As we discussed yesterday, the Fed's primary objective is to reduce leverage of the job seeker, and current work force, in commanding higher wages.
Wage growth has fueled inflation. And what the Fed fears is a wage (upward) spiral.
That said, after adding $6 trillion to the money supply in two years (ten years worth of money supply growth in two), we should expect higher prices. It's excess money, chasing a relative stable quantity of assets.
That's a formula for higher prices.
And as we've discussed, while the rate of change in prices (i.e. inflation) will come down, the level of prices will not — unless much of that $6 trillion is sucked out of the economy. That's not going to happen.
It is implied that the Fed's quantitative tightening program will accomplish that, but if we look back at the 2017-2019 period, when the Fed was shrinking it's balance sheet, the money supply (M2) kept growing!
Back to the jobs report today…
Again, the most important data point in the report this morning wasn't jobs, but it was wage growth.
Is there more evidence that the wage spiral threat is abating?
The answer is, yes.
Average hourly earnings grew by 0.3%. If we annualize that, we get 3.7% wage growth. That's significantly lower than the year-over-year change, which is better than 5% growth (but trending lower), as you can see in the chart below…
