by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Jobs metrics were immune to worsening economic malaise.
The official labor market metrics in the US — unemployment rate, number of jobs created, weekly unemployment insurance claims, etc. — have been immune to the worsening malaise visible elsewhere:
- Total business sales have declined since mid-2014.
- Business inventories have reached crisis levels.
- Corporate earnings, no matter how financially engineered, have fallen four quarters in a row.
- Productivity is down.