Labor

The good news - another 'soft' survey data item inches to a new post-Trump high as Chicago PMI rises to 57.7 - highest since Jan 2015. However, the bad news is that exuberant hope is not translating into hard reality as the employment sub-index collapsed into contraction.

The 57.7 print beat expectations of a modest decline to 56.9, but the employment component crashed from 57.7 to 49.9 - into contraction.

Business barometer rose at a faster pace, signaling expansion

It seems President Trump was on to something when he said healthcare in America would "explode," if left alone. ABC reports that retired teachers in Texas are projected to pay double or triple their current premiums for healthcare beginning September 1.

http://launch.newsinc.com/

Seemingly no amount of empirical evidence will ever convince progressives that raising minimum wages to artificially elevated levels is a bad idea.  Somehow the basic idea that raising the cost of a good ultimately results in lower consumption of that good just doesn't compute. 

And while roughly 50% of the country will promptly ignore it, below is yet another study, from Dr. David Macpherson of Trinity University and Dr. William Even or Miami University, pointing out the devastating consequences of minimum wage hikes.

As Trump gets ready to renegotiate NAFTA and impose tariffs on companies looking to outsource production to Mexico, a new study from MIT and Boston University suggests that industrial robots, not Mexico, may be the bigger factor contributing to the high levels on unemployment in the Midwest. 

Entitled "Robots and Jobs: Evidence From US Labor Markets," the authors of the study found that the addition of 1 robot per 1,000 workers results in an 18-35 bps reduction in the employment-to-population ratio and 25-50bps reduction in wages.  Per Bloomberg:

Authored by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

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