Abortion is the issue for GOP, or is it?

The recent court ruling against the medication abortion drug mifepristone has created a firestorm of protest among the drug’s manufacturer and women across the nation, as this unprecedented ruling from the judicial bench on a two-decade old approval from the US Federal Drug  Administration seems to be the latest attack after the Dobbs decision that vacated the right to abortion enshrined in the decades old decision of Roe v. Wade.

Moral implications aside, this latest move is still part and parcel of the burgeoning culture wars between the ultra conservative right and the liberal progressive wing in American political life, but supporting abortion in political life goes much deeper for the Republican party, as it attempts to woo and sustain votes, especially in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

The widespread coverage in the media has sparked debates, and legal maneuvers, that give a sustained voice to the issue, yet the depth of concern, supported by supporters of former President Donald Trump, is not the lone voice, as April’s 6-week abortion ban supported by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis gives it a further push. 

Or, does it? 

Abortion rights has the support of both President Biden, and the Democratic Party, and they have campaigned on this issue as have other lawmakers across the country, and even some ardent supporters of Trump, having been defeated, want to back away from it, fearing that the GOP might lose another presidential race.

One issue that has the support of many, on both the extreme right and the middle right, are anti-trans bills, whether to ban gender affirming care, for those under 18, or banning transgender boys and girls from playing school athletics with the gender they identify and the issue is red hot and will only increase over time as a winnable issue for both the White House, and statehouse races.

Running almost parallel to the supposed teaching of Critical Race Theory in elementary and high schools, the two are hoped to secure a stronger base of support for the right, and also to try and regain the support of suburban women who left them over abortion access.

Reaching back into the past, especially the tumultuous 1960s, the area of gender rights and human sexuality has run the gamut from the advent of the Pill, and then Women's Lib and Gay Liberation, which seem like a quaint relic of the past, along with miniskirts and bell bottoms.

America’s near obsession with gender, and by extension sexuality, is an issue that can wax, and wane, and even withsame-sex marriage.  A 2022 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute, (non-partisan) showed that “68 percent of respondents favored allowing same-sex couples to marry, including 49 percent of Republicans,” according to The New York Times.

The Times also reported that the same-sex ruling by the Supreme Court was a low point for those social conservatives and mourned the loss of fundraising dollars, and they quoted Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, who said, “we knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about,” and that issue is the burgeoning area of transgender rights , and the rise of young people identifying as trans.

There are now 20 Republican led states that have gone down the path of bathroom access, medically affirming treatments, and the aforementioned athletic participation.

The historic lead was the 2021 success of a veto override by the Republican led Arkansas legislature successfully banning “transition medication or surgery.”

Next up was DeSantis who signed a bill preventing transgender girls from playing K-12 sports,” but recognized a move to shore up his presidential aspirations.

Thursday the US House of Representatives passed a vote banning transgender girls from school sports. The vote passed strictly on partisan lines, and would change the definition of sex to be based “solely on a person’s genetics at birth,” reported The Washington Post, with its target on transgendered women and girls, and a recent poll conducted by the Post and The University of Maryland found a majority of Americans “opposed in high school, college, or professional women’s sports.”

All of this considered, and circling back to abortion, can anyone say that it’s a dead issue for the GOP? Not with uncertainty say most observers of Capitol Hill, and the Supreme Court, and certainly Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, US District Attorney of North Texas, who brought the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs, that argues that there are dangerous side effects to the drug, is an ardent foe of abortion rights.

Also on the agenda is the ant-science stance that the judge’s injunction and statements that there are effects of the drug, despite rigorous study by the FDA, and it’s not hard to see that by extension this could further amplify the anti-vax community who now have a prominent advocate running for the presidency in the person of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and some are even suggesting that he might be a vice- presidential candidate for Trump in 2024.

Dr. Jeremy Levin, chief executive of Ovid Therapeutics told the Times that the Texas lawsuit could not only eat away at the authority of the FDA, it, “much more importantly, it opens it up to a political determination of what a medicine is or isn’t and that is deeply horrific for vaccines, Alzheimer drugs, all the others.”

If successful, what would this lawsuit, on its way to the US Supreme Court, with a stay ending on Friday at midnight, do for a vaccine for the next epidemic?

March Jobs, CPI, and a mixed bag

The March Jobs Report issued by the US Labor Dept, last Friday didn’t deliver quite the eggs needed for a sunny economic Easter, but it did offer some rays of hope for both the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and President Biden, especially as he is expected to soon announce his reelection campaign.

