The economy has been on a roller coaster ride since the cyclical peak of December 2007. (See illustration.) The gradual slide of early 2008 turned into a terrifying freefall in the last quarter of 2008 (after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy) and the first quarter of 2009. Now the train is probably at the bottom of the roller coaster valley.

The Index of Leading Economic Indicators, represented by the first car in the train, was this morning reported to have risen for the seventh consecutive month in October. Similarly, consumer confidence is substantially improved relative to February (though it, like all economic statistics, has experienced some bumps in the ride). The important middle cars, which represent measures of aggregate output, probably reached bottom in the early summer, and then started back up.  The BEA’s advanced estimate for GDP growth in the third quarter was 3 ½ % .

The jobs measures are lagging well behind the rest of the train, as usual.
Among three key labor market measures, the hours worked series has apparently reached the bottom. Employment is still falling, though thankfully not at the very rapid pace of a year ago. The unemployment rate brings up the rear; people in that car are understandably unhappy.

The Queen of England during the summer asked economists why no one had predicted the credit crunch and recession.   Paul Krugman points out that, inasmuch as economists can almost never predict the timing of recessions (and don’t claim to be able to), the real questions are worse.  The real questions are, rather how macroeconomists (most) could have gotten it so wrong as to believe that:
(i) a severe recession was not even looming ahead as a potential danger, and
(ii) a breakdown of many of the world’s most liquid financial markets, in New York and London, was impossible to imagine.

To anyone wondering about these questions, I recommend Krugman’s essay in the New York Times Sunday magazine, September 6:  “How Did Economists Get it So Wrong?” .
I think his diagnosis of the state of macroeconomic theory for the last 30 years has it right. 

I would only add that he is modest in skipping over one point:  during Japan’s lost decade of growth in the 1990s Paul himself forcefully drew from the Japanese experience the implication that a severe economic breakdown was, after all, possible in a modern industrialized economy – a breakdown that both was reminiscent of the Great Depression and was outside the ken of modern macroeconomic theory.   But macroeconomics went on as before.   (Likewise with the stock market correction of 1987, the LTCM crisis of 1998, and the dotcom bust of 2000-01.   I do think, however, that our field did a better job with the emerging market crises of 1994-2001, in part because it was considered permissible to argue that financial markets in this case were highly imperfect.)

The list of scholarly economists who in my view deserve kudos for getting important parts of the crisis right ahead of time also includes, among others:

• Robert Shiller – for declaring most visibly that the housing boom was a bubble,
• Ned Gramlich — for pointing out most assiduously that families were being persuaded to take out mortgages that weren’t good for them,
• Ragu Rajan — for diagnosing most accurately the problems of excessive leverage in the financial system,
• Claudio Borio and Bill White at the BIS — for seeing most presciently the dangers of a monetary policy that ignored asset bubbles, and
• Nouriel Roubini – for warning most fortissimo how serious a future meltdown was likely to be.

Returning to Krugman’s NYT article, even the caricature drawings are good…  except that I have never seen Olivier Blanchard in a double-breasted suit.    But Robert Lucas definitely merits a place there as a leader of the orthodoxy:   When given one page in a recent  Economist essay to defend “freshwater” economic theorists regarding the crisis, he actually thought it was a useful rebuttal to point out that critics are repeating arguments they have made before.  And he also thought it was useful to explain:  “The term “efficient” as used here means that individuals use information in their own private interest. It has nothing to do with socially desirable pricing; people often confuse the two.”  — As if it is not the latter question that the public is wondering about.

(For other economists’ reactions to the Krugman piece, see the National Journal site.)

 [Any reader wishing to make comments on this post is referred to the RGE version.]

In the July employment report released by the BLS this morning, August 7, the labor market shows its first encouraging signs. Most commentators will focus on the jobs numbers, which show a decline of less than half the rate that the economy experienced in the “freefall period” of late 2008 and early 2009.

Employment tends to lag behind production. For this reason, as readers of this blog will know, my preferred indicator is total hours worked. The latest numbers show that the length of the workweek has begun to rebound from its record low of two months ago. As a result, the BLS reports that total hours worked in the economy did not decline at all in July, for the first time since the financial meltdown of last September.

