“Consumers Aren’t Spending Even In a Booming Job Market”

[Savannahmann]

60. It has more to do with the labor participation IMO.

Rising costs are an issue, but labor participation is abysmal. What that means is roughly speaking, two out of every five people are not working. They aren't considered unemployed anymore because of various reasons. But they aren't working either.



And it keeps falling. That is the dangerous metric IMO. Let's say there are a hundred of us and we are all working to hold up and carry a weight. Divided among the hundred of us it is not that big of a deal. It is easily held up by the people under it. But one by one people start peeling off. Each one who departs has his/her share taken up by those that are left. The more that leave, the greater the strain on those remaining.

Obviously having more people holding it up is preferable, it makes the load easier for the people to hold up. But as time goes, there are fewer and fewer holding the weight up, and eventually it will be too few to hold it up.

93,600,000 people are not in the labor force right now. That is disproportionately carried by women. 56,000,000 women are not in the labor force. Thus the women are overrepresented in that group.

Think about it. Nearly two out of five people. These are people you know, I know, and everyone knows. People around you who aren't in the job market, and have essentially given up. Now, it's hard to sell the idea that the economy is doing great when there is this feeling that it's not right. For many people, it's like telling a guy on a cold night that at least the fire will keep him warm. The guy looks at you and says it's my house that's on fire. People hear the unemployment rate, and assume it's a lie because they know that so many around them are not working, so the numbers can't be right. That's the big danger with the impression that a lie has been told. Once you decide that one thing is a lie, you doubt everything else that that person tells you.