The price of rising employment: Slow wage growth, trade risks

If wage growth doesn’t kick into high gear, increasing inflation could swallow even the minimal improvement in purchasing power workers have attained.

A slowing rate of job growth in July nonetheless managed to pull some workers off the sidelines, but wage growth mired at 2.7 percent began to elicit concerns that wages will fail to keep up with inflation as the economy picks up steam.

At 157,000, the number of jobs created last month fell short of expectations, but upward revisions of the previous two months and a broad base of new jobs across industries left economists relatively sanguine about the miss.

“I don’t think you want things to be ‘great’ because great means the Fed worries about inflation and the economy moving ahead too quickly,” said Scott Wren, senior global equity strategist at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute. “The expansion killer is the Fed making a mistake, moving too fast. We don’t want to see great right now. We just want to see good.”
Upward revisions to May and June added a combined total of 59,000 jobs added, bringing the monthly average to 224,000 over the past three months.  “In the past, summer months tend to show large employment fluctuations due to the timing of seasonal hiring,” National Retail Federation chief economist Jack Kleinhenz said in a statement. The retail sector eked out a small gain of 7,000 despite a loss of 32,000 jobs, largely due to the closure of the Toys R Us chain.

 

The labor market sectors with the most notable growth in July were professional and business services, which added 51,000 jobs; and manufacturing and healthcare/social assistance, which added 37,000 and 34,000 jobs, respectively.

“U.S. manufacturing is flexing some muscle right now,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com, but noted these and other labor market gains could be threatened by President Donald Trump’s protectionist sentiments. “Obviously, there are huge risks associated with the trade dispute,” he said.

If wage growth doesn’t kick into high gear, increasing inflation could swallow even the minimal improvement in purchasing power workers have attained in the recovery so far.

“I don’t think we’ve seen the brunt of the tariffs yet,” said Arne Kalleberg, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Manufacturing and agriculture-related jobs would be especially at risk if China or the European Union enact retaliatory sanctions, he said.

Derailing the current labor market expansion could hurt the most at-risk members of the workforce the most and slow mediocre wage growth even further, even as rising inflation erodes the value of Americans’ pay.

“We have to think about the fact that inflation’s running at a 2 percent rate,” Hamrick said. “We’re on this rising interest rate trajectory.” If wage growth doesn’t kick into high gear, increasing inflation could swallow even the minimal improvement in purchasing power workers have attained in the recovery so far.

Economists say demographics are one factor behind wage growth that trails what most experts consider the low end of healthy wage growth by nearly a full percentage point. As baby boomers leave the workforce, the younger and generally less-experienced workers taking their place don’t earn as much.

A yawning skills gap is another. Economists say a robust economy is drawing people back into the workforce, but this could be one of the factors holding down wage growth. “What businesses are having to do is they can’t find people with skills, so they have to hire them at unskilled wages and then train them,” said Dan North, chief economist at Euler Hermes North America.

The data bears this out: Compared to the topline unemployment rate of 3.9 percent, the broader U-6 measure of unemployment fell three-tenths of a percentage point to 7.5 percent in July, a percentage point lower than it was a year ago.

“Of course, the people hired without skills have lower productivity,” North added. The upshot is that unskilled workers aren’t being paid as much, which economists theorize could be holding down wage gains.

With fewer skills and lower productivity, these would be the workers most likely to lose out if companies have to start cutting jobs in response to a trade war-initiated slowdown. “I always worry about the quality of these jobs,” Kalleberg said. “There’s very little bargaining power on the part of workers.“

by Martha C. White / 

NBC News

Desperate employers search for holiday workers in tight job market

When UPS lured holiday job seekers recently to its Columbus, Ohio, package sorting center, it turned the dreary process of interviews and background checks into a full-blown party complete with candy and movie-ticket giveaways.

Faced with a shrinking labor pool and a need to fill 95,000 extra jobs this holiday season, the Louisville-based delivery giant has been left scrambling to find innovative ways to tempt potential employees— including turning recruiting sessions into celebrations.

It’s not just UPS. As the holidays draw closer and holiday hiring is in full swing, industries across the board are feeling the unintended side effects of a falling unemployment rate— now at a 17-year low of 4.1%. But retail, food services and delivery, industries that are an essential part of the holiday grind, are among the most vulnerable.

“It’s definitely a workers’ market,” says Peter Harrison, CEO of Snagajob, an online job search engine, who says companies on the platform are increasingly struggling to find workers. “No question about it. Right now, employers are having to do everything they can to lure people in.”

Starting with pay. Hooplas and giveaways aside, companies know nothing can help them sign up workers faster than the prospect of more cold hard cash and benefits:

• Target. The big-box retailer recently announced it’s increasing the hourly minimum wage to $11 an hour, with plans to go as high as $15 an hour by 2020.