While jobs in the nation are plentiful, for those that want them, employers have slowed the pace of hiring from the earlier frenzied search, and the plentiful benefits of hiring bonuses, and PTO have tapered off, despite a slight downturn in the unemployment rate, and there are more people returning to work, from the sidelines, than previously seen.

Of course, the elephant in the room is inflation, and the decrease in hiring, no matter how small offers a light at the end of the tunnel for Powell, but not enough to not consider raising the interest rate again, in May; which the odds among economists for another quarter point increase is 67 percent favoring.

Still there are those that are optimistic, and one might be Michael Pugliese an economist at Wells Fargo, who told The New York Times, “I think it’s very clear interest rates are starting to play a role . . . Some of it is just normalizing. You’re obviously not going to be able to sustain the job growth we’ve seen over the past year or two indefinitely.”

The numbers: 236,000 nonfarm jobs were created in March, and the unemployment rate decreased to 3.5 percent, but there was a mixed bag in the following areas: transportation and warehousing, was little changed at 10,000, but warehousing and storage decreased by 12,000; retail, where little had changed, there was a slight decrease of 15,000.

With those numbers the mixed side, there was an increase of prime working age workers, those aged 25 to 54 years old, at 83.1 percent, but some economists debate the significance.

President Biden said, when the report was released, “This is a good jobs report for hard working Americans,” but he added, “there is still more work to do '' to reduce prices that have hit the wallets of many Americans.

Chicago based Challenger, Christmas and Gray reported that there were 89,703 job cuts in March, with 15 percent in February. But the most layoffs are in the tech sector, totaling 168,243, and according to techcrunch.com, Meta, the parent company of Google, laid off 10,000 with another 5,000 open slots canceled; and Microsoft with 10,000 laid off, in a team that was dedicated to AI (artificial intelligence) work.

Adding to this turmoil, Indeed laid off 15 percent of its tech workers, at 2,200, and Accenture 19,000, or 2.5 percent of its workforce.

On the brighter side, job gains included leisure and travel at 72,000, education and health at 65,000, and government workers at 42,000.

Coming from the sidelines, perhaps because of inflation, was a slight bump, not statistically significant, in labor force participation, from previous months, now at  62.6 percent contrasted with 62.5 in February.

Good news is that the employment rate for Black Americans has hit a record low of 5 percent. And, while much of that, and other figures, might be limited by future lower wage growth, which reached a high of over 3.2 percent between January and March, but averaged 4.2 over the last 12 months, (in March average hourly earnings were greater than 0.3 percent), but this still brings good news to those, ”last hired, first fired.”

All eyes turned on Wednesday to the Consumer Price Index, (which measures the prices that consumers pay for goods, and services), to give more detail on another major rising cost, shelter, making many Americans worry about how to house themselves, affordably. And, what we saw was that housing costs increased, despite an offset at the gas pump.

Stripping out the volatile cost of food and energy, the CPI rose to 0.4 percent, and just behind shelter was insurance, 1.2 percent increase,airline fares at 4.0 percent, household furnishings and new vehicles.

Taking a birdseye view the report showed an all time rate of 5.6 percent, year over year with the month of March, without food and energy.

The takeaway is that this report showed the rise in consumer prices was at its slowest since May of 2021, with inflation increasing by 0.1 percent over the last month, and 5.0 percent over last March.

Many economists had predicted 0.2 percent, and the reduction was seen as a sign of progress in the fight against inflation, even with the 5.0 percent increase in housing, and this pause, as some are calling it, is an indicator, along with the March jobs report for the upcoming Fed’s monetary policy moves.

Ending the economic news last week, there is is still the specter of recession for some bankers,and even consumers, and as we have noted before, some seem to gain satisfaction that it will happen, and in a recent Fortune commentary, Murray Sabrin said that it was inevitable, and citing as an indicator, the inverted yield curve, the bane of undergraduate economics, and its focus on “the difference between the 10 year Treasury note and the three month T Bill.”

While not always a perfect indicator, Sabrin seems focused on it, while admitting some curveballs in previous years, (in 1998) when the expected “short term rates rise above the long term rate a recession begins about a year later.”

Tech layoffs may be the tipping point in his prediction, but no one has a crystal ball to state when it can happen. Or, as a saying goes, “it ain’t over, till it's over.”

February Jobs Report is a mixed blessing

Friday’s Jobs Report for February released by the US Labor Dept. gave a mix of numbers, some redolent fears of recession, and an edginess about inflation still haunting the nation's economy. 

