bill [which] prohibits teachers from leading classroom lessons on gender identity or sexual orientation for students in kindergarten through third grade. It also bans such lessons for older students unless they are “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate, “ reported Politico.

DeSantis, of course is positioning himself as a 2024 presidential candidate, in case Trump decides, or is forced to not run; but, this bill and others, takes a relatively new phenomenon and upends it for political gain, thus proving that all politics are local.

While the bill has many moving parts,” it became apparent after the Virginia governor’s race, where Republican Glenn Younkin beat Terry McAuliffe in large part by pushing parental rights in education, that Florida Republicans had tapped into a growing sense of frustration from parents.”

This was sharply evident with Blackburn’s questioning of Jackson, when she asked, “What is a woman?”, and not satisfied with Jackson’s reply that she was not a biologist, the senator feigned genteel shock, and bewilderment.

Finally, the elephant in the room question: abortion, or more specifically Roe v. Wade, and with correspondingly conservative justices on the Supreme Court in recent memory, and with many pro-lifers wanting, and even expecting a reversal, Jackson was again the scapegoat.

The National Catholic Reporter noted that, “Jackson was asked a few times March 22 about her abortion views. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked Jackson, as she has asked the last three court nominees, if Roe v. Wade, the court's 1973 decision legalizing abortion nationwide, was settled law. Jackson, as other nominees before her have done, agreed that the court's decision was a binding precedent.”

Sensing a possible trap, when “Later when she was asked by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., if she has a personal belief on when life begins, she said she did.

"I have a religious belief that I set aside when I am ruling on cases," she told the committee.

With Blackburn rounding the coroner and questioning her for her belief should Roe be overturned, Jackson replied, she replied, as she would “as any other precedent.”

It’s not as if the November midterms are just around the corner, or are they? Graham has since said that he would not vote for Jackson’ ‘I will oppose her and I will vote ‘no’” Graham stated from the Senate floor, and weakened the Biden’s administration for bipartisan support, and to avoid a tie breaker from Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Meanwhile Maine Senator Susan Collins has said that she will vote yes for the judge, but cynics have noted a familiar pattern for her, when the die is cast, and she faces no great political loss, unlike her support for Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court.

As we have noted before, it’s all over but for the fighting.