Labor

When it comes to the US labor market, it's a tale of two extremes according to a recent report by Goldman Sachs.

At one end, the rate of short-term unemployment, defined as those unemployed fewer than 15 weeks, is lower than at any point since the Korean War and is already 0.4% below the bottom reached in the late 90s boom, with half of the gap likely due to demographic change. According to Goldman economists, "from the perspective of workers transitioning briefly between jobs whose attachment to employment is high, this is already a very tight labor market."

As the inexorable advance of automation kills jobs from retail to manufacturing to data entry while wages in the US show only marginal signs of improvement, the Labor Department's latest biennial employment projections have revealed the fastest and slowest-growing fields in the US.

On October 11, we reported that the now defunct Sears Canada announced plans to liquidate its remaining 150 stores instead of restructuring, the latest admission of brick and mortar defeat in the war with Amazon, with the result some 12,000 job losses in the coming weeks. The Canadian version of Sears is the latest victim of department-store decline that’s swept North America as shoppers gravitate online. While the retailer has dabbled in pop-up stores and e-commerce, its distribution centers aren’t as automated as Amazon.com Inc.

Alexander Hamilton, George Washington’s Treasury Secretary, in his first “Report on the Public Credit” in 1790,

put forth the concepts of “assumption” and “redemption.”

He argued that the federal government should assume the Revolutionary War debt

and pay those debts at “face value” in full to the bearers of such debt on demand.

In order to redeem the $75 million of bonds, Hamilton promoted the creation of a “sinking fund”

that would pay off five percent of the bonds annually.

Authored by Marcia Christoff-Kurapovna via The Mises Institute,

[Part of a series on the Swiss economy and society.]