After last week's market plunge, suddenly the pension mandate has flipped, with the relative performance between stocks and bonds now meaning that pension funds have shifted from buyers to sellers of fixed income.
The only thing the bureaucratic resistance hates more than President Trump is the disclosure of their own salaries. It’s a classic case of the bureaucracy protecting the bureaucracy, underscoring the resistance faced by the new administration.
"Terrified employees report constant fear over losing their jobs over the OTS 'scorecards', which anything below 89.9% can qualify as a failing score - resulting in possible firings."
"...misses pushed our broader wage growth tracker to just 2.1% as of Q4...Rising concentration of activity and employment has shifted the balance of bargaining power from consumers and workers to firms and employers."
After a burst of record high job openings which started in June of last year and declined in the fall, today's December JOLTS report showed another modest drop in job openings from 5.978MM to 5.8113MM, below the 5.950MM consensus estimate, and the lowest print since May.
Canada’s largest oil company announced last week that it will be cutting about 400 heavy-equipment operator positions over the next six years as they phase in a new fleet of self-driving trucks.
Trump's SOTU claim that black unemployment was at all time lows came perfectly timed, because if he had waited just 2 more days, the story would be very different...
It was all about average hourly earnings, which printing at 2.9% was the highest increase since June 2009 and a clear warning sign that inflation is about to make a strong comeback.
While The Fed may be getting nervous, we suspect the Trump administration will be smirking quietly as Labor Department data showed total U.S. employee compensation rose in the fourth quarter to match the biggest 12-month gain since 2008, as private-sector pay picked up.
One source of labor already firmly embedded and becoming more important to employers are independent contractors or “freelancers”. Work on an as-needed basis and/or from a remote location is becoming more accepted and is known as the “gig economy.”
...the companies said they are working toward building an independent company focused on technology solutions “that will provide [their] US employees and their families with simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost.”
