David A. Rosenberg Chief Economist & Strategist drosenberg@gluskinsheff.com + 1 416 681 8919
June 5, 2009 Economics Commentary
MARKET MUSINGS & DATA DECIPHERING
Coffee with Dave
WHERE PERCEPTION DIVERGES FROM REALITY The headline nonfarm payroll figure came in above expectations at -345,000 in May — the consensus was looking for something closer to -525,000. The markets are treating this as yet another in the line-up of ‘green shoots’ because the decline was less severe than it was in April (-504,000), March (-652,000), February (-681,000) and January (-741,000). However, let’s not forget that the fairy tale Birth-Death model from the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) added 220,000 to the headline — so adjusting for that, we would have actually seen a 565,000 headline job decline. At least initially, this skew to the data is being readily dismissed. To Mr. Market, this was not a case of employment declining 345,000, it was a case of the rate of change improving by 159,000 from April and by 496,000 from the weakest point of the cycle back in January. So, what Mr. Market is doing is extrapolating this so-called improvement into the future and drawing the conclusion that employment is going to start to turn positive on a ‘firstderivative’ basis by August, at which time we will all be bidding au revoir to the recession. NOT SO FAST Changes in the second-derivative only take you so far. As an example, the best nonfarm payroll report during the expansion was the 380,000 print on November 2005. We never came close to such a tally again, the data began to moderate after that point, and yet the recession didn’t begin for another two years. So this view that we have come off the -741,000 nonfarm payroll result in January and sequentially improved from what was a horrific credit-collapseinduced slide, by no means suggests that a cycle of renewed job creation is only a few months away. Just as it would have been premature to call for the end of the economic expansion in November 2005 at the peak of the job gains, it is very likely a mistake in the other direction to be calling for the end to the downturn just because employment is no longer declining at the same awful pace it was at the turn of the year. Just as the recession officially began on the first negative nonfarm payroll reading in December 2007, the recession will officially end when it turns positive — not just “less negative”. That could be several quarters away, in our view.
Nonfarm payrolls came in above expectations, falling ‘only’ 345,000 in May (the consensus was closer to -525,000) …
… but not so fast, the birth-death model added 220,000 to the headline, so the number could be closer to -565,000
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June 5, 2009 – Coffee with Dave
LET’S PUT THE PAYROLL DATA INTO PERSPECTIVE We have to put the data into perspective. Before the Lehman collapse, when equities were in a moderate bear market and bonds in a moderate bull market, the worst nonfarm payroll result we saw was -175,000. We don’t seem to recall too many pundits rejoicing over employment declines at that time, which were basically half of what was just posted in May. Moreover, the worst nonfarm payroll number in the 2001 recession — right after 9-11 — was -325,000; and before that, at the depths of the 1990-91 recession, the worst report showed a -306,000 print. So basically, what we saw today was a number consistent with a deep recession — just not quite as deep as the near-6% at an annual rate contraction we saw in the first quarter. It is difficult to rejoice over an employment data that is consistent with real GDP still declining anywhere from a 2% to 4% at an annual rate. Now here we are, close to nine months after the Lehman collapse, and we are still printing employment numbers that are double what they were before pre-Lehman. That is the bigger picture. Moreover, the internals of today’s report, in a word, were awful. Not only are businesses still cutting jobs but they are also reducing the hours that their employees are working; the private workweek hit a new record low of 33.1 hours (from 33.2 hours in April). So, total labour input was much weaker than the headline payroll suggests and this is vividly illustrated in the aggregate-hours worked index, which fell 0.7% MoM and something ‘green shoot’ advocates will not like discuss since this was actually worse than the 0.3% MoM drop in April; this takes the three-month trend to a -8.6% annual rate. Think about that for a moment because what goes into GDP is total hours worked and productivity — so the latter better continue to hang in there or else we are going to be seeing some nasty output data going forward that may well take Mr. Market by surprise. Put another way, if companies had held hours worked constant in May instead of cutting them, to achieve the total labour input they achieved last month would have required — get this — a 927,000 payroll cut. ‘Green shoot’ indeed. WHAT ABOUT THE HOUSEHOLD SURVEY Not much was made of the Household Survey, which showed a 437,000 job decline in May (-661,000 for those under the ripe old age of 55) and a further rise in the unemployment rate, to 9.4% in May from 8.9% in April and 7.2% at the turn of the year. The unemployment rate is now at its highest level since August 1983, and there now seems to be little doubt that it will take out the post-WWII peak of 10.8% posted in late 1982. Recall that in these painful postbubble cycles, the jobless rate continues to rise in the ensuing jobless recoveries —the recession ended in March 1991 but the unemployment rate did not peak until June 1992; and while the last recession may have ended in November 2001, the jobless rate peaked in June 2003. It has become fashionable to call the unemployment rate a ‘lagging indicator’, which is true in a classic garden-variety inventory-induced recession, but in a credit cycle it is actually much closer to a coincident indicator since it is highly correlated to consumer delinquency rates.
The internals of today’s nonfarm report, in a word, were awful
The unemployment rate is now at its highest level since August 1993
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June 5, 2009 – Coffee with Dave
In any event, even the 9.4% unemployment rate, as bad as that number is, sugar-coats the situation. The number of full-time jobs shrank 407,000 last month, dominating the decline in the Household Survey, and there were 174,000 people who got pushed into part-time work because of the weak economy (not by choice) and that represented a whopping 26% increase at an annual rate. So, when you consider what the workweek did, and the relentless shift towards part-time employment, as well as other measures of labour market slack, the underlying jobless rate (the U-6 measure) rose to an all-time high of 16.4% from 15.8% in April and 9.8% a year ago. Like any other market, the labour market responds to the vagaries of supply and demand. When I went to university in the early 1980s, we learned that there could never be a deflation because of wage rigidities in the labour market. Well, it may be time to rip those chapters out of the Econ 101 textbooks. The really critical number in today’s report was the 0.2% decline in average weekly earnings — the proxy for wage-based personal income — which was the second decline in the last three months. Since December, the YoY trend has been sliced in half, to a mere 1.2% rate. This is certainly going to anchor a soft set of income and sales data through the month of June, and these are two ingredients that go into the National Bureau of Economic Research’s (NBER) recession-determination call. Another ingredient is production and considering that factory payrolls sank 156,000 and that the manufacturing workweek slipped from 39.5 hours to 39.3 hours in May, it looks as though output fell as much as 1.0% in May (and this is with a bounce-back in the automotive area). This in turn suggests that the manufacturing capacity utilization rate will have made a new record low for the fifth month in a row — to just above 65% from 65.7% in April. In a nutshell, what the data today told us was that the degree of slack or excess capacity in both the labour and product markets widened even further in May. Recession pressures may well be subsiding next to the sharp contraction earlier this year; however, deflation risks are not only lingering but in fact are intensifying. We still believe that the V-shape recovery hopes that have underpinned the equity market while undermining the bond market in recent months will inevitably prove to be under water.
Like any other market, the labour market responds to the vagaries of supply and demand
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June 5, 2009 – Coffee with Dave
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June 5, 2009 – Coffee with Dave
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