I could easily spend the entire day ranting about how dumb Americans are, but I’ll share some positive news instead. We’re going to need it.
Numbers released this morning by the ADP Research Institute show that 230,000 jobs were created during the month of October, slightly beating expectations.
via Bloomberg
The 230,000 increase in employment, the most since June, followed a revised 225,000 gain the prior month, figures from Roseland, New Jersey-based ADP Research Institute showed today. The median forecast of 44 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for an advance of 220,000. [...]
The hiring gains reflect sustained consumer-spending gains in the face of a global slowdown, helped by a drop in fuel prices. Even as employers hold down firings and add to staffs, workers may need a faster pace of wage gains to support the purchases that make up the biggest part of the economy.
The good but incoherent news is that Americans chose to vote in favor of minimum wage hikes in half a dozen locations yesterday, but they did so while also voting for anti-minimum wage candidates.
I assume this means they either have no idea what their candidates stood for, or they had a stroke in the voting booth.
Either way, this is a consumer driven economy whether we like it or not and the road the recovery is through consumer demand. People can’t buy your shit if they don’t have any money.