Written By:
Ingo Winzer, President
Ingo Winzer, President
Local Market Monitor
Continuing
the trend of recent months, in May the number of jobs in retail sales was no
better than last year. This very worrying development isn't really so surprising
because we've seen that the income of consumers has barely increased for years,
while the amount of debt they're carrying has grown. At some point that has to
translate into less spending.
Other
parts of the economy are still doing well. Jobs in business services, for
example, are growing at a faster rate
than last year. Jobs in healthcare are growing at a slower rate, but still at a good clip - and growth seems to be fine
in finance, construction and at restaurants. Ok, jobs aren't growing in
manufacturing or government - almost a quarter of the economy - but they
haven't for a while. So why is the poor showing in retail now so important?
Because it's a LEADING indicator.
Jobs
in healthcare didn't even feel the 2008 recession until 2009, jobs in business
services were still doing fine in late 2007. But jobs in retail had already
sputtered in 2006, well before the crash in early 2008. Stay tuned.
Overall,
jobs in May were 1.5 percent higher than last year. This seems to be the new
normal in 2017, as 1.8 percent was the new normal in 2016. Jobs were up 3
percent in construction, flat in manufacturing, flat in retail, up 2 percent in
finance, 3 percent in business services, 2.3 percent in healthcare, 2 percent
at restaurants, and a half percent in government.
Unemployment
is at a low 4.3 percent, whatever that means these days when many people have
just dropped out of the regular workforce.
