Word: slowdown
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...question is, where does it go from here? Layoffs and unemployment typically rise coming out of a slowdown, as companies use job cuts to regain profitability and prepare for future growth. Optimists will tell you that the worse the numbers get, the more likely a quick recovery becomes...
...Pessimists, of course, will look at that theory and wonder where that nascent recovery has been hiding. If unemployment rises sharpest after the slowdown is done, say the bears, then it follows that this round of upticks is only a prelude to a very ugly second wave of layoffs, when companies find out this winter that consumer demand just ain?t what it was in all spring...
...That's the longest estimate yet. Yet in the short political week since the White House promised the Washington Post that addressing the economic slowdown would be George W. Bush's "number one priority" all fall, the President has already made it clear that he's done all he's going to do. No new tax cuts or gaudy deficit spending - budgets are tight in Washington too - and certainly nothing so gauche as to have Paul O'Neill talk down the dollar to help manufacturing, or to jawbone the Fed when it's practically jawboning itself...
...meantime, headlines like "Job Cuts Top 1 Million" certainly don't help. The saying goes, a slowdown is when your neighbor's out of work; a recession is when you are. And while the unemployment picture is not really all that bad - as the August unemployment number is expected to show, not all announced cuts turn into real cuts, some pink slips get torn up, and decently skilled workers are finding other jobs - a million job cuts is the kind of number that can make even a patriotic consumer stop and think: What if next month I'm the neighbor...
...Friday is the barrage. The lead is August?s unemployment number, expected to come in at an upticked 4.6 percent. Economic types will remember that unemployment always rises coming out of a slowdown as well as into a recession, so even an unpleasant surprise like 4.7 or 4.8 doesn?t mean anything bad, necessarily. Unless consumers think it does. Other consumer numbers are folded into the report, namely average workweek and hourly earnings, and those?ll be the garnishes. And then there?s wholesale inventories for July - normally one to watch very closely, since those shelves have...