Surprise, Surprise: Average Hourly Work Week Declined To 34.4 Hours; Average Hourly Wage Decreased; ObamaCare Mandates 35 Hours To Receive Employer-Provided Benefits -- March 4, 2016

Remember the "magic numbers" that were posted before the Obama administration:

The Magic Numbers

First time claims, unemployment benefits: 400,000 (> 400,000: economic stagnation)

New jobs: 200,000 (< 200,000 new jobs: economic stagnation)

Economists estimate the labor market needs to create about 125,000 jobs a month to keep the unemployment rate steady, though estimates vary -- Reuters.

Now, the February jobs numbers: 242K vs 190K forecast.

Despite the strong headline number, the closely watched average hourly wages actually declined for the month, falling three cents and equating to a 2.2 percent annualized jump, down from 2.5 percent in January. Fed policy makers are looking at wages for evidence of inflation. The average hourly work week also declined 0.2 hours to 34.4.

Speaking of which: when does ObamaCare mandate? 35 hours. 

To some extent, the "surge" in February should have been expected with the horrendous January, 2016, showing: 172,000.


source: tradingeconomics.com
The average of the most recent 12 months: 221K/month. Note the "magic numbers."

So, we have hourly wages declining AND number of hours decreasing.

The question is whether an individual holding two jobs -- do they count one individual as working, or two jobs filled? I assume the latter. I'm sure it's a complicated formula that can be massaged. 

Unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.9%. And, of course, we all know how accurate that is.  

In what sectors were jobs being added?

Health care and social assistance added 57,000 jobs, construction added 19,000 jobs, and private educational services employment rose by 28,000 in February. But the sector that really caught some by surprise was retail. Retail added 55,000 (and this was in February).

Gilding the lily as they say, from the linked article: The labor force participation rate, which is a measure of the active portion of the labor force, rose to 62.9% from 62.8%, the highest since January 2015.

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Retirement 

A variation of this story seems to be published at least once every month, pointing out how dire Americans' retirement savings accounts (including pensions). This one from Yahoo!Finance:  

In effect, we have kicked two of the legs out of the three-legged retirement stool. Individual savings have stagnated along with wages, as more and more of workers’ paychecks cover little more than everyday needs.

The pension has been substituted with a stock plan that was never intended to serve as an adequate replacement. The new 401(k)’s “were initially viewed as a supplement to traditional pensions,” Morrissey said. “It’s not surprising that they haven’t worked out, because they weren’t intended to serve that purpose.” 

I do not understand that last statement. Whatever. The article goes on with the solution. Oh, yes, spend other people's money as Bernie Sanders suggests:

The solution, to Morrissey, is to strengthen the one leg of the stool that has remained intact: Social Security. This remains the one program that is critical to retirees across the spectrum, regardless of race, income or education. For low-income seniors, Social Security represents nearly all of their income. Social Security expansion has become a rallying cry for liberals, and with Bernie Sanders’ support it could become the one piece of his agenda that gets accepted in the Democratic platform, as the best way to arrest the retirement crisis.

 Now that I've read this, I feel duped. This was an "advertisement" disguised as a news article supporting Bernie Sanders. Whatever.

I do agree that employers took advantage of 401(k)'s to feel "okay" about cutting pensions. But that doesn't mean 401(k)'s haven't worked out as intended; employers took advantage of them. But to some extent, some employers may have had to offset ObamaCare taxes with lower pension costs to survive. I don't know. Just Friday morning rambling.

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Notes to the Granddaughters

I'm in a great mood. I've had a GoPro Hero 3+ for quite some time now. My wife suggested I use the money we got for turning in our iPad version 1 to Target some years ago to buy a GoPro camera. It overwhelmed me at first: it seemed like to many instructions, too complicated. But over the years, working with new technology and with the help of our 19-month-old Sophia, I now feel much more comfortable.

I also had a lot of free, uninterrupted time. May is out in California for a couple of weeks. Last night I devoted four hours of uninterrupted time to really study the manual and play with the camera. For things I did not understand I went to YouTube. For example, GoPro includes a white, rubbery thing, which is what it is called: the "white, rubbery thing." I had no idea what it was for, and the manual did not mention it.

YouTube did. Very, very clever.

Anyway, here's my first GoPro video:



Just kidding. I will post my "real" GoPro video later today.

With regard to the F-111 video above, I had about a dozen sorties in the right seat of the F-111 while assigned to RAF Lakenheath. I had over a 100 sorties in the F-15, but in the F-15, I was simply "walk-on" baggage riding along with a two-seater was put on the flying scheduled. However, with the F-111 I was very much part of the crew: navigating, dropping dummy ordnance on training runs. I never experienced any close calls in the F-111 like the one in the video above.