What, Too Many Job Openings?

Financial FAQs

We are now seeing real evidence of the need for more working adults, if the US economy is to continue to grow. The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, said April job openings are nearly 1 million ahead of hirings in a widening spread pointing to skill scarcity in the labor market.

Graph: Econoday

“Job openings totaled 6.044 million in April which is well outside Econoday's high estimate for 5.765 million and up from a revised 5.785 million in the prior month. Hirings totaled 5.051 million which is well down from March's 5.304 million with the spread between the two nearly 150,000 higher at 993,000,” said Econoday.

What to do about it, since infrastructure upgrades are needed to boost economic growth? Private industry has not increased capital expenditures on anything for more than one year, choosing to either hoard their increased profits, or invest overseas. Both state and federal governments have to increase their public works spending as well, which is not yet happening because states have to run on balanced budgets.
And many chose to cut taxes like Kansas in the belief that trickle-down economics was the conservatives’ answer to adversity; which has instead prolonged the pain.
The ultra-conservative Tea Party is in control of Congress and many states, in other words, and they have focused on tax cuts, such as those incorporated in the so-called repeal and replace Obamacare House bill that was passed without updating its CBO scoring, because up to 24 million could lose health coverage, while coverage costs would skyrocket.
The Center For Budget Policies Priorities (CBPP), a progressive think tank, has been asking states to boost their infrastructure spending for years:

“But rather than identifying and making the infrastructure investments that provide the foundation for a strong economy, many states are cutting taxes and offering corporate subsidies in a misguided approach to boosting economic growth.  Tax cuts will spur little to no economic growth and take money away from schools, universities, and other public investments essential to producing the talented workforce that businesses need.”

Graph: CBPP

As I’ve reported in past columns, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in its 2017 report card on the condition of America’s infrastructure gave U.S. infrastructure a D+ or “poor” rating.  The engineers estimated the cost of bringing America’s infrastructure to a state of good repair (a grade of B) by 2020 at $4.59 trillion, of which only about 55 percent has been committed. 

Improving roads and bridges alone would require almost $850 billion more than states, localities, and the federal government have allocated.  Schools need another $270 billion beyond what’s been invested. 

CBS News reports that the Trump plan specifies only $200 billion in new federal spending even as the administration's budget includes "enormous cuts to public investment," according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute. The administration also did not specify just where the remaining $800 billion would come from and how the spending increases would jibe with the huge cuts in infrastructure spending envisioned in its proposed budget. 

The question now is not only how will these projects be financed, but where will we find the workforce?

Harlan Green © 2017

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Should Trump Economics Fail?

Popular Economics Weekly

It doesn’t look good for two Trump and Republican campaign promises currently working their way through Congress: i.e., to repeal and replace Obamacare, and reform the tax code. They should really be working on what is possible; a $1 Trillion infrastructure spending bill. So the euphoria and expectations generated by the Trump victory might dissipate, and that is what’s needed to generate future growth at the end of an already long business cycle.

Why? There is massive opposition from both Republicans and Democrats to both an Obamacare replacement vehicle and tax reform proposals to date. Whereas the one campaign promise that could succeed is the upgrade and replacement of our aging public infrastructure. Both Republicans and Democrats want it for their home states and districts.

For instance, out of the 614,387 bridges in the US, more than 200,000 are more than 50 years old. The Associated Society of Civil Engineers 2016 report estimates it would cost some $123 billion just to fix the bridges in the US, and many of the one million drinking water pipes have been in use for almost 100 years. The aging system makes water breaks more prevalent, which means there are about two trillion gallons of treated water lost each year.

In fact, most of our highways and bridges were built more than 70 years ago, which is why the ASCE says public infrastructure is now behind more the $4.5 trillion in maintenance alone, such as highways, harbors, wastewater facilities and bridges.

Graph: CBO

Even more important to our security and economic well-being, is the majority of the transmission and distribution lines were built in the mid-20th century and have a life expectancy of about 50 years, meaning that they are already outdated. So between 2016 to 2025, there's an investment gap of about $177 billion for infrastructure that supports electricity, like power plants and power lines, reports the ASCE. 

There is another Republican obsession, however that may block even that possibility. It’s Trump’s preoccupation with the Wall, or pseudo Wall, and deportation of millions of undocumented workers—the majority of which have lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years. They have raised families, paid taxes, and held jobs that white and other ethnic groups are either incapable of doing (such as farm work), or refuse the low wages and benefits on this bottom rung of the labor ladder.

Graph: Business Insider

Any increase in their deportation could cause severe damage to growth, and maybe even end the 8 years of this growth cycle. The Center for American Progress, a liberal policy institute in Washington, is even more blunt. It estimates that a policy of mass deportation would "immediately reduce the nation's GDP by 1.4% and ultimately by 2.6%." This is when current GDP growth is just 2 percent.

