Interest Rates and Full Employment

[svelte]

Great article on what’s been going on with interest rates and employment numbers.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-24/fed-struggles-to-nail-down-the-meaning-of-full-employment

[FlyerInHi]

I remember some people on here arguing that inflation is through the roof, and that the government is lying to us and manipulating the numbers on both inflation and employment.

[gogogosandiego]

I remember people using the price of gas in the depths of a recession as their starting point for their inflation ‘argument’.

[svelte]

[quote=FlyerInHi]I remember some people on here arguing that inflation is through the roof, and that the government is lying to us and manipulating the numbers on both inflation and employment.[/quote]

There is some manipulation going on with both of those numbers.

As the article points out, with unemployment at record lows, why isn’t the inflation rate going up? And why is the “new jobs” number almost 200K per month? Where are those people coming from?

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/ces0000000001?output_view=net_1mth

And they’ve been dinking with the CPI calculation with lower readings as a result:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2015/01/29/consumer-price-index-undergoes-most-significant-change-in-25-years/#685695447b27

[svelte]

What I’m really trying to figure out, and why I posted that article, is where things are heading…will interest rates stay low?

Will the low unemployment numbers ever lead to jumps in wages?

Are we near a cliff?

I need to map out the next decade as far as my employment, savings, and other plans and those are key data points for my decisions.

[Author]

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