However without the consumer going back to shops to buy, these greenshots with end up like leaves on trees during the Autumn: brown.
Whilst a lagging indicator, unemployment will be key in this current recession due to its psychological effect on consumers combined with the depth of this recession. Let's review 3 graphs.
Graph 1 shows that the unemployment in the US will be the deepest since WWII. True the pace of employment destruction eased to 216,000 in August vs. 276,000 in July (revised up) and 463,000 in June (revised up). This is however not surprising being nearly 2 years in recession: the pace of 400,000/500,000+ new unemployed a month was not sustainable for very much longer with the stimulus package and money injected. Unemployment rate increased to 9.7%; however including part-time workers who would like to work fulltime and other unemployed that are discouraged to seeking a job, the rate is above 16%!
This recession is however by far the deepest since the early 70s, and will affect the way the baby boomers will consume and reflect on their pensions having lived on debt steroids for 20 years: fear is new; fear of losing their job, fear of losing their home, fear of losing their savings, fear about the social and health coverage, fear about their pension, concern about their children higher education and job, etc.
This results in reconstituting their savings (up to 6.9%) after having been sub zero 3 years ago. However, this steep increase is mainly in the form of debt repayment (and not in liquid savings accounts) and is helped by deflationary pressures. it does not bold well for consumption in the coming months.
The third chart illustrates that the current job market has suffered losses that are more than six times as much as average (20 months after the beginning of a recession). In fact, if this were an average recession/job loss cycle, the number of jobs would have begun to increase five months ago...
Whilst at odd with many commentators, I am still convinced that we are due for not so nice surprises on the economic front by year-end, Q1 2010 at the latest, hence my view of an equity market correction.Sources:
Bureau of Labor Statistics
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
U.S. Department of Commerce
http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/Nipa-Frb.asp?Freq=Qtr
Prof. Michael Hudson
Debt Deflation Arrives:What the Jump in the U.S. Savings Rate Means
http://www.michael-hudson.com/articles/financial/090630ODebtDeflation_SavingsRate.html#_ftn2
The New York Times
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/comparing-this-recession-to-previous-ones-job-losses/
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