The good news, for some, was that the US still has a healthy job market with the results of 311,000 non farm jobs, when it was expected that there would be 225,000; but somewhat encouraging was that wages only increased by 0.2 percent, with an average of only 3.6 percent over the last three months,encouraging news that the Federal Reserve’s efforts of taming inflation with increased rate hikes is working.

Those numbers are still higher than what the Fed would like to see as it balances its inflation toolbox to lessen the numbers and increase the unemployment rate, to lower prices. But, on  the consumer side, there are fears that taking this robust market in hand could easily lead to a job change to get higher earnings to meet inflationary prices, especially at the supermarket.

When Jerome Powell, president of the Fed appeared on Capitol Hill this past week he told lawmakers that, “we have covered a lot of ground and the full efforts of our tightening so far are yet to be fruitful,” and added that there is still much work to do battling inflation.

Meeting those remarks was Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who at their meeting at the Senate Banking Committee replied by stating, “Once the economy starts shedding jobs, it’s kind of like an empty runaway train. It’s really hard to stop.”

Those fears are justified, but on the employer side there is a reluctance to cut jobs since consumer confidence has transitioned from the pandemic driven goods, enjoyed at home, to services such as travel and dining out, with a corresponding increase in leisure and hospitality to 105,000 jobs.

On the other hand they are not afraid to deplete their once bloated inventories and the truckers that delivered them, and in February, those jobs were decreased to 22,000; and, on the tail end the information tech people, needed to manage the flow of commerce, was cut to 25,000, leaving many to wonder what the future will hold.

Added to the conundrum is that there are approximately two jobs available for every job seeker, and this has nudged the dial for some to seek employment, or maybe come back from the ranks of the retired, and that number increased to 419,000 with a labor force participation rate of 62.5 from January’s figure of 62.4.

The New York TImes reported that there was an 83.1 increase in the working population aged 25 to 54, prime working years, but again, as employers try to find the right mix of stay, or leave on the balance sheets, those jobs might be risky as Powell increases the rates, from its current baseline of 5.1 percent.

All eyes are on the upcoming CPI report,to be released on Tuesday, and this closely watched inflationary can show the road ahead; but couple that with the next Open Market meeting of the Feds on March 21st and 22nd, might be a nail biter for many.

A fly in the ointment, for some, is that profits have ballooned, up 17 cents on the dollar from a previous figure of 12 cents in the last decade, despite creating concern in some areas, it does allow for greater job security, at least for now.

January Jobs report hits the moon with huge numbers

Shock and awe was the reaction to Friday’s jobs report for January from the US Department of Labor as the news of 517,000 non farm jobs spread across the media, and jaws dropped from the halls of academia to the mythical Main Street, as they tried to absorb the huge number, when only, at best 182,000 were expected, accompanied by a 3.4 unemployment rate, one not seen since 1969.

President Biden was ecstatic saying that his brand worked, and worked well, and gave a smidgen of the joy he will give in his State of the Union address on Feb. 7. This follows on the heels of many legislative sucesses in recent weeks, and will no doubt be a part of his announcement of his relection campaign.

As he stated, “I’m happy to report that the state of the union and the state of the economy is strong.”

There was however some wailing and nashing of teeth in the marbled corridors of the Federal Reserve building, where Chairman Jerome Powell, already struggling to battle inflation through a series of rate hikes, will see that the road is still uphill in efforts to tame prices, despite a glimmer of light with lower automobile prices, and gasoline.

Despite more jobs for Americans, and wages, there was a slight drop in consumer spending, with a transtion from spending on goods to services, as they tired of bread making machines at home, in favor of dining out, even beyond their geographic locals. But, for Powell this is not enough and the recent rate hike of a quarter of a percentage point to a target range of 4.5%, 4.75% may have further affect.

The nations employers in some areas have tried to mitigate any looming layoffs, and balance sheet deficits, by trimming benefits, as they also trimmed qualifications in some open slots to attract workers; and, that seems to be working, but only time can tell.

Powell did note that his efforts at “disinflation that we have seen so far has not come at the expense of a weaker labor market.”

When postioned against layoffs in the tech, finance, housing and media sectors Friday’s huge numbers seem to have unerved some economists, in this tight labor market. And, some including Lael Brainard, Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve, noted recently, that the calibrating efforts we’ve discussed in prior months, could swing too far, and a time lag may not show the consequnces of being too aggresive, till too late.

