On Friday Joe Senileden announced that enhanced jobless benefits had no effect on the horrible April jobs report. 3 days later he announced that these extra federal benefit payments are persuading those who are out of work to hold off on getting a job even though the extra $300 runs through September
what a difference a weekend makes
Rabobank's Michael Every captured the absolute circular lunacy of what Biden has created, which will inevitably end in chaos:
Consider Friday’s shocking US payrolls number, which came in at only 266K when the market had expected 1,000K, with March revised down from 916K to 770K. Obviously this release blew market bets about Fed tapering and inflation out of the water. Indeed, there is now a stronger view that central banks can carry on pumping asset markets and commodity prices --and so headline CPI-- in the hope this will magically generate wage inflation. It’s either an amazing fumble or hustle: opinions vary. Meanwhile, from a US Treasury Secretary who knows that (long) game well, the message is that the bad payrolls number means a need for more federal social spending.
The problem is that there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that the reason more people are not returning to the jobs that have re-opened for them is not “fear”, but that the combination of welfare packages they are currently on pay more than their old jobs did. If so, what we are seeing in real time is the impact of a high level Universal Basic Income (UBI) - and how is that working out for the economy?
So why don't firms just raise their wages to attract more candidates to rejoin the workforce?
Firms aren’t going to raise wages when they know the stimulus checks run out soon (and as labor generally has no bargaining power): but they can’t re-open until the workers come back. Yet if the government believes the lack of re-opening requires extended stimulus, then theoretically we can all sit like this for a long time... It’s ironic that just as central banks can’t see their miserly policy towards labour doesn’t work, Keynesianism Redux can’t see its generous policy maybe doesn’t always work either.