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“We’ve never had anything like it,” Allen Sinai, chief economist and strategist at Decision Economics, told the Wall Street Journal. “A collapse and then a boom-like pick-up… is without historical parallel.”
Several factors back Sinai’s claim, the WSJ noted in a 3 June analysis:
- This year through May, 830,000 new businesses were formed that intend to employ more than one person, 21 percent more than the same period in 2006, the previous record.
- Household debt burden as a percentage of income is at its smallest since 1980;
- Household savings reached an annualized rate of $2.8 trillion in April;
- Since February 2020, just before the economy crashed, home prices have risen 14 percent and the Dow is up 18 percent.
Recoveries in 1991 and 1992, 2001, and after the Great Recession created fewer jobs; unemployment dogged the economy for years.
Lingering unemployment is typical after a recession, with jobless workers waiting for cautious employers to test the economy by rehiring slowly.
This time, jobs are begging for workers, and the May jobs report showed the greatest hiring gains in hospitality, a sector often the last to recover after an economic downturn.
For every 100 people vaccinated, 12 get new jobs, according to a study from the University of Minnesota.
And, of course, the unprecedented trillions pumped into the financial and economic systems by the Feds and Washington also limited the 2020 crash’s impact.
Congress sent three separate cash payments to almost every adult, paid businesses to keep workers on the payroll, and added a federal weekly unemployment payment that equaled the average state stipend.
At the same time, the U.S. Federal Reserve flooded markets with cheap money, dropped interest rates near zero, and bought nearly $3 trillion worth of government and corporate bonds.
Money to Burn?
The household savings rate of $2.8 trillion in April was more than twice as much as before the 2020 collapse and far outpacing the $784 billion in June 2009 – about $909 billion in current dollars – during the Great Recession, according to the WSJ.
However, as we have detailed, the snap-back recovery has created problems as quickly as opportunities.
The sudden demand for everything from copper to kitchen appliances has surprised suppliers, creating shortages at a time when many businesses have not re-staffed. As a result, supply chains face bottlenecks, a shortage of goods, shortage of transport, and shortage of workers among them.
TRENDPOST: The consequence of high demand and material shortages has been sudden inflation, most recently sprinting the CPI index up 0.9 percent in April, the most dramatic one-month gain since 1982.
Also, instead of flocking to jobs, as we have detailed, many workers hang back out of fear of the COVID virus or because, for some, their combined weekly federal and state unemployment benefits pay more than working a 40-hour week at $15 an hour.
From April 2020 through March this year, the number of applicants per available job dropped from five to 1.2, the WSJ found, far fewer than during either of the last two recessions.
We have pointed to a lack of child care keeping women out of the workforce; the number of workers in child care centers remains 30 percent less than it was before 2020’s crisis.
Also, more than half of white-collar job-seekers want to work from home while only 10 percent of relevant jobs offer that option, economist Rubeela Farooqi at High Frequency Economics pointed out in a comment quoted by The New York Times.
About 44 percent of workers able to do so want to continue to work remotely from now on, a recent ZipRecruiter survey found.
TREND FORECAST: As we have been forecasting, the more people that work from home, the further commercial real estate will fall.
On the upside, with some 830,000 new businesses formed, 21 percent more than the same period in 2006, the previous record, this illustrates OnTrendpreneur® opportunities for new products, services, and styles that were inspired by the New ABnormal, resulting from the COVID War.
We maintain our forecast that with strong household balance sheets, minus a wild card, the economic “Biden Bounce” will extend throughout most of this year.
TRENDPOST: The federal $300 weekly unemployment benefit passed by Congress last year during the financial collapse will end as scheduled on 30 September and not be extended, as President Biden confirmed in televised comments on 28 May.
As we have detailed, with weekly state unemployment benefits averaging $318, according to the Labor Department, adding the federal $300 brings the average weekly benefit to $618, more than a person would earn working 40 hours a week at $15 an hour.
At least 25 states, most of them controlled by Republican governors, already have decided to end the federal benefit early, a move within their authority and “that’s OK,” Biden press secretary Jen Psaki said in a recent press briefing.