Ergo last week’s small increase from the Feds, the smallest in eleven months. Let caution be the path ahead, say many economists, versus the hole plugging that was seen last year.

What has hardly changed, ironically, is the rate of labor force particiaption, which has barely budged, and is currently at 62.4, showing the increasing willngness for many baby boomers to remain retired, not even transitoning to become Walmart greeters, wielding a yellow marker for customer reciepts.

For women there are still issues of child care, and in two person households, sacrifice may be the watchword. In the absence of government funded child care, this is a reality that must be embraced.

Nevertheless the US economy grew at 2.1 percent by the end of last year, and nearly all jobs lost to the Covid pandemic have been restored.

Of course, no picture of the nation’s economy would be complete without a discussion of wages, and that shows a moderation of 0.3 percent from December of 2022, and 4.4 percent over the course of 2022.

Taking a look at that growth, broadly speaking we can see 128,000 in leisure and hospitality, including bars and restaurants, with demands for meals and drinks have begun to return to normal pattern, as well as air travel, despite recent snafus with Southwestern Airlines and stranded passengers.

Local government employmnt, also improved, especailly on the state level as seen with the end of striking employees at the University of California schools.

Temporary workers got more assignments and their ranks swelled to 26,000.

Black employment steadied at 5.4 percent with a bump from Black women, but the gains were relative to the higher unemployment in that group, and taking a glance at the end of 2022, there was an increase among Black men of 5.3 percent, with women it was a decrease of 4.7 percent.

There has also been a seesaw efect with a decrease of 5.5 percent in Spetember of 2019, and in November of 101`, thee was a decrease for Black women of 5 percent, and now while there is praise for improvement, Black employment, overall, is higher when compared to whites, Asians and Hispanics.

Kate Bahn, director of labor market policy and chief econmist at the Washington Center of equitable Growth told CNBC that “Sometimes when folks see improvement, they see it as positve, but the disparities  are stil there.

Let’s take a closer look at the elephant in the room, inflation, as fears continue, despite the absence of a recession, which many curiously want to see; but, as we see that some price increases were temporay, and that the effects of supply chain weakness has abated, along with the early energy and gas increases that  have leveled of since the early days of the war in Ukraine. 

Implict in some of the chair’s remarks is a desire for a soft landing, that some observers rejected last year, that incudes a mild recession, but optimists such as Aaron Sojouner told NPR, “Inflation has come down but there’s not a recession.”

While there is still a hard slog ahead, we can all be thankful for that.

December 2022 Jobs report is Deja Vu

If the last few US Dept of Labor Jobs Report are beginning to give the reader a sense of Deja Vu, then they won’t be disappointed with the December 2022 report released on Friday that showed that the US economy is still growing jobs, albeit at a slightly lower rate than November at 223,000, that did shift the gears downward, but not enough to halt the rate increases by the Federal Reserve Bank to defuse inflation.

Correspondingly the unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, at its prior low before the pandemic. But, as economists have noted, fears of recession are not apparent, as Chris Varvares, cohead of US economics for S&P Global Market Intelligence told The New York Times, “If the U.S. economy is slipping into recession nobody told the labor market.”

The good news for the Feds is that their actions are beginning to show promise, with predictions that unemployment will rise to 4.6 percent in a further move to cut inflation.

There have been some gains in labor force participation, to 62.3, but that hardly moved the dial as we have seen that for some time.

Some alarm in the areas of big shops such as Amazon which is laying off 18,000 workers but some speculate that with the massive hiring that was done when the demand for goods tripled during the pandemic lockdown, that with a corresponding move towards service, rather than goods, this crash is inevitable.

Temporary services are taking a hit cutting 35,000 jobs, but may be a cautionary measure than an actual reflection of nervous employers, since they are not direct hires, and can be brought back, if needed in the future, and can show some gains on the balance sheet to sooth investor nerves.

Sales Force the cloud based software developer has laid off 8,000 employees at best guess,1o percent of its  employees, but will reflect only a partial savings on the final quarter of $800 million to $1 billion being recorded; a bit of finangling allowed to spread the loss across other quarters.

Attribution is given to a global downturn for the change in consumer habits rom the pandemic lockdown when vast swaths of office workers, used their home offices, rather than their corporate office spaces, and an overestimate of aggressive sales said Chief Executive Marc Benioff,in a move that most analysts say is a well calculated gamble to salvage profits.

There are still many employers that are anxious to find the right person for the right jobs and this is what is still fueling most of the gains in the American workforce.

