berita hari ini : Jobs Strength Puts Fed on Hot Seat - Wall Street Journal The U.S. job market showed surprising resilience in October despite a partial government shutdown for half the month, rekindling debate about whether the economy is strong enough for the Federal Reserve to rein in its signature easy-money program. The Labor Department reported that U.S. employers added 204,000 jobs last month, defying expectations for weaker hiring amid the shutdown and a debt-ceiling fight that knocked down consumer and business confidence. The jobless rate ticked up 0.1 percentage point to 7.3% largely due to the shutdown, which furloughed hundreds of thousands of workers. Friday’s report bolstered expectations that the Fed will soon start slowing the pace of its $85 billion a month in bond purchases, possibly as early as its next meeting Dec. 17-18. The program was launched in September of last year in an effort to hold down long-term interest rates and boost investment and hiring. “There is some vibrancy and strength in the U.S. economy, which is likely to manifest itself in 2014,” said Nathan Sheets, a Citigroup economist and former head of the Fed’s international research division. Stock prices leapt Friday on the new sign of vigor in the U.S. economy and the dollar strengthened, while interest rates moved higher, as they typically do amid signs of strengthening growth. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 167.80 points or 1.08%, to its latest record at 15761.78. Treasury yields rose. But the seemingly strong report—itself marred by statistical quirks related to the shutdown—comes amid a blurry global backdrop that could complicate the Fed’s decision. The European Central Bank on Thursday lowered its benchmark interest rate in response to flagging European inflation. U.S. inflation is also well below the Fed’s 2% target. Central banks in Peru and the Czech Republic also took measures this past week to boost their economies amid low inflation. And Standard & Poor’s on Friday cut its rating on French government debt. One bright note was a report showing that China’s exports rose strongly in October, a good sign for the world’s second-largest economy and for global demand. “The [U.S.] economy appears to be somewhat ahead of Europe in terms of its recovery,” Mr. Sheets said. “This week we’ve seen the European Central Bank double down on its efforts to stimulate, in response to downward inflation pressures that have emerged.” But other U.S. data show substantial weakening in critical areas of the domestic economy of late. A separate government report on third-quarter economic growth, released Thursday, showed consumer spending at one of its weakest paces of the economic recovery. Businesses also cut back equipment purchases for only the second time in the recovery, which is now in its fifth year, underscoring their cautious investment stance. Fed officials have been predicting for several months that economic growth will pick up as the headwinds caused by tight federal spending and this year’s tax hikes begin to wane. The latest report gives some hope that the prediction could materialize. “The U.S. economy may have had more momentum than at first assumed due to the drop in consumer confidence and pessimistic headlines coming out of Washington D.C.,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West, in a note to clients. He cautioned, however, that risks remain, including the potential for a Fed cut in bond purchases to push U.S. interest rates higher and trigger financial turmoil in emerging markets. The domestic and global crosscurrents potentially leave Fed officials with another cliffhanger decision at their December policy meeting. The job market has improved since the Fed launched the bond-buying program in September 2012, when the unemployment rate was 7.8%. That makes some officials eager to pull back. But slow growth and low inflation leave many officials willing to be patient about acting. The possibility of cutting the bond buys “should be on the table for forthcoming meetings,” Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Dennis Lockhart told reporters Friday after delivering a speech in Oxford, Miss. Most Fed officials agree that even if they do pull back on the bond-buying program, they will still keep short-term interest rates near zero for a long time to come. “Employment is growing at a pretty steady, if unspectacular, pace,” Mr. Lockhart said in his speech. But “inflation is too low, and that carries some risk of a weakening economy.” A separate Commerce Department report Friday showed the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the price index for personal consumption expenditures, rose just 0.9% in September from a year earlier after climbing just 1.1% in the year that ended in August—well below the Fed’s 2% target. Among the most encouraging revelations in the jobs report were upward revisions to government estimates of job growth in August and September, before the government shutdown, easing worries about a renewed slowdown in the labor market. With the revisions, the trend in job creation looks notably better than it did just a few weeks ago. The latest report showed that payroll employment grew by an average of just less than 202,000 jobs per month in the past three months. The previous jobs report, released Oct. 22, showed job growth had averaged 143,000 per month over the prior three-month period. The latest figures included a number of statistical quirks that will likely lead Fed officials to be even more cautious than usual about inferring too much from a single month’s jobs report. For example, the timing of the delayed monthly hiring survey might have skewed the data. The report also showed an unusually large one-month flow of people out of the workforce, which was greeted with some skepticism among economists. Last month’s payroll gains were broad-based, but the strongest increases came in lower-paying industries such as retail, hotels and restaurants. The challenges for the economy and labor market remain substantial. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment released Friday fell to a two-year low of 72 from 73.2 in October. Sparring in Washington and broader uncertainty is causing many store owners to move cautiously, often opting to hire seasonal or part-time workers, said Ace Hardware Corp. Chief Executive John Venhuizen. “Stores are hiring, but it’s more muted than what we’d expect given the nature of the business being so strong,” he said. Ace, which has 4,700 stores that are mostly independently owned, recorded strong sales growth during the past six months, including a 4% gain in October. “We definitely saw some softening of the business when the politicians were making all the headlines” during the government shutdown, Mr. Venhuizen said. “And nothing was really resolved, just put off. That creates more uncertainty, not less.” But the improving stock market and broader gains in the economy appear to be giving wealthier Americans more confidence about opening their wallets. When the economy went sour, affluent clients “still had plenty of money” but chose to put off renovations, said Kelly Conklin, owner of Foley Waite Associates, a woodworking firm in Kenilworth, N.J., that is seeing increased orders from luxury-home builders and renovators. “Now that the economy seems to be improving, they are getting more comfortable spending their money.” Strengthening demand has allowed the firm to add four employees this fall, bringing its head count to 14. That is the same size it was before the recession, which forced Foley Waite to cut back to as few as four workers. Overall, 11.3 million Americans remained unemployed in October, a number that has held steady for several months. A broader measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those working part time, but who want full-time employment, rose to 13.8% from 13.6% in September. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, speaking at an International Monetary Fund conference Friday, commented broadly about slack in the labor market. The unemployment rate, he said, probably understates the softness in the labor market. It is an argument Fed officials have made before. Because so many Americans are leaving the labor force, they are also leaving the government’s counts of unemployed workers and holding down the jobless rate. The slack is a reason why the Fed has continued pushing easy-money policies. Mr. Bernanke gave no indication Friday of whether he is more or less inclined to start pulling back on the bond-buying program. Derrick Collins, a 26-year-old from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has been unable to find work since he was let go from a commercial cleaning company in March. He hoped obtaining his commercial truck-driving license would improve his prospects, but he found companies reluctant to hire despite all the headlines about a record stock market and strong earnings in many industries. “It strikes me as very odd,” he said. “The profits are stopping with the upper management and not getting down to the bottom.” After seeking work for months without luck, Mr. Collins is now planning to start his own business delivering and assembling furniture. “I see that some areas of the economy are starting to turn, but it’s taken far too long,” he said. –Jeffrey Sparshott and Michael S. Derby contributed to this article. Write to Eric Morath at eric.morath@wsj, Jon Hilsenrath at jon.hilsenrath@wsj and Sudeep Reddy at sudeep.reddy@wsj klik baca selanjutnya : ift.tt/17T2ghD
Posted on: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 00:14:39 +0000
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