By almost any measure, the monthly unemployment numbers are the most overanalyzed data in investments.
With little basis for speculation about what the Federal Reserve will do about interest rates (i.e., apparently nothing), and any fiscal reforms unlikely, the Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report is about the closest thing to action that most financial players have seen since the financial crisis of 2008.
Such was the case on Friday, when the government reported that the economy produced 192,000 new jobs in the month of March, keeping the unemployment rate steady at 6.7 percent.
But while all the sidebars in the 60 employment reports we have gotten since the bottom of the financial collapse five years ago make for good cocktail-party conversation, economist Peter Morici drills down to the heart of the problem: namely, that “employment opportunities for prime working-age adults have not kept pace with population growth.”
Yes, adults age 25 to 54 — those coveted by advertisers, those building families, those with the best combination of energy and experience — have been cut out of this so-called recovery. At the beginning of this century, nearly 82 percent of this group had a job; now that number is down to 76.5 percent.
More alarming still is that that number has shrunk even with the increased participation of women in the workforce over the past 14 years. As a result, as Morici outlines, 1 out of 6 men, nearly 17 percent, between the ages of 25 and 54 is without a job.
What’s more, men with good-paying, high-benefits jobs are holding on to them well after the age of 65. (Who can blame them?) As a result, nearly one-third of seniors ages 65 to 69 are employed, up from 27 percent 10 years ago, drying up opportunities for the Gen Xers behind them.
What is disturbing is that the Federal Reserve, now under the auspices of one of those 65-to-69-year-olds, is doubling down on the policies that have cut to the core of full employment for the most productive.
Unfortunately, there seems to be little appetite in Washington for anything but the status quo.