One never wants to read too much into a single report, especially one subject to revision. But when today’s labor news is combined with a variety of other data, it looks likely that the economy is finally at or near the turning point.

Hours Worked  (Changes) from the Current Employment Statistics survey,
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Aug. 7, 2009

Year       Jan   Feb   Mar     Apr   May   Jun                    Jul   Aug   Sep     Oct  Nov  Dec
2007    -0.5   0.0   0.6    -0.3   0.5   0.1                   -0.2 -0.1   0.1      0.2   0.2   0.1
2008    -0.3  0.1 -0.1     -0.1 -0.5 -0.5                    -0.2  0.2  -0.6   -0.8 -0.9 -0.9
2009    -0.7 -0.6 -1.2    -0.6 -0.3 -0.7(P)                0.0(P)

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Personal saving rose again in the second quarter. “Does this mean the stimulus tax cut has failed, as the 2008 tax cut stimulus did?”, asks The National Journal.

My answer:

Martin Feldstein and others predicted that the tax-cut component of the 2009 fiscal stimulus package would have substantially less expansionary bang-for-the-buck than the spending component of the package, because much of the tax cut would be saved, as had been the case with the 2008 tax cut.  (“Bang for the buck” in this case could be defined as demand stimulus divided by budget cost.)   We knew this from Milton Friedman’s permanent income hypothesis, or even from good old Keynesian multiplier theory.

But in February President Obama had to get those last three (Republican) votes to pass the stimulus bill in the Senate, and those three Senators insisted on raising the tax cut component of the stimulus package a bit and lowering the spending component. Their motivation presumably was to mollify their fellow Republicans, many of whom still claim that ONLY tax cuts provide stimulus, and that spending does not (and perhaps even has a negative effect) — which is even more extreme than the claim that a tax cut creates stimulus equal to spending. After the failures of the Bush tax cuts (and Reagan’s before him), I don’t know if any economists still cling to such “supply sider” notions — or indeed if these congressmen would be able to state their logic. Regardless, I think the Feldstein prediction has been borne out since then.   Talk about irony!   The Reagan tax cuts of 1981-83 and the Bush tax cuts of 2001-03 were both explicitly designed to boost saving — hence their focus on capital income and higher income brackets — and yet in both cases private saving fell in their aftermath.   The tax cuts of January 2008 and February 2009 were both explicitly designed to boost consumption; yet private saving rose in their aftermath !   

Fortunately, the majority of the Obama stimulus package took the form of increased spending, much of which has yet to come.

None of this is to deny that efficiency is an important consideration, and cost-benefit calculations should always enter into the choice of both what kind of tax cuts to adopt and what kind of spending increases to adopt. But if it is short-term demand stimulus we are after, and we are, then government spending gives more bang for the buck than tax cuts.

[Any readers wishing to post a comment are encouraged to go to the versions on Seeking Alpha or RGE Monitor.]

On July 31, the Department of Commerce’s BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis) released an important set of numbers regarding GDP.  Of most immediate interest, the advance estimate of GDP growth for the second quarter, April-June, 2009, was a very moderate -1 per cent per annum.  The small magnitude of this negative number confirms an inflection point in the second quarter.   As most of us had already thought, the economy is no longer in the free-fall of October 2008 to March 2009 — when the rate of output contraction was approximately 6% per annum – but, rather, is beginning to level out.     

Furthermore, the figures reveal large depletion of inventories in the second quarter, which offers good grounds for hope that firms will begin to produce more in the second half of the year.  In other words, the economy is probably bottoming out even as we speak.

But even if it turns out that the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee eventually puts the trough sometime in the 2nd half of 2009, it will not make that decision until all the facts are in, which will be a long time.    A major reason is that government statistics, especially for GDP, are always revised subsequently.   That brings us to the other big component of the BEA release on Friday:  comprehensive revisions to the GDP numbers going back many years.    The BEA does a comprehensive revision generally every five years.  In this case the statistics were substantially affected, especially those over the last dozen years, as the results of a number of permanent changes in methodology (such as how natural disasters are treated in the accounts).   