• J.C. Penney. The department store chain will start offering paid time off, up to one week a year, to eligible part-time employees in early 2018.

• UPS. The deliverer known for its distinctive brown trucks offers weekly retention bonuses, up to $200 a week, as a reward to employees who work every day.

As for getting out the word, that’s where the parties come in.

“It’s just another way to reach people,” says Dan McMackin, a UPS spokesperson, who says recruiters also went to football games and Green Day concerts. “The competition for workers means we’ve got to be creative. We need to get out there and talk to everyone.”

Areas with unemployment levels below the national average have been hit the hardest.

In Columbus, for instance, where UPS held its recent holiday recruiting party, the unemployment rate was 3.8% in September, compared to the U.S. rate of 4.2% (the national rate dipped to 4.1% in October). The Columbus area was tied for 168th-lowest in unemployment among 388 metro areas.

Last summer, in Fort Collins, Colo., where the unemployment rate was 1.9% in September, second lowest in the nation, Abbie Lowe, was struggling to staff her store, Neighborhood Liquors. She had a sign on the door for more than a month in addition to the ads posted on Craigslist. Lowe got four resumes.

“Typically, we had a bigger pool to select potential employees from,” Lowe says. “But there are jobs everywhere here. Even day laborers are getting jobs all the time. We can’t keep anyone in here.”

As the holiday season looms, Target plans to hire more than 100,000 extra hourly workers to help out in stores. Josh King has the story (@abridgetoland). Buzz60

In Exeter, N.H., where the unemployment rate hovers around 2.3%, Ryan Abood, CEO of Gourmet Giftbags, an online retailer that makes upscale gift bags, says he focuses on offering “creature comforts” to lure in holiday-season employees.

“It’s all about creating a good vibe at work,” he says. That includes an office with a pool table, air hockey and ping-pong game.

The company, which sells about a million gift baskets a year, usually triples its full-time workforce during the holiday season from 55 people to around 150. Three years ago, Abood says, he received between 50 and 70 applications. This year he had fewer than 10.

 “It’s gone from bad to brutal for employers in terms of the talent pool,” Abood says. The company now has a bus service that picks workers up and brings them to the workplace.

“It’s bad when employers are busing workers to work to get enough people to execute the work we do,” he says. “We would never do that if the talent pool wasn’t so bad. Why would we go through all that extra hassle?”

Some companies are turning to social media or temporary staffing companies to fill the gap— but have had little luck.

“You ask for 10 temps and they send you eight,” says Butch Yamali, CEO of The Dover Group, which owns 12 companies, including restaurants, a catering hall and a construction company in the Nassau County, N.Y. area. Dover Group has more than 1,000 employees.

 About six months ago, Yamali began offering bonuses to current employees who recommend new people. In the past he never had to worry about finding workers.

“You’d just ask a staff member if they have a friend or relative to work,” says Yamali, who says the holidays are the busiest time of year. “There was always some way to find staff. Now it’s impossible. It hurts. People are out spending money but we don’t have enough staff to catch them properly.”

Other companies are leveraging new technology to compete for workers. More than 50 franchisees and corporate partners across the U.S., such as various McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, began using Instant Financial earlier this year. The service allows employees to be paid by the day instead of waiting until the end of the week or month.

This summer’s string of hurricanes in the South left an even bigger dent in the labor pool, especially among construction workers.

“This is not necessarily a bad thing for the people looking for jobs,” says Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Retail Federation. “They’re going to find them.”

But for employers, many have been forced to lower their hiring standards.

“A growing number of employers used to have elaborate assessments to get hired,” Harrison says. “They’ve had to dramatically shorten them—or eliminate them all together in some cases. If they make it too hard to apply, then people will just not apply.”

, USA TODAY

MONTHLY ECONOMIC REVIEW: FEBRUARY 2015

In the February 2015 Monthly Economic Review, NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz provides in-depth analysis on the latest government economic indicators, such as wages and income change, retail sales and consumer sentiment. Additionally, the report looks at retail employment. Employment, according to NRF, which excludes automobiles, gas stations and restaurants, increased 34,800 in January to 2.76 million jobs seasonally adjusted, a gain of 215,600 from the same month last year. Total retail employment across all industry segments increased 45,900 to 15.6 million in January.


NRF’s Monthly Economic Review is a report for NRF and its communities’ members that includes the latest information on industry sales, providing a thorough overview of the current retail and economic climate.

Prepared by NRF chief economist Jack Kleinhenz, the report utilizes recent economic data to analyze the impact of key indicators such as energy costs and the housing market on retail sales growth.