Mounting Job Losses Will Hurt Consumption, Housing, Banks’ Balance Sheets, Public Finances and Lead to Protectionist Pressures

Recent data suggest that job market conditions are not improving in the United States and other advanced economies. In the U.S., the unemployment rate, currently at 9.5%, is poised to rise above 10% by the fall. It should peak at 11% some time in 2010 and remain well above 10% for a long time. The unemployment rate will peak above 10% in most other advanced economies (especially Europe and Japan), too, where social safety nets are broader and thus leading to less short term job losses and pain, but where the effects of the crisis on growth have been even more severe than the U.S.

But these raw figures on job losses, bad as they are, actually understate the weakness in world labor markets. If you include partially employed workers and discouraged workers who left the U.S. labor force, for example, the unemployment rate is already 16.5%; even temporary employment is sharply down. Monetary and fiscal stimulus in most countries has done little to slow down the rate of job losses as economies suffer from  problems of insolvency, not just illiquidity, and as the fiscal stimulus programs are too small and not labor intensive enough. As a result, total labor income – the product of jobs times hours worked times average hourly wages – has fallen dramatically.

Moreover, many employers, seeking to “share the pain” of the recession and slow down the rate of layoffs, are now asking workers to accept cuts in both hours and hourly wages. Thus, the total effect of the recession on labor income of jobs, hours and wage reductions is much larger.

Other indicators are suggesting a protracted period of job losses and a persistently high unemployment rate even after the recession is over. The average duration of unemployment is not at an all time high in the U.S. Many manufacturing sectors are on a secular decline (autos, etc.) and employers are shedding jobs on a permanent basis; employment in the previously bubbly sectors (housing and related housing/real estate services, banking and financial services) is falling sharply and will not recover for a long time. The process of offshore outsourcing of both blue collar and white collar jobs is still in full swing. A lot of the job losses in the U.S. and in other advanced economies are structural rather than cyclical; many jobs will never come back.

A sharp contraction in jobs and labor income has many negative consequences on both the economy and financial markets. There are at least five important ones that we will discuss next: