The U.S. unemployment rate recently fell to 3.7%, a rate last seen in 1969. This very low rate is giving the Fed and many other market watchers reasons to worry that the labor market, and thus the overall economy, may be overheating. While it is true we are late in a business cycle, labor market indicators suggest that we are not as late as we may think. To be precise, job growth remains too high, wage growth remains too low, and the employment rate still has room to rise before we run out of workers and hit full employment.
Elliot Eisenberg
Over the past year, the U.S. working-age population has grown by about 225,000 a month. Given that 60.4% of that population works, that means the US economy needs to create 136,000 jobs/month to keep the unemployment rate stable. However, over the past three months, job growth has averaged 218,000/month, and over the past year 211,000/month. As a result, the economy is creating more jobs than required to simply absorb new labor market entrants. This alone suggests that the economy is not at full employment. When we reach full employment, net new job growth will settle at or about 136,000 jobs/month.
Another sign that we are not on the verge of an overheated labor market is that wage growth remains quite subdued. When an economy is short of workers, employers compete for scarce labor, and in the process push up wages, causing inflation to rise. But we see none of that. Over the past year labor productivity growth has been 1.3%, and if you add to that the Fed’s 2% inflation target, you get 3.3%. Wage growth below 3.3% will not cause inflation to increase. And, sure enough, wage growth over the past year has been just 3.1%. If the economy really was overheating, wages would be growing at a much faster rate.
Another clue that the labor market will not seize up anytime soon is that the percentage of working Americans at 60.4% remains well below its pre-recession peak of 63.4%. While a return to 63.4% is unlikely, due to an aging population, more persons going to college, and a few other factors, the rate has been steadily rising since hitting a cyclical low of 58.2% in July 2011. Moreover, the percentage of 25 to 54-year-old persons (those of prime working age) that are working has been rising for almost eight straight years but is still full one percentage point below its pre-recession peak of 80.3%. As a result, I suspect that the percentage will rise at least a bit higher before it tops out.
Lastly, the unemployment rate is no longer as good a measure of labor force slack as it was in the past. Here is one example why: Until recently, finding part-time work that still allowed one to go on job interviews was virtually impossible. Thus, many who looked for a job were out of necessity unemployed. Today, with platforms such as Uber, TaskRabbit, Fiverr and others, one can be employed while actively looking for a more suitable full-time job. As a result, comparing the low unemployment rate of today to similar rates in the past will lead one to conclude that the labor market is tighter than it really is.
Despite a near 50-year low in the unemployment rate, because of technological changes and a careful reading of demographics and data, it seems that the labor market still has some room to vigorously expand before monthly employment growth must slow. As a result, the Fed need not worry that the 3.7% unemployment rate is indicative of an economy that is about to overheat due to a worker shortage – yet.
Elliot Eisenberg, Ph.D. is President of GraphsandLaughs, LLC and can be reached at Elliot@graphsandlaughs.net. His daily 70-word economics and policy blog can be seen at www.econ70.com. You can subscribe and have the blog delivered directly to your email by visiting the website or by texting the word “BOWTIE” to 22828.
Four more businesses recently joined the Family Business Association of California, the only organization exclusively working to protect the interests of family businesses in Sacramento.
Mag Bay Yachts was founded in 2013 by father and son Michael and Barrett Howarth in Adelanto. The company manufactures fiberglass fishing boats and sells them in the U.S., Mexico, and the Caribbean. They employ 15.
Longhorn Meat Company was established in 1976 and is now owned and operated by second- generation Phil Kattenhorn, who took over when his father retired. The company is a retail meat processor and seller located in Auburn and employs nine. The company has been awarded Best Butcher Shop by the Auburn Journal, and featured in Comstock’s Magazine.
Western Engineering Contractors was founded by Don Carroll in 1982 and has grown the general engineering construction company to 135 employees. The company does grading, paving, and underground construction within a 100-mile radius of Sacramento.
Medina McKelvey LLP is a Roseville-based law firm founded by Alex Medina and Brandon McKelvey in 2014. The firm specializes in wage and hour defense (Private Attorneys General Act, or PAGA lawsuits), employment law, and general litigation.
FBA Executive Director Robert Rivinius said the owners of the four companies recognize the challenges of doing business in California, especially for family-owned firms.
“California’s family businesses create the bulk of new jobs, look at the long-term, treat their employees as extended family and stakeholders, and are far more responsive to local needs than corporations headquartered thousands of miles away,” Rivinius said.
“Yet the state’s ever-increasing tax and regulatory burden makes it harder and harder for these firms to remain strong. During the recently concluded legislative two-year session, FBA led a coalition to defeat a dangerous plan to impose a California inheritance tax that would have jeopardized the future existence of many of these companies, and these four businesses recognize the need for family businesses to band together.”
