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  • There are nearly 10 million job openings in the U.S.

  • Right now.

  • Almost everybody who wants a job can have one.

  • I said that almost everybody can have a job.

  • And that's by design of the Federal Reserve.

  • The Fed has to monitor the labor market.

  • Fed has a dual mandate.

  • Dual mandate. And it focuses both on price stability and

  • also maximum sustainable employment.

  • Maximum sustainable employment is the highest

  • level of employment we can have without generating

  • harmful inflation.

  • The problem is that maximum employment target is much

  • less obvious than the 2% inflation rate target.

  • After all, the Fed itself says the max level of

  • employment is not directly measurable.

  • It's more sort of amorphous thing.

  • There isn't a number and there isn't one particular

  • measure either.

  • So then what does this mean?

  • Labor market conditions are consistent with maximum

  • employment.

  • Here's why every American who wants a job can't have a

  • job and what maximum employment really means.

  • So the Fed aims for 2% inflation year over year

  • straight forward.

  • But for the other half of the dual mandate, there's no

  • magic numerical target.

  • And the unemployment market just doesn't work like that.

  • The Federal Reserve cannot directly control the

  • unemployment rate.

  • Really what they're trying to eliminate is the part of

  • the unemployment that goes up and down because of the

  • cyclical nature of the economy.

  • We're never going to have 0% unemployment.

  • And that would make sense, right? Because there's

  • always going to be movement in the job market.

  • When Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said

  • most of the members of the Federal Open Market

  • Committee saw the labor market as consistent with

  • maximum employment in 2022.

  • He defined it as.

  • The highest level of employment that is

  • consistent with price stability. And that is that

  • is my personal view.

  • But the problem is.

  • Whether we can raise rates and move to less

  • accommodative and even tight financial conditions

  • without hurting the labor market.

  • So what Powell is saying here is stable employment

  • hinges on the Fed's actions on inflation, whether they

  • raise or lower interest rates.

  • Think of it like this.

  • The Fed mans a sailboat.

  • On deck, maximum employment rides along.

  • Powell can raise or lower its price stability sails by

  • pulling the interest rate cables that will help him

  • steer the boat.

  • So by controlling the sails of inflation, the Fed hopes

  • to set the labor market in the right direction.

  • The seas are pretty stormy, and the Fed has to steer

  • around some pretty big boulders in the harbor.

  • And so it makes it really hard because the wind might

  • shift and they may not realize the wind is shifting

  • until it's too late.

  • I tortured that metaphor to death.

  • In 2020, the Fed actually expanded its definition of

  • maximum employment.

  • And it said it would no longer preemptively raise

  • interest rates just because the unemployment rate had

  • fallen low. It would wait until it saw an uptick in

  • inflation.

  • That's when the Federal Reserve added broad-based

  • and inclusive to its employment goals.

  • That's sort of where you start thinking about how do

  • different populations fare.

  • Like we know for a fact that generally in any sort

  • of recession, it's going to be the low income workers

  • who are hit the hardest, right?

  • The Fed closely monitors this give and take

  • relationship between unemployment and inflation,

  • also known as.

  • The natural rate of unemployment. This shows the

  • sustainable level of employment that doesn't

  • cause inflation.

  • Unemployment that is consistent with expected

  • inflation equaling actual inflation.

  • Part of managing this balance calls for the Fed to

  • make tough choices for the labor market that could make

  • workers lose their jobs.

  • I think it's hard to sell to the public that what you're

  • trying to do is make more people unemployed, right?

  • No one wants to hear that.

  • The economics is if you have so many people working and

  • employers scrambling for workers, we will get more

  • inflation than we want.

  • The Fed tries to keep perfect balance of jobs to

  • inflation as steady as possible.

  • The law doesn't have the word sustainable in it.

  • The law just says maximum employment.

  • We can't run experiments on the unemployment rate or

  • inflation the way we can our hypotheses when it comes

  • to physics and chemistry.

  • The question is how low can the unemployment rate go

  • before it starts producing wage pressures and

  • inflation? The short answer is we don't really know.

  • Measuring employment starts with the headline

  • unemployment rate tracking how many people without jobs

  • have actively looked for employment in the last four

  • weeks.

