The transportation sector seems like a pretty good indicator. Maybe a dip in the number of semi's in the road over time?
How we will know when a recession is coming?
71–80 of 128 posts
Re: How we will know when a recession is coming?
#72> The Great Recession officially ended in June of 2009 As a "millennial" who graduated in 2008, I seriously hate reading shit like this. Maybe it recovered for the Boomer's pension funds and 401k's, but it took many of my friends over a decade to find work equal to their qualifications. They're only JUST NOW starting to get payed what they deserve (PHDs, MBAs, and Masters degree holders).
Considering the definition of recession is “2 quarters or more of negative growth”, the recession did end June 2009.
Levels of pay have nothing to do with whether or not we’re in a recession.
Re: How we will know when a recession is coming?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They're only JUST NOW starting to get payed what they deserve That is absurd. In a free market with free movement of goods and people, whatever you are getting paid is what you "deserve" aka what other participants in the market are willing to pay for your services. It is only explicit government intervention that overrides this process; subsided renewal energy sources, childcare, housing etc. But with everything e…
> ...getting exactly what the market could afford. "afford" is an odd word choice. As if to suggest that employers simply don't have any money by which they could have increased worker salaries. In this same period, average CEO compensation increased 25-50%, depending on how you measure it. So, apparently, there's lots of money, but its distribution is skewing increasingly to the very top. So let's not say "afford".
A CEO getting an extra $5M leading a 100,000 employee company means each employee could have gotten an extra $50.
So i would argue it still about what the company can afford.
Re: How we will know when a recession is coming?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not have any real numbers, and this is just anecdotal, but in Slovenia (small EU country), a lot of our larger retailers have replaced some posters (basically ads) in their stores with "workers needed" posters, and some have literally advertised that they're looking for workers in their paper ads we get in the mail. Also a car repair shop literally had an radio ad that they're looking for repairmen. It might be…
My sister was working in those retail positions in Slovenia as late as 2 years ago. The pay is laughable (3eur/hour) and the working conditions are shit. A promotion grants you a whopping 10cent rate increase. A whole 0.8 euro per day if you pass a test!! Oh and you don’t get more than 30 hours per week coz then they’d have to pay benefits. No shit they have a hard time hiring. Most young people will rather try being…
https://jobs.aldi-hofer.com/hofer-kariera-si/job/1000-Ljublj...
They're offering 1.2*minimum wage for 30h/week.
For someone without any other qualifications, that's not bad.
I dont know where she worked, but most offer more. Ever barteding gets you 7+eur/h and tips in Ljubljana.
Re: How we will know when a recession is coming?
#75“Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours." --Ronald Reagan
Harry S Truman originally said it, Ronald Reagan added on an additional part. "Recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his job"
Doesn't surprise me that it wasn't original. I purposely left off the last bit to avoid "politics" creep.
Re: How we will know when a recession is coming?
#76I worry a lot less about a market correction then I do a political "correction" affecting the markets. We're so polarized. You can sense a desperation among those who took out an exceptionally high amount of student debt and have no realistic way of repaying it. Risk of medical bankruptcy is also extremely high. Among other things, these types of occurrences make people desperate, and desperate people are willing to…
This is pure fear spreading. Why are you doing it - is the future really so terrifying?
Re: How we will know when a recession is coming?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
My sister was working in those retail positions in Slovenia as late as 2 years ago. The pay is laughable (3eur/hour) and the working conditions are shit. A promotion grants you a whopping 10cent rate increase. A whole 0.8 euro per day if you pass a test!! Oh and you don’t get more than 30 hours per week coz then they’d have to pay benefits. No shit they have a hard time hiring. Most young people will rather try being…
https://jobs.aldi-hofer.com/hofer-kariera-si/job/1000-Ljublj... They're offering 1.2*minimum wage for 30h/week. For someone without any other qualifications, that's not bad. I dont know where she worked, but most offer more. Ever barteding gets you 7+eur/h and tips in Ljubljana.
Probably a trick of being a student job. I didn’t dig too much and instead nudged her to spend time working on actual long term passions (personal training et al)
Re: How we will know when a recession is coming?
#78Out of curiosity, how reliable are all of the metrics we use for measuring economic health? For instance, how reliable is the unemployment rate when it is a highly political number with lots of incentives to misrepresent (ie the chronically unemployed are excluded from the count)? Beyond that, how much are these indicators just fudged or straight-up lied about? Everybody is happy to agree with me when I say that Chin…
There's a name for the phenomenon, Goodhart's Law [1]. Generally, once a metric is used for decision making, it no longer reflects the phenomenon that it is attempting to measure. Making it much more complicated is the fact that methodologies vary from year to year, and are often created by averaging data from a number of different sources. I've become fairly convinced that almost all macroeconomic measures are so fl…
> The exceptions tend to be metrics that require skin in the game to shift -- the yield curve inversion or S&P500 index
I agree with you on the S&P500, but isn't the yield curve fairly easily manipulated by the Federal Reserve and their rate setting activities?
Re: How we will know when a recession is coming?
#79Out of curiosity, how reliable are all of the metrics we use for measuring economic health? For instance, how reliable is the unemployment rate when it is a highly political number with lots of incentives to misrepresent (ie the chronically unemployed are excluded from the count)? Beyond that, how much are these indicators just fudged or straight-up lied about? Everybody is happy to agree with me when I say that Chin…
One difference is that in the US and other Western countries is that these metrics don’t only come from one state-authorized authority. Investment firms, news outlets, economists routinely check these metrics and offer their own. In China, someone saying that the government is wrong, won’t get much traction. Dissenting Chinese economists are actively censored.
While information freedom doesn’t mean the official metrics are accurate, lack of freedom is a warning sign and should be treated with extreme skepticism.
Re: How we will know when a recession is coming?
#80Very recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Number of employed Americans is at an all-time high, participation rate is not:
https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cps_charts.pdf
For example, slide 15, percentage of the unemployed deemed as long term unemployed declined from 45% to 20% from 2012 - 2019.