About the Family Business Association of California (FBA):Founded in 2012, the Family Business Association of California is the only organization working exclusively at the Capitol to educate lawmakers and regulators about the importance of family businesses to the state’s economy and to their communities – and to advocate positions on legislation and regulations. For more information, visit www.myfba.org.
Late in the evening on Sunday September 30, stakeholders, advocates, and constituents received the last email notification from Governor Jerry Brown providing a legislative update on the final bills to be signed or vetoed. In his four-term tenure as governor, he has signed over 20,000 bills into law, including 1,016 this year. This year he also vetoed 16.5 percent of bills that made it to his desk, which is consistent with similar percentages in the 15 other signing periods. Final outcomes for several bills that were a high priority for the Family Business Association at the end of this session are outlined below.
In the final days of session Senator Galgiani introduced SCA 24, which would have limited the tax exclusion for the purchase or transfer of a principal residence from parents or grandparents to their children and would require the property to continue as a principal residence of the transferee. The measure would also have deleted the exemption on the first $1 million of the full cash value of all other real property (often a family business or farm), thereby requiring these properties to be reassessed upon a purchase or transfer.
Families would have been forced to dissolve companies, lay off employees, or sell land in order to pay the substantial tax obligation under required by this bill, supplanting working capital to create jobs and allow business expansion. FBA immediately met with the senator, submitted our oppose letter and alerted the coalition we led last year on the estate tax. While FBA advocates were successful in holding this measure, we expect related efforts to continue next year under the new administration.
Employers also escaped a few burdensome bills due to the Governor’s veto pen. Brown vetoed AB 1870 (Reyes) that would have extended the statute of limitations from one year to three years for all discrimination, harassment, and retaliation claims filed with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Brown also vetoed AB 3080 (Gonzalez-Fletcher), which would have prohibited arbitration and settlement agreements for labor and employment claims, creating significant litigation exposure and expense for employers and significantly delaying the resolution of disputes for employees. Both authors have vowed to reintroduce these efforts after the next administration take office.
Of the bills signed into law, employers should be particularly aware of two.
SB 1300 (Jackson) bans nondisclosure agreements in sexual harassment and assault disputes, a practice that was publicly scrutinized as tools of predator filmmaker Harvey Weinstein. And SB 1343 (Mitchell) reduces the sexual harassment training requirement threshold from employers with 50 or more employees to employers with just five or more employees, includes non-supervisorial employees in the training, and requires that the Department of Fair Employment and Housing develop an online training course and make it available on the Department’s Web site. The bill requires that all employers must provide training by January 1, 2020.
In his 50-year career in politics, employers have come to know what to expect from Governor Brown, from the good (stabilizing the budget and workers compensation rates), to the bad (increasing labor and energy costs). We wish Jerry well as he rides off into the Colusa sunset — it’s truly the end of an era. Here’s hoping the next administration will be a golden era for California and not an error. In either instance, FBA will remain at the Capitol to serve you. Thank you for your membership.
Over the past few decades, the term “gentrification,” i.e. high-income persons and households moving into poor minority neighborhoods, who, in doing so, push out significantly poorer lifelong residents, has become one of the most negatively loaded words in urban circles. Almost everyone has heard about a formerly inexpensive community that over a decade became very pricy and celebrated its recovery with the arrival of a Whole Foods selling overpriced kombucha and GMO-free produce.
Elliot Eisenberg
As appealing and as plausible as this story may be, it’s an urban myth. The best empirical analyses conducted by urban economists have failed to detect a rise in displacements within gentrifying neighborhoods. This finding goes so much against conventional wisdom it seems impossible, but it’s true. As a matter of fact, researchers find that poor residents are more likely to stay put as their neighborhood improves. Moreover, the benefits of gentrification, in terms of reduced crime and better amenities, more employment opportunities, and reduced commutes are rarely, if ever, considered by naysayers.
There are three primary reasons why many believe that the poor suffer when wealthier residents move in. The first is that while all Americans move quite a bit, on average about 11.5 times during their lifetime, not everyone moves an equal amount. For example, from 2012 to 2013, 28 million Americans over age 15 moved: 11% of the population. Among households with incomes over $100,000, the percentage that moved was just 7%, compared to 13% for those with incomes below $5,000 excluding government benefits. As a result, merely observing that there are fewer poor in a neighborhood in no way suggests that gentrification is to blame.
A second explanation is that poor neighborhoods have had so little investment for so long, there is considerable slack in both their residential and commercial property markets. In most middle- and upper-class neighborhoods, virtually all housing units, store fronts, and office spaces are occupied. So, the arrival of a new household or business means the departure of another. But in poorer neighborhoods there are many vacant storefronts and apartments, so much so that relatively large numbers of wealthier households can move in and not push out existing residents or businesses. One study calculated that a low-income New York City neighborhood could go from a population that is 30% poor to 12% poor over a decade without displacing anyone.
Another reason the poor are not as adversely impacted as one would expect is that local governments often promote affordable housing programs such as rent control, inclusionary zoning, or other rent stabilization programs in neighborhoods that experience rapidly rising rents. Moreover, in neighborhoods experiencing rapid price appreciation, some market rate units are also built. Because of this increase in supply, rents rise less quickly.
Separately, but closely related to the above, many persons who bemoan gentrification simultaneously lament racial segregation and the lack of investment in non-white neighborhoods. The introduction of wealthier residents lessens the percentage of poor persons, and that has been shown to reduce teen pregnancy and incarceration rates and other such negative outcomes. Moreover, in these communities these improved social outcomes happen through market forces and frequently absent governmental intervention. To argue against gentrification is to encourage the status quo and insist that poor neighborhoods remain poor and segregated, and needlessly cut off from opportunity.
Elliot Eisenberg, Ph.D. is President of GraphsandLaughs, LLC and can be reached at Elliot@graphsandlaughs.net. His daily 70-word economics and policy blog can be seen at www.econ70.com. You can subscribe and have the blog delivered directly to your email by visiting the website or by texting the word “BOWTIE” to 22828.
When Leonard Shubert rolled into Chico in 1938 and decided it would be a great place to start an ice cream business, some of the locals were skeptical.
“People said, ‘You’re going to sell five-cent ice cream cones? Good luck with that,’” recalled Kasey Pulliam-Reynolds, Shubert’s great-niece and the co-owner of Shubert’s Ice Cream & Candy, which is celebrating its 80thanniversary this year.
Kasey Pulliam-Reynolds and Nathan Reynolds of Shubert’s Ice Cream & Candy.
Indeed, Shubert’s is a North State icon, with lines regularly wrapped around the block on summer evenings to enjoy one of its 30-odd varieties of ice cream and 30 more kinds of hand-made candy. In fact, 10 years ago, it was recognized by ABC’s Good Morning Americaas one of the nation’s two best ice cream stores.
Still housed in its original downtown location, the Pulliam family this year finally opened a second location in the city’s major shopping mall to meet the demand.
Reynolds said the secret to Shubert’s continuing popularity is the family’s commitment to quality.
“Everything is made on site and only family members and one other person make our products,” said Reynolds, who handles the marketing and business end of the business while her brother, Nathan Pulliam, is in charge of production.
All the candy and ice cream are still handmade using many local ingredients, including butter, cream, honey and nuts. Even the seasonal treats, such as boysenberry sundaes in the spring, watermelon sherbet in the summer, and pumpkin ice cream in the fall, contain locally grown produce to give them that distinctive homemade taste.
Family members have been deeply involved since the beginning. After a Depression-era insurance business in Montana failed, Shubert purchased an ice cream machine and headed west to find a location. When he drove into Chico, with its tree-lined Esplanade, he knew it was where he wanted to build his business.
(Reynolds notes the original ice cream machine is still in use and is a secret to the business’ success as it makes a different product than more recent machines.)
As business grew in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, Shubert brought family members out from Missouri to help out, including a nephew, Charles Pulliam, who eventually bought the business. Pulliam’s son, Chuck, took over from his dad and now the fourth generation is in charge.
While Nathan had been working at the store since high school, Reynolds spent some time in Corporate America, noting that having five family members working together was enough (grandpa, grandma, mom, dad, and brother all worked at the shop). She worked for large companies for several years until her mother died suddenly.
Because Reynolds was the only family member who had been taught how to hand-dip chocolates, she came back home. In fact, the candy side of the operation – almost a separate business – has been an important part of Shubert’s success over the years, as it keeps the customers coming in over the holidays and at Valentine’s Day when ice cream sales are low.
And that blend of ice cream and candy came together nicely in perhaps Shubert’s signature product – Chico mint ice cream, a reversal of most mint-chip ice creams because it’s chocolate ice cream with chips from the company’s handmade mint candy.
As with most family businesses, there are advantages and disadvantages to owning your business.
“There’s a lot of hard work and there are times the kids have to sacrifice and maybe not go on vacation when their friends do, but next Thursday I get to be a field trip driver when other parents don’t have that kind of flexibility,” she said
She joined FBA because she believes small businesses need a bigger voice.
“I used to do a lot of advocacy, but now that the business has grown and I don’t have time to fight for small business, I thought it would be important to join an organization that is acting as my eyes and ears about what is going on in Sacramento while I’m running my own business,” she said.
Reynolds is still directly involved in advocacy, however. She’s running for a seat on the Chico City Council this fall and while distressed about some recent vandalism around the store by people opposed to her right-of-center views, she is feeling good about her campaign and hopes to be able to bring diverse groups together if elected.