These revisions produced two interesting implications for the current recession, quite aside from the question whether it is now ending.  

First, the recession turns out to have been worse than the previous GDP numbers indicated.  During the course of 2008, the economy apparently contracted 1.9%, more than double the previous estimate of 0.8%.      The cumulative decline through the 2009 Q-I now appears to have been 2.8% (as compared to the previously reported 1.8%).    Add in the latest quarter, and the 3% cumulative decline cements the claim of this recession to be the worst since the 1930s.

Second, that revision includes a conversion of the +0.9% that was previously reported for the first quarter of 2008 to the new estimate for that quarter:  -0.7%.

That is important from the viewpoint of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee.   Why?     All through 2008 it was difficult to tell whether a recession had started at the end of 2007.   On the one hand, some measures such as employment and real income had peaked then,  but on the other hand it appeared that GDP had continued to grow in early 2008.     Even after the accelerated deterioration in the autumn of 2008, when it could no longer be doubted that the economy was in recession, the signals as to the date of its beginning still conflicted.     

The Committee ended up, on December 1, 2008, declaring that the peak had occurred in December 2007.    As always, there were critics.   Some didn’t see how we could declare that a recession had begun six months before GDP growth turned negative.   “Everybody knows that a recession is defined as two consecutive negative quarters”     (More common, as usual, was the precisely opposite critique:   “The NBER is just now saying what has long been obvious to everyone but them.”)

The new report from the BEA that the first quarter of 2008 was negative after all is thus another piece of evidence that validates the choice of end-2007 as the business cycle peak.   Similarly, it validates the decision by the Committee to have made the call in December, rather than waiting for the BEA revisions of July 31, 2009.  

The bottom line of all of this?    We are less at sea than we had feared.   The data now tell a story that is fairly well delineated, the story of a recession that, though upsettingly severe in amplitude, appears familiarly sinusoidal in shape.

(This post does not necessarily represent the views of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee or its members.  Nor of the BEA or its Advisory Committee members.)

———————————————————————————————————————————————————–

                                                              I 06   II 06 III 06  IV 06                          I 07  II 07 III 07     IV 07                            I 08    II 08      III 08       IV 08                 I 09

Newly reported GDP        5.4    1.4     .1    3.0               1.2    3.2    3.6    2.1                    -.7    1.5       -2.7     -5.4           -6.4       

Previously published.      4.8    2.7     .8    1.5                 .1    4.8    4.8    -.2                    +.9      2.8       -.5       -6.3         -5.5

 

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“Is the recent Return to Saving temporary or permanent?” asks the National Journal .

The famous Paradox of Thrift holds now more than ever: what is good for the individual, and for the economy in the long run — high saving — is bad for the economy in the short run.  During the current worst-post-30s recession we need a boost to demand.   In the longer run we need more saving.

Americans could not have gotten the timing worse. During the three expansions of 1983-2007 the economy grew well, and by the end of the period the first baby boomers had reached their peak earning years. Yet households’ saving rates declined, falling almost to zero in 2005-07.  Meanwhile, the government ran record deficits, reducing national saving even more (in the 1980s and 2000s; the late 1990s saw surpluses). It is ironic that the pro-capital orientation to the Reagan tax cuts of 1981-83 and the Bush tax cuts of 2001-03 was largely sold as an incentive to increase saving and investment, and yet household saving fell sharply subsequent to both policy changes — to say nothing of national saving. The increase in the after-tax return to saving did not lead to a “return to saving.”

The saving rate was so low before the financial crisis that it had nowhere to go but up, even if the timing has been awful. Incidentally, that the first substantial increase in American saving rates in 30 years has come in response to the worst recession in 70 years should put a nail in the coffin of macroeconomists’ practice of lavishing attention in their models on the mathematics of intertemporal optimization.   (But it probably won’t.)

