As politicians and businesses trip over each other to see who can raise the minimum wage the fastest and to what extent, the typical "totally unforeseen" consequences of central planning are being felt.
From a human resource perspective, workplace tension is on the rise.
With record numbers of older workers in the workforce, as the beach/sunset/walks-in-the-park vision of retirement crashes on the shores of reality, there could be a light at the end of the tunnel.
After a series of tests on ways to deter theft, Wal-Mart has decided that America's favorite supercenter position will be making a comeback. This summer, Wal-Mart will be rolling out a program that will bring door greeters back to the entrances in hopes of reducing theft, and improving customer service.
We already know that the quantity of the April jobs was disappointing, but what about the quality? Well, on one hand the BLS reported that based on the Household Survey, in April 253K full time jobs were lost so there's that. But what did the Establishment Survey, which is the far more massaged one and thus the one that algos pay the most attention to, show?
Goldman's muppet crushing ways continue.
Recall that just three days before today's deplorable jobs number, Goldman revised its payrolls forecast higher, saying that "we expect a 240k gain in nonfarm payroll employment in April. We increased our forecast from an initial estimate of 225k published last Friday as a result of the improvement in the employment component of the ISM non-manufacturing survey released this week."
Oops.
In addition to the troubling trend revealed by the yet again declining labor participation rate as a result of hundreds of thousands of Americans dropping out of the labor force (and lack of entrants), one other recurring concern we have had with the jobs report is that new job growth has disproportionately gone to elderly workers, those 55 and over at the expense of young (16-24) and prime aged (25-54) workers.