Good news: 4.4M new people who filed for unemployment this week was lower than the week before. Some might argue that’s a positive trend. Bad news: the total number of US people who have filed for unemployment is now 26.5M in just 5 weeks… eliminating all the additional jobs created post 2008. Around 1 in 6 Americans have lost their job.
From mine, it’s the Fed which has juiced the rally so far… less so what we see with “the curve”. To be fair, there are early signs (very early) the infection curve is starting to flatten…
There’s no question this is a historic time in the US economy – especially when it comes to the jobs and income.
For example, wages growth continues to exceed that of inflation. Average hourly earnings rose 3.1% year-over-year in November – versus inflation running at a very low 1.6%.
