I know. Employment is up. You see help wanted signs more regularly. The economy in absolute numbers is growing. So why do critics like me keep blaring out warnings?
For the same reasons as always. Because so much of what you read, or see and hear, about the economy only occasionally gives you the full context of what is actually going on.
Like the truth about the shape of retail now, as depicted in the linked Bloomberg article below. And even if consumer confidence is up now (for god knows whatever reason, other than a lot of people are just still really ignorant of what is happening in so many areas where hourly working people, as well as salaried, are involved).
Put bluntly, the bottom is about to fall out from under store oriented retail; and lest you think that not much to worry about think again. That is not only something like 8 million retail workers (according to the Bloomberg article), but a whole lot of debt load held by local banks as well. And then there's the local taxes such establishments have always provided to their communities, as well as significant employment.
And as the Bloomberg article also makes clear, it isn't just competitors like Amazon that are to blame, though, to be clear, here, that is why retail became stressed in the first place (and so got bought up and put into debt in the first place). And a lot of that can be laid at the feet of our old friend "Technological Change." And we all know where that is going to continue to go.
Pretty soon you are going to start hearing about massive layoffs in other industries where hourly, or self employed folks still get a lot of employment: Things that involve driving vehicles for instance in any commercial sense. Just wait till that hits not only the trucking industry, and people movers in general, but all the rest of commercial transport (like automating piloting everything from aircraft, to container ships, all warehouse operations, and perhaps even more and more motorized construction equipment). And then how long do you think it might take cash strapped communities to switch from human police patrols to armed drones; either flying or self moving on the ground; and once that starts, how many other first responders will come to be replaced.
The other part of this, of course, when all of these economic numbers are bandied about, is that we seldom get accurate breakdowns of just how much of our total economic growth is in, say increases in real wage purchasing power, as opposed to say, all the various paper investments (buying and leveraging and selling just to turn around more loan fees, and quick profit rapes of once profitable private companies); number crunching investments (where you just play numbers games across various electrified commodity exchanges), or profit increases simply because you control so much of a market you can charge whatever exorbitant fees you care to. Any more than we would think to discount money being made simply because there is so much more destruction going on now, on a regular basis (by drought enhanced forest fires, climate change tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding; not to mention the always ongoing, directly human caused destruction, by whatever kinds of motivating desperation).
Bottom line here is that you can believe the hype if you want to, but, just like the luster wearing off certain prominent politicians now, you are not going to have the luxury of that belief much longer; count on it because a truly rude awakening is rolling down on you just as sure as the nature of inertia can make it.
See Also:
THE AGE OF ANXIETY
Adapting to the new economy has made young people drastically more worried and dissatisfied than their parents' generation.
Josh Short was expecting crowds and you all let him down.
