We have been pounding the table that 2012 will be a replica of 2011 since before January 1: after all the central planners' script book has only so many pages. Sure enough, here is yet another indicator. Job gains remain anchored in the low cost labor sectors of the economy - retail, temporary, leisure, and hospitality - a pattern, as Bloomberg Brief points out, that has characterized growth during the current expansion. While this growth in jobs may optically appeal to many, it leaves a 2.9% spending growth pace unsustainable especially as we see, in the three charts below, a growing sense of deja vu in the labor market overall. Between a Spring-time swoon in non-farm payrolls, a cyclical crunch in service sector hirings, and a mirror-image trough and deterioration in initial claims, 2012 appears to be heading towards the same pattern of central-bank disappointment as the last three years of this nominal recovery. Same Deja Vu... Different year.
NFP is echoing 2011's dismal deterioration post-Bernanke...
[3]
and Service sector hiring appears to be fading once again - third year in a row...
[4]
and initial claims are getting that glitch-in-the-matrix feeling too...
[5]
which leaves us muddling along the bottom in terms of real potential growth (with average hourly earnings deteriorating once again)...
[6]
Charts: Bloomberg