Presumably the magnitude of the current economic dislocation is teaching many blind-sided individuals the value of precautionary saving. We certainly will need further increases in saving as soon as the recession is over. But have we seen a major permanent change in Americans’ anti-saving culture? I fear not. Even now, it does not occur to people that it is desirable to pay cash for auto purchases or other consumer durables, or eventually to pay off their mortgage when possible. Even now, it does not occur to politicians to change the pro-housing bias in the tax law, by eliminating the tax-deductibility of mortgage interest for example.

Moreover, the very first baby-boomers have now started to retire. Increasingly, the higher saving rate of those who see retirement looming ahead (some of whom now “have religion”) will be counteracted by the dis-saving of those who do retire.

The same thing will probably happen in other countries.  Indeed, in Japan, which reached the retirement bulge first, the saving rate fell correspondingly. Europe and China will probably follow. I declare the end of the “global savings glut.”  Real interest rates will have to rise.

[Readers wishing to post a comment are encouraged to go to the versions on the RGE Monitor site or the Seeking Alpha site. ]  

The quip “There are three kinds of lies:  lies, damn lies, and statistics” is variously attributed to Benjamin Disraeli or Mark Twain.   What should the public make of government statistics, such as the monthly employment report released today, Thursday, July 2, by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)?  

There is no lying in US government statistics.   But there are always commentators who will use the numbers to make whatever point they want.     One should learn enough to be able to interpret the numbers for oneself.     That is the only way to prevent being misled.

Of the many numbers contained in the BLS reports, I view three as especially important.    

The most salient figure politically is the unemployment rate, which hit 9.5% in June, according to Thursday’s report.    This was the highest level since August 1983 and clearly reflects the current extent of distress in American labor markets.

Critics of the official statistics like to point out that the unemployment rate does not capture discouraged workers who have dropped out of the labor force because they couldn’t find a job.  True.  But the government isn’t trying to make the unemployment number look smaller.   Rather, it is just too difficult to decide who is a “discouraged worker,” as opposed to simply being out of the labor force.   So the BLS always defines only those who have looked for a job recently as being in the measured labor force.   This still allows us to compare changes in unemployment over time, which is the purpose of the unemployment rate.   The agency does compute a measure that attempts to include discouraged workers and part-time workers — the U-6 series — but I don’t think it is right to call this the “real unemployment rate.”   

The second important number in the labor market reports is employment, that is, the number of workers who have jobs, which was down another 467,000 in June.    This is the statistic to which the financial markets and macroeconomic forecasters pay the most attention on a monthly basis.  (In that sense, the question of discouraged workers is a red herring.)     Employment peaked in December 2007, the start of the recession.    Since then, we have lost 6 million jobs altogether.   The current recession is now both the longest-lasting and the deepest since the 1930s.    But at least the period of the steepest rate of job loss –  November 2008 to March 2009 – appears to be behind us.  

Two details about the jobs number.    First, the statisticians get the “employment” number through one method, by surveying establishments (employers), while the unemployment rate uses a measure of employment derived through a different method, by surveying households.   The employment number is generally considered more reliable because it is based on a wider survey — another reason to prefer it.  

The second point is that, for purposes of comparison across different business cycles, we still need to divide employment by something.     If not the labor force, then what?   We must, at a minimum, allow for population growth.    So it is useful to divide employment by total population.  This way we don’t have to attempt distinctions about which Americans might be prepared to take a job under the right circumstances.  The fraction of the population (civilian non-institutional) with jobs peaked at the end of the Clinton Administration, reaching 64 ½  % in January 2001.   It has now declined to 59 ½ %.

Although the financial markets pay most attention to the number of workers with jobs, employment is not much good for forecasting the overall economy, because it tends to be a lagging indicator.   Even when firms see economic activity starting to pick up, they delay hiring, because it is costly to find, hire, and train new workers – not to mention to fire them again if the recovery turns out abortive.   