That may not satisfy Fed Chair Jerome Powell who said not only does the Fed have more work to do, but, “we’ve continually expected to make faster progress on inflation than we have,” this past Friday, after the report was released.

What’s left? Another 5.1 raise by the end of 2023, which is another three quarter point adjustment, and equals a half percentage point higher increase than previously planned.

Powell also said to expect rates to remain high for some time, and while scant consolation to the stock market, it creates fear of layoffs, as many have cautioned, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren as we reported last month, but most economical forecasts say that pain is inevitable, as the Times opined, “central bankers believe it is necessary to prevent price increases from beginning to feed on themselves.”

What no one wants is a repeat of the 1970s where inflation remained for years and the added oil price from global prices shot up prices, and the Fed pushed rates to almost 20 percent and unemployment to double digits for a cool down..

U.S. Economy: A Tale of Two Views

Last Wednesday’s news that the Federal Reserve Bank issued a half-point less than prior interest rate hikes brought some relief to economists and lawmakers, and the White House, and then the news that inflation was lessening brought even more relief, but then as the camera pulled in closer, that sense of optimism dimmed since employment in the US is still red hot and employers are in a bidding war to hire the most talent, and they are doing that by increasing wages, a direct path to higher prices for the consumer, something that has worried the Fed for some time.

The US is still adding 200,000 jobs per month, and that is part of the problem, and it was a concern for the November Jobs Report, and may still be one for December’s but to add to the mix there was the November CPI data, released a few days prior by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, softer than expected by some traders and financial market analysts, and was described as a “game changer”, according to Marketwatch.com..

Cost of living showed strength and rose only by 0.1% on a monthly basis, which was accompanied by a stock and bond rally, and as reported, “November’s annual headline CPI rate fell to 7.1% from 7.7% in the prior month, marking the lowest level since the end of 2021, after peaking at 9.1% in June.”

“We were all expecting a softer report, but this is pretty significant and makes people question what the Fed is going to do moving forward,” said John Farawell, head of municipal trading at bond underwriter Roosevelt & Cross in New York. “We had been thinking 50- to 75-basis-point rate hikes, but now know that Wednesday’s move will be 50 and the one after that may be 25 in February,” he said via phone to their reporter.

Taking a quick glance at that good news, The New York Times reported: “Fed officials voted unanimously at the conclusion of their two-day meeting to raise borrowing costs by half a percentage point, a pullback after four consecutive three-quarter point increases. Their policy rate is now set to a range of 4.25 to 4.5 percent, the highest it has been since 2007.”

That however does not mean that their cuts will go away, since those pesky prices have to be dealt with, still, and includes higher borrowing prices as a target, as the Times stressed.

“We’ve continually expected to make faster progress on inflation than we have,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said during his news conference after the release. He described the Fed’s new expectations as: “slower progress on inflation, tighter policy, probably higher rates, probably held for longer, just to get you to the kind of restriction that you need to get inflation down to 2 percent.”

Recession fears are also a concern, and while part of inflation fighting,  he said, in response, “We have more work to do.”

That decision by the Federal Markets Open Committee to raise interest points by only 50 basis points, “a step down from the 75 basis points seen over the previous four meetings. Of course, 50 basis points is still a historically large increase, and we still have some ways to go, “ Powell reiterated.

“The Fed’s higher rates are expected to cool the economy notably next year. Central bankers predict that unemployment will jump to 4.6 percent from 3.7 percent now, and then remain elevated for years. Growth is expected to be much weaker in 2023 than previously anticipated, pushing the economy to the brink of a recession.”

Those predictions are for three more quarter-point incremental increases, and for 2023, a 5.1 % increase upending the 3.15 percent in September.

All of these moves, aggressive, not so, or even in between, can take their toll on US workers, of grave concern for lawmakers, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who said, “He’s pushing too hard to get more people fired because he thinks that this is one way to help bring down inflation.” in her remarks to HuffPost, and added, `But it’s sure painful for the families who lose their jobs.”

As noted earlier, while rate increases are the tool to reduce inflation, the balancing act calibration is tricky, and their moves to slow spending though inflation rate hikes means that money can be more expensive to borrow, but if spending slows too much, there will be layoffs, mostly affecting lower-income families as Huffpost noted.

That tip into recession brought a reply, of sorts, by Powell, who said, “I don’t think anyone knows whether we’re going to have a recession or not, and if we do, whether it’s going to be a deep one or not . . . . “It’s not knowable.”