  • Usually looking at the unemployment rate is enough

  • because most of the other measures of the labor market

  • travel pretty close to it.

  • Unemployment is only measuring that for people

  • who are looking for jobs, right?

  • Lots of groups of people who are not counted as

  • unemployed but might actually want a job.

  • And that's not going to show up in that unemployment

  • number.

  • So, economists dig deeper.

  • Well, one thing they're looking at is how many

  • people are there who say they'd like a job, but

  • they're not bothering to look because they don't

  • think they could find one.

  • That's called discouraged workers.

  • They're looking at what is the labor force

  • participation rate.

  • That is what fraction of the working age population

  • is either working or looking for work.

  • For example, the labor force participation rate declines

  • when people stop looking for work, which happened

  • amid the pandemic.

  • But these numbers aren't inclusive of nuance.

  • As one number does, it's masking all the

  • heterogeneity you can see, right?

  • So different races, different genders, different

  • age, groups are going to have very different levels

  • of participation.

  • Right now, there are about two job vacancies for every

  • one unemployed person.

  • That's where the job Openings and Labor Turnover

  • Survey, aka the JOLTS report comes in.

  • It's a look into who's been hired and who's been fired.

  • Things like the number of quits that we're seeing,

  • right? Or the number of job openings that are available.

  • Plus, demographics shift the understanding of this data.

  • That's a big reason why defining maximum employment

  • is extra tricky.

  • So, economists track workers ages.

  • I think it's really important to zoom in on the

  • prime age employment to population ratio.

  • That is the share of people between the ages of 25 and

  • 54 who are working and try to figure out what sort of

  • structural unemployment for the U.S.

  • is today, given the technology, given the policy

  • landscape and given the demographic makeup of the

  • country. And so it does change over time.

  • So, at any given point in time, maximum employment is

  • defined by what the population looks like.

  • There might be times where 4% unemployment is

  • consistent with very low or falling inflation and other

  • times where it may be inflationary.

  • So, you've just got to kind of, you know, taste the

  • pudding, and see, and see how it goes.

  • The maximum employment goals shifts with the state of the

  • economy, just as Powell said back in 2022.

  • Maximum employment will evolve over time and through

  • the course of the business cycle and in the particular

  • situation we're in now, the level of maximum of

  • employment that's consistent with stable

  • prices may increase and we hope that it will as more

  • people come back into the labor market.

  • The interesting thing is that we were at maximum

  • employment before the pandemic and we had very

  • little inflation.

  • Our country is taking everything that COVID has to

  • throw at us and we've come back stronger.

  • America is back to work.

  • We're coming out of the pandemic, right?

  • And all of a sudden we got back to a point where

  • unemployment was historically low, which is

  • generally not what you would expect would happen.

  • And I think a lot of that is just outside of the Fed's

  • control.

  • Of what the Fed can control, the central bank is aiming

  • for what it calls a soft landing.

  • Powell thinks that employers will reduce the number of

  • vacancies in the economy.

  • That is, they'll stop hiring without laying a lot

  • of people off. And that's the path or the course to

  • bringing the sailboat to shore without hitting any

  • rocks. Jay Powell thinks the wind might hit the sails

  • just right.

  • The good news is that we do see labor force

  • participation picking up again.

  • And if companies find it easier to fill vacancies

  • without bidding up wages so much and then passing on

  • that cost to consumers with higher prices, perhaps, just

  • perhaps, we may be able to sustain this low level of

  • unemployment without inflation growing.

  • The Fed is a bunch of people who are sitting around

  • looking at all these numbers, trying to draw

  • something from recent history, but also trying to

  • understand how the world might be different today and

  • trying to make a judgment about how can they use the

  • levers they have to steer us towards the maximum part

  • of employment with the sustainable part, which they

  • think means it can only be sustainable if we're at or

  • near, somewhere near, 2% inflation.

  • The harder question for the Fed is how do you know when

  • there's too many people working in the economy and

  • therefore we have to raise interest rates so that some

  • of them get laid off so we can avoid inflation?

There are nearly 10 million job openings in the U.S.

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