Live data from Hacker News

Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

cnn.com

51–60 of 204 posts

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#51

The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 90% of these stocks. Most of you reading this are in the top 10%. Stock prices are a game among the wealthy who haven’t demanded that workers should be paid more to lower the absurdly high corporate profits.

American workers are highest paid in the world. The same evil “wealthy” investor class is not responsible for Americans getting the highest wages but is only responsible for job cuts?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average...

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#52
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People employed can afford to buy stuff though, which also increases profit. The simpler reason is that it means that people believe Fed will read this as a license to not have to slow down rate increases, which will hurt stocks.

> The simpler reason is that it means that people believe Fed will read this as a license to not have to slow down rate increases But there's a direct relation, because the Fed has been very explicit that they're worried about employment and wage growth, and they're raising interest rates in order to depress those. The Fed operates according to the interests of the wealthy.

> The Fed operates according to the interests of the wealthy.

Eh, the Fed is playing business cycle PID controller with the standard economic model that's worked to keep inflation low since the 1970s; having employment above a certain level ("NAIRU") causes a "wage-price spiral", and the side effects of the resulting inflation are deemed worse than those of artificially keeping employment higher than it otherwise might be.

It certainly works for stability and against a high-inflation environment where people are constantly on strike. The side effect is indeed that this pressures wage earners.

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#53
post #3

To me the headline says it all. Those workers, being in demand, asking for higher wages. What about our profits! We need a level of desperation in our work force, at least that caused by 4% unemployment, if we can expect to maintain the wealth gap that has been built up over the last years! (If it's not clear from the above, personally I am in favor of low unemployment and higher income equality.)

Did you read the article? It’s the anticipation of higher interest rates by the stock markets that send stocks down. And the Fed may do so because they want to raise them “just so much to counter inflation without drifting into a recession”. For Tech that may mean that the focus will shift towards profitability which may increase pressure on the workforce. What do you mean by “higher income equality”? E.g., people ea…

The markets have been wishing / predicting a decline in the rise of interest rates, which clearly isn't going to happen.

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wouldn’t inherently lead to CPI inflation though except that the supply of many, many things is so damned constrained. Even the feds own reports acknowledge that slightly over half of inflation is from lack of supply, not high wages. e.g. wages aren’t doubling the price of eggs.

> wages aren’t doubling the price of eggs. No, that seems to be a crime of opportunity.

[deleted]

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#55
post #35

The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 90% of these stocks. Most of you reading this are in the top 10%. Stock prices are a game among the wealthy who haven’t demanded that workers should be paid more to lower the absurdly high corporate profits.

Context, for those that were interested like I was. According to Investopedia, based on SSI data. Top .1% is $3,212,486/year 1% is 823,763 5% is 342,987 10% is 173,176 I am waaaaay under that. Education is a joke.

Check numbers for your profession, and if you are way below norms, consider looking for a new job (perhaps in a high wage geographic region), or ask for a raise.

There are serious labor shortages throughout the job market.

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#56
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? It’s the anticipation of higher interest rates by the stock markets that send stocks down. And the Fed may do so because they want to raise them “just so much to counter inflation without drifting into a recession”. For Tech that may mean that the focus will shift towards profitability which may increase pressure on the workforce. What do you mean by “higher income equality”? E.g., people ea…

> Isn’t income equality (government interventions in some aspects aside) a mere reflection of people’s contribution to a economy and their ability to negotiate? Watch the elision between this and the next sentence: > So, are you assuming/applying everyone more or less has the same contribution or do you want everyone to be paid the same irrespective? The bit that's gone is "their ability to negotiate", which depends…

Income from capital is generally lower in low-interest regimes. We probably saw inflation in asset classes such as housing and stock as a result of monetary oversupply and cheap access to capital. Not factoring in such things into inflation is a question the Fed would have to address.

With a sufficient social net and minimum wages, even poorly qualified have good negotiation power. No offense, but I’m also not sure how paying 30 USD/h to somebody who doesn’t speak the language and is performing low complexity work is doing society any good. I live in Europe and there is no way anybody would come for house cleaning, shopping or whatnot below that - because they are just better off with free housing, free healthcare, free schooling and money on top.

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#57
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a way of reducing inflation without hitting wages or jobs, please share that with world.

I don't want to reduce wage inflation, at least not for the majority of the population.

I wasn’t talking about wage inflation. I don’t want to age either. Nobody does.

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#58
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should have read the article. The fear is that we are going to see yet another round of interest rate hikes to slow down inflation. Unemployment (according to the article) is also closer to 3% than 4 at the moment.

You seem to be saying essentially the same thing. The fed has been pretty clear that it sees wage growth as a serious inflation problem (because it's sticky) and they're intentionally raising rates to force cuts to wages and employment. Personally - I'm a little mixed, since I believe rates were far too low and have created a very strange economy where you have companies that never actually make money become househol…

> But on the other hand, I feel like the current stance of the fed - "raise the rates to stop hot employment and wage growth" - is a cop out. Inflation control is the second of their two mandates, employment is the first.

This is the real reason we need a proper, comfortable safety net and higher minimum wages. In my opinion it is very good to lower the wages of higher wage earners in order to raise interest rates, and just buffer the large number of marginal people (America the beautiful, can't afford to get a tooth pulled) who would actually suffer with transfer payments.

But even if you don't believe that, lower-income people have a higher exposure to inflated prices simply because all of their income goes to consumption. So they should be supplemented.

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? It’s the anticipation of higher interest rates by the stock markets that send stocks down. And the Fed may do so because they want to raise them “just so much to counter inflation without drifting into a recession”. For Tech that may mean that the focus will shift towards profitability which may increase pressure on the workforce. What do you mean by “higher income equality”? E.g., people ea…

> For Tech that may mean that the focus will shift towards profitability Is it like tech or any other industry has ever focused (directly or indirectly) in something else? Maybe they just realized their superpowers are waning and they can’t keep hiring with obscene salaries indefinitely.

[deleted]

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#60
post #25

I really hate financial headlines. The S&P is still up 3.08% this week . This headline makes today's 0.65% drop sound catastrophic.

Why yes, because stories of tech layoffs and stocks buybacks were the focus earlier in the week. Now these same investors wake up to some news about low wage job growth and all of a sudden their sky is falling again and the market shrinks like a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum.
Post reply on HN