For this reason, the third indicator is my personal favorite for gauging the business cycle in real time:  the rate of change of total hours worked in the economy.  Total hours worked is equal to the total number of workers employed, multiplied by the length of the workweek for the average worker.   The length of the workweek can be expected to respond at turning points faster than does the number of jobs.  When demand is slowing, firms tend to cut back on overtime, and then switch to part-time workers or in some cases cut workers back to partial workweeks, before they lay them off.    The phenomenon is called “labor hoarding.”  Conversely, when demand begins to rise, firms tend to increase the workweek, before they hire new workers.   (To take two historical examples, the “change in total hours worked” improved in both April 1991 and November 2001, which on other grounds were eventually declared to mark the ends of their respective recessions.)   

The workweek reached a historically short level in June: 33.0 hours.  Not a good sign.    As one consequence, total hours worked fell 0.8% that month, continuing the same rapid deterioration we have seen since last September, the month when Lehman Brothers failed and the recession worsened sharply.  

The bottom line for the economy:   despite signs in other areas that the recession is leveling out – most importantly, production and sales — the labor market indicators in themselves are not yet signaling a turning point.   Thus the June numbers confirm the evaluation I made a month ago, based on hours worked in May, that the apparent good news in the widely reported May employment number was probably an insignificant blip.   The bottom line for newspaper readers:   master your statistics, so that they can’t master you.

[Readers wishing to post comments are referred to the version of this post on Seeking Alpha or the RGE Monitor site. ]

The rate of decline in employment moderated substantially in May, according to the BLS figures released June 5, to about half the monthly rate of job loss recorded over the preceding six months (345,000 vs. 642,000).    The news was received in a variety of ways. 

First, the cynics.  They tend to wax sarcastic at the idea of “things are not getting worse quite as fast as they were” as a good-news proposition.    But a wide variety of recent data indicate that the economy is no longer in the state of free-fall that it entered last September, and this is indeed good news.  To begin to level off is the first step toward the start of the recovery.

Second, the academics note (correctly) that there is little information in each individual monthly statistical fluctuation that is measured, because the data are inevitably noisy.   Still, the public wants to know, in real time, what is the best we can glean from the information we have. 

Third, the financial press, in particular, had been asking whether this quarter could turn out to be the bottom of the recession.  The May employment report encouraged enthusiastic speculation that the answer was “yes.”  The stock market reacted positively.

The members of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee (of which I am one) will be responsible for calling the trough when the time is right.  We have a range of views regarding the proper place of employment numbers in such deliberations.    But one can say, on the one hand, that a decline in economic activity is a decline in economic activity, and therefore still a state of recession, even if the rate of decline has moderated a lot.    One can also say, on the other hand, that employment is usually a lagging indicator of economic activity.  (For example, the economy continued to lose jobs long after the ends of the 1991 and 2001 recessions.  Hence the “jobless recoveries.”)

Speaking entirely for myself, I like to look at the rate of change of total hours worked in the economy.  Total hours worked is equal to the total number of workers employed multiplied by the average length of the workweek for the average worker.   The length of the workweek tends to respond at turning points faster than does the number of jobs.  When demand is slowing, firms tend to cut back on overtime, and then switch to part-time workers or in some cases cut workers back to partial workweeks, before they lay them off.  Conversely, when demand is rising, firms tend to end furloughs, and if necessary ask workers to work overtime, before they hire new workers.   (The hours worked measure improved in April 1991 and November 2001 which on other grounds were eventually declared to mark the ends of their respective recessions.)     The phenomenon is called “labor hoarding”  and it is attributable to the costs of finding, hiring and training new workers and the costs in terms of severance pay and morale when firing workers.

Unfortunately, pursuing this logic leads to second thoughts about whether the most recent BLS announcement was really good news after all.  Forbes picked up on the point. The length of the average work week fell to its lowest since 1964 !  The graph below shows that, not only did total hours worked decline in May, but the rate of decline (0.7%) was very much in line with the rate of contraction that workers have experienced since September.  Hours worked suggests that the hope-inspiring May moderation in the job loss series may have been a monthly aberration.  If firms were really gearing up to start hiring workers once again, why would they now be cutting back as strongly as ever on the hours that they ask their existing employees to work?   If one factors in falling wages, to compute total weekly earnings, the picture looks still worse.  My bottom line:  the labor market does not quite yet suggest that the economy has hit bottom.