“The central bank’s aggressive stance comes as central bankers worry that inflation will remain high for years to come. Though price increases are already beginning to moderate from the four-decade highs they reached this summer, the Fed’s economic projections make clear that policymakers think it is going to take years to return inflation fully to their 2 percent goal”, opined the Times.

Going a step further, we have this: “And though the Fed expects to keep rates above 5 percent through the end of 2023, investors are still betting that the central bank will stop raising rates sooner and begin cutting them earlier,” bringing market fears.

“Financial markets want black and white, and you’re working in shades of gray,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, explaining that investors are not internalizing the Fed’s nuanced message,” reported the Times.

To make matters worse, “That divergence could be a problem for central bankers. Higher stock prices and lower market-based interest rates make money cheaper and easier to borrow, helping to stimulate the economy — the opposite of the Fed’s goal as it tries to lower inflation.”

 

 

November US Jobs Report singing the same tune

At the risk of sounding like a well-worn record, the November Jobs Report released by the US Labor Dept. on Friday is a repeat of prior months with its surge of jobs and employers scrambling to find the right talent, and willing to pay more to get them. 

The problem is that this pattern has steadied the ladder on inflation and increased the efforts of the Federal Reserve Bank to tamp down inflation with increased interest rates, and in what seems like an upward climb for them, it has replaced the earlier doom and gloom reports of recession.

Fridays numbers showed an increase of 263,000 non farm jobs, much higher than the expected 200,000 most economists predicted, and unemployment remains predictable at 3.7 percent, (which is also pushing up wages) against a background of an added jobs in 2022, according to The Hill, “more than it did in the economic boom years” up the Covid pandemic. In fact there have been “two open jobs for each unemployed American as recently as September according to Labor Dept. data.”

Increased earnings are another headache for the Fed, and Chairman Jerome Powell has noted as such, over the last few reports, and earnings increased by 0.6 percent in November and reached 5.1 percent for the past 12 months.

Backing into the detail, it was also reported, “The biggest news in this release is large upward revisions in wage growth for September and October and a big number for November,” Jason Furman, who chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) under former President Obama, said on Twitter.

“This is the second time this year we’ve seen [revisions] like this dashing the hopes that maybe nominal [wage] growth was cooling,” he continued.

Powell has noted “To be clear, strong wage growth is a good thing,” in remarks at The Brookings Institution, but cautioned, “But for wage growth to be sustainable, it needs to be consistent with 2 percent inflation, ”a mandate for the Fed, besides full employment.

He recently added this warning: they have “a long way to go” before inflation will fall back to pre-pandemic levels.

While the labor force participation rate has flatlined, it has also become a significant factor for employers to try and tease them from the sidelines with sign on bonuses, and such, but for many, especially women, lacking adequate childcare, they are forced to stay on those sidelines, along with those workers who took advantage of the Covid lockdown to evaluate their jobs, often moving away from jobs that require long hours on their feet, or in long distance transportation jobs.

There are some bright spots: leisure and hospitality with increases of 5.8 percent, and an increase with health care and hospitality. But, those were offset by losses in transportation and warehousing which dropped 15,000 jobs, and retail with a 30,000 job loss, totaling by 62,000 since August.

Retailers were also gearing up, by decreasing holiday hiring by some cautious employers, such as Macy’s and Walmart, fearing that customers were going to face higher prices, and spend less.

Money.com noted that, “Folks are expected to feel "sticker shock" when they go shopping for holiday gifts because prices have risen with inflation, says Andrew Flowers, a labor economist for recruitment advertising company Appcast. Companies are concerned Americans will react to these price hikes by spending less money, impacting their bottom lines and reducing the need for extra staff.

“Consumers are going to face a holiday season with higher prices,” Flowers says. “Inflation, and all the knock-off effects of inflation, are going to likely slow consumer spending this season, and whether it's retailers or warehouse employers, they are going to have to respond.”

There are others that see a brighter light with increased consumer spending, but they are in the minority, and with that spending as the main driver of the US economy, this is an area of concern.

Some sectors are shedding employees, said The Wall Street Journal, “with many growing nervous about the economic outlook,” as they see consumers transitioning from spending on goods to services; restaurants in particular. Some see a reduction than layoffs, noted Guy Berger, principal economist at LinkedIn.

Revisions to figures along with the household survey might show less hiring than payroll figures suggest, opined the Journal.

The reaction from the White House was jubilant, and President Biden said, “We continue to create jobs — lots of jobs,” he told reporters before signing a bill to avert a nationwide rail strike. “We’re in a situation where things are moving — moving in the right direction.”