Where Is the US Heading and How Will This Impact Markets?
What are some of the options going forward? None of the options are particularly pleasant, although some are less lethal than others.
We are entering the summer months with a wide array of conflicting and confusing data. I have touched on many of these things previously, but we need to dig into them a bit deeper to get a better understanding of where the economy is heading and how the markets are likely to react. Consider the following chart: Job Openings in the U.S.
Job openings in the US are effectively falling off of a cliff. Prior sharp declines in job openings over the past twenty-five years have coincided with severe economic downturns – the Dot-com bubble of 2000, the Great Recession that began in late 2007, and the Covid recession of 2020. The current collapse in job openings, however, is an anomaly as the economy seems to be chugging along, albeit at a modest growth rate. This is just one of many anomalies in the current economic environment. Several obvious questions are why things are different this time and how things will play out from here. Hopefully, we will get a better understanding of these things in this week’s write-up.