None other than Fed Chairman Janet Yellen also voiced her concern in a recent speech. "Labor-force growth has been slowing in the United States," Yellen said. "It's one of several reasons, along with slow productivity growth, for the fact that our economy has been growing at a slow pace. Immigration has been an important source of labor-force growth. So slowing the pace of immigration probably would slow the growth rate of the economy."

Her comments are striking because Yellen is usually careful not to discuss topics outside her monetary policy and regulation mandate, lest her remarks be construed as political.

And, "Because capital will adjust downward to a reduction in labor — for example, farmers will scrap or sell excess equipment per remaining worker — the long-run effects are larger and amount to two-thirds of the decline experienced during the Great Recession," the CAP report says. "Removing 7 million unauthorized workers would reduce national employment by an amount like that experienced during the Great Recession."

Over 10 years, US output will have fallen $4.7 trillion short of what it might otherwise have been, CAP says. For comparison, US gross domestic product, the nation's total spending on goods and services, stood at $18.6 trillion at the end of 2016.

Those are very large numbers, which means Republicans and Democrats will have to learn to work together on what is practical and attainable to avoid the next recession.

Harlan Green © 2017

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Falling Households Incomes—The Real ‘Fiscal Cliff’

Popular Economics Weekly

It is household income that is falling off a cliff. This is partly due to the busted housing bubble and subsequent Great Recession that shaved 40 percent from household wealth. But household incomes haven’t been rising as fast as inflation since the 1970s, either. So we should be worrying about the drastic decline in buying power, rather than Congress’s inability to agree on a federal budget, if we want to cure the looming ‘fiscal cliff’.

If we don’t find a way to improve average household finances, Americans could plunge into decades of slow growth and the continued deterioration in their standard of living. Why? We are a consumer society, so that 70 percent of U.S. economic growth is powered by consumer spending. That is why government has to be part of the solution.

Three-fifths of all jobs lost during the Great Recession paid middle-income wages, while those created during the economic recovery pay low wages, according to a new study by the National Employment Law Project. Both economic forces and government budget cuts are causing this deficit of good jobs, according to the study.

For instance, many of the losses in well-paying jobs came from state and local governments, which have cut 485,000 jobs since February 2010, NELP found. Many mid-wage government workers that have been laid off during the economic recovery include teachers and police officers.

There is an easy way to reverse the downward spiral in wages—begin to upgrade our aging public services. In what New York Times Nicholas Kristof has labeled A Failed Experiment, the World Economic Forum ranks American infrastructure 25^th in the world, down from 8^th in 2003-4.

One would think with the ongoing drought, Tsumanis, and Hurricane Sandy that we would know how important government is to the solution of our many problems. New Jersey Governor Chris Christy certainly thought so in lauding President Obama for his help during Sandy. So the most obvious place to start is a national program to repair our crumbling infrastructure that the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates needs at least $2.2 Trillion in repairs and upgrades over the next 5 years just to keep it safe.

The wealthy have always had an answer to the ongoing decrepitude of public services, said Kristof. “Public playgrounds and tennis courts decrepit? Never mind—just join a private tennis club. I’m used to seeing this mind-set in developing countries like Chad or Pakistan, where the feudal rich make do behind high walls topped with shards of glass; increasingly, I see it in our country.”

The ASCE has launched a new series of reports that take a closer look at the economic impacts of America’s deteriorating infrastructure. These economic studies look forward to 2020 and 2040 to predict impacts on GDP, personal income, and jobs if current infrastructure investment trends continue. 

The first report was released in July 2011 and focused on surface transportation. The landmark study, Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Surface Transportation Infrastructure, found the nation’s deteriorating surface transportation infrastructure will cost the American economy more than 870,000 jobs, and suppress the growth of the country’s Gross Domestic Product by $897 billion by 2020. Commissioned by ASCE and conducted by the Economic Development Research Group of Boston, the report shows that the nation is facing a funding gap of about $94 billion a year compared with our current spending levels.

In fact Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz asserts in a recent Project Syndicate blog that “Spending, especially on investments in education, technology, and infrastructure, can actually lead to lower long-term deficits.”

Most of the federal ‘fiscal cliff’ was created by borrowing to finance serial tax cuts and increased military spending that benefited the few at the expense of the many, instead of shoring up social security and Medicare reserves, as Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill advocated.

In fact, those tax revenues were diverted to the real ‘takers’, the wealthiest Wall Street financiers and corporate CEOs who have managed to capture most of the created wealth over the last decades. Just in 2009, it’s well documented that 93 percent of the income increase went to the top 1 percent of income earners through lower dividend and capital gains taxes, as well as record corporate profits.

But that means taking political power back from the elites who would rather starve government programs that could boost middle class incomes and consumers, asserts Chrystia Freeland in Plutocrats, The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. Plutocrats are putting the wealth accumulated from deregulation of the U.S. economy into developing the middle classes of developing countries such as India, China, and Brazil, rather than the U.S.

Need we say more? Should we continue to allow the private good to trump public good? Not unless we enjoy reverting back to conditions like those in the developing world.

Harlan Green © 2012