Long-term unemployment in America falls when employment growth increases

A few weeks ago, I updated my research on the way employment growth accesses the different unemployment duration pools using Australian data. In that blog post (October 19, 2020) – The long-term unemployed are not an inflation constraint in a recovery – I showed that the claim that the long-term unemployed constitute an inflation constraint because employers will not choose to offer them jobs due to perceived scarring is a popular neoliberal assertion but has no basis in the actual data. The orthodox economists use that assertion to justify microeconomic (supply-side) policies (training, activation, etc) rather than direct job creation. The reality is that when employment growth is strong enough, both short-run and long-run pools of the unemployed are accessed by employers. In the latter case, employers alter hiring standards and offer on-the-job training to ensure they do not lose market share. I have received several E-mails stating that the US is different and the long-term unemployed are shunned by employers, which means that trying to stimulate the economy will hit the inflation constraint sooner than if there was a Job Guarantee in place. Logically, there is no reason the US labour market operates differently in any fundamental way to the Australian labour market so I decided to examine the validity of the ‘irreversibility hypothesis’ using US data. Guess what? The hypothesis doesn’t hold up in the US either.

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The Weekend Quiz – October 31-November 1, 2020 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’s Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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Inflation is not necessarily due to excessive spending

Yesterday’s data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (October 28, 2020) – Consumer Price Index, Australia – for the September-quarter 2020, illustrates what a lot of people do not fully grasp. Inflation can be driven by administrative decisions and can be curtailed or restrained by varying those decisions. No tax rises or cuts to government spending are needed. The data also reflect on the reasons that predictions from mainstream (New Keynesian) economic models fail dramatically. Mainstream economists claim that monetary policy (adjusting of interest rates) is an effective way to manage the economic cycle. They claim that central banks can effectively manipulate total spending by adjusting the cost of borrowing to increase output and push up the inflation rate. The empirical experience does not accord with those assertions. Central bankers around the world have been demonstrating how weak monetary policy is in trying to stimulate demand. They have been massively building up their balance sheets through QE to push their inflation rates up without much success. Further, it has been claimed that a sustained period of low interest rates would be inflationary. Well, again the empirical evidence doesn’t support that claim. The Reserve Bank of Australia has now purchased more than $50 billion worth of federal government bonds and a smaller amount of state and territory government debt. And yet inflation is well below the lower bound of the RBA’s inflation targetting range. The most reliable measure of inflationary expectations are flat and below the RBA’s target policy range.

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Politics in a Podcast – fiscal statements and the pandemic future

It’s Wednesday and just a few things today while I attend to other things (writing, meetings, etc). I will have an interesting announcement to make in a few weeks (around then) about a project I am working on that I hope have wide interest. Today, we have a podcast I recorded a few weeks ago with the Politics in the Pub, Newcastle group – now, in this coronavirus era being rebadged and reformatted as Politics in a Podcast. And then we celebrate a great musician who died last week but left some memorable songs for us to take into the future.

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Drain the (corporate) swamp

Today, I celebrate – my home town of Melbourne has recorded zero new infections for the second time since June 9, 2020 and zero deaths. A consecutive day of double zero. My Melbourne band Pressure Drop is planning a live streamed gig soon – our first time playing since March. Details will come when we know more about when we can do it. Something to celebrate in a bleak year. Today I am writing about the underside of neoliberalism though. Nothing to celebrate about this at all. Revolving doors, corporatisation of public service and introducing the excesses and corruption that is endemic in that private sector, more on that, and a federal government that is refusing to introduce a federal corruption body despite the evidence of widespread malpractice at that level. Why this matters is because to build a better world we need to reverse the demolition of the traditional public service by the neoliberals over several decades, which has turned a once wonderful bureaucracy (departmental structure) from a public service delivery capacity into a contract brokerage for outsourced and deregulated service delivery units, chasing profits in the private sector and cutting as many corners as they can get away with. With lax oversight these days, they can get away with a lot. And when public agencies start behaving as if they are corporations then things really come unstuck. And then we see the alarming necrosis that exists at the top levels of Australian corporations. No wonder we have just had Royal Commissions into the banking and finance sector and into the (privatised) aged care sector which have delivered such shocking results. Nothing to celebrate at all.

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US claimants recovery stalls

Today, I celebrate – my home town of Melbourne has recorded zero new infections for the first time since June 9, 2020 and zero deaths. But things are not so hot elsewhere in the world. As the US labour market started to rebound over the summer, I stopped updating my analysis of the claimants data horror story that had earlier demonstrated how sharp the decline in March and April had been. But I have still been monitoring it on a weekly basis and the information we are now getting from the US Department of Labor’s weekly data releases are indicating that as the virus escalates, seemingly out of control, the labour market recovery has all but stalled and a reasonable prediction would be that it will deteriorate somewhat if the infection rate leads to tighter restrictions (which it should). A relatively short blog post today (tied up with things today) – just some notes as I updated the data to see what was going on. The conclusions are obvious. Much more fiscal support is needed in the US, especially targetted at the bottom end of the labour market. Devastation will follow with the sorts of numbers that appear to be entrenched at present.

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The Weekend Quiz – October 24-25, 2020 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’s Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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Forget the record deficits and public debt – focus on what the net spending is doing to advance well-being

Yesterday (October 21, 2020), the British Office of National Statistics (ONS) released the latest – Public sector finances, UK: September 2020 – which, predictably tells us that government borrowing was “£28.4 billion more than in September 2019 and the third-highest borrowing in any month since records began in 1993” and that the public debt ratio has risen to “103.5% of … GDP … this was the highest debt to GDP ratio since … 1960.” Shock horror. While I yawn. The financial media went to town on the data. The Financial Times article (October 22, 2020) – UK government borrowing reaches record in first half of fiscal year – claimed the second wave that is now sweeping the northern hemisphere “have dampened hopes” that the stimulus “could be quickly scaled back” which has “fuelled concerns over the US’s mounting public debt”. It didn’t clarify as to who was concerned or why. The old canards seem to die slowly. Meanwhile, the IMF has changed tack somewhat after its tawdry display during the GFC. Overall, we should be relaxed about the records being set (deficits, public debt) and focus on what the net spending is doing to advance our interests. Focusing on the financial parameters will just divert our attention away from what is important.

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