Breitbart Business Digest: The Job Market Is Still Too Hot

Everyone Has a Job and No One Is Happy

Job openings have fallen 20 percent over the last year, dropping from 12.027 million last March to 9.6 million, according to the Labor Department’s most recent data. According to labor market data constructed by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco economist Regis Barnichon that goes back to 1951, there has never been a decline of 20 percent or more in job openings without a substantial increase in the unemployment rate.

Yet the unemployment rate sits near an historic low of 3.5 percent.

Even after the decline in job openings, there were something like 1.6 vacancies per unemployed persons. That’s down from the two-t0-one ratio hit last year. But it is still higher than anything we witnessed prepandemic. A normal ratio would be something like one-to-one.

Remarkably, this extremely low level of unemployment is accompanied by very low levels of consumer confidence. Everyone has a job and no one is happy.

Big Banks Getting Bigger

JPMorgan Chase was already one of the largest banks to ever exist. Judged by asset size, it was already the largest bank in the United States. Nearly everyone agrees that our largest banks are too big already. The chief executive of JPMorgan Chase has said he regrets his 2008 acquisitions.

And yet, when push came to shove, it was JPMorgan Chase that regulators turned to for the rescue of First Republic Bank. There were at least three other banks in the bidding but none could match JPM’s firepower. According to the Wall Street Journal, the bank had 800 people working over the weekend on the deal.