After a period of months in which official U.S. economic reports have been widely seen as rather creatively “adjusted,” some reality is peeking through. A report published April 6 by the so-called “outplacement tracking firm” Challenger, Gray and Christmas, found that just under 90,000 mass layoffs had been announced in March and 270,416 in the first quarter as a whole, five times the mass layoffs announced in the first quarter of 2022. In the same survey, planned hirings in March totaled 9,044, one-tenth of the layoffs. As for the reflection of this in unemployment claims reports, which had been invisible until now, new claims in the week ending March 5 rose to 228,000 from 199,000, and the Labor Department suddenly revised the previous week’s total upward by a full 20% to 246,000.
The most fundamental feature for the labor force and the economy is productivity, and in particular ‘total factor productivity’, which attempts to measure the degree of economic growth which is caused by technological advances and appropriate educational improvements in the labor force. A government report issued March 23 found that total factor productivity dropped by 1.2% in the economy in 2022 as a whole, “the largest decline in productivity since 1982.” It was the third consecutive year of TFP declines.
