Credit: Shutterstock photoHave you seen the label "Made in USA"? Supposedly this means the product is "all or virtually all" made in the United States. I have little faith in labels such as this - the USA supply chain has gone from vertical (where one company literally made every piece of the final product) to almost horizontal (where the manufacturer is an assembler of outsourced components).
Without extremely tight supply chain controls found in aerospace and nuclear industry - few can prove the ultimate sub-subcomponent manufacturer in a court of law. Even in the 1970's, the amount of foreign made elements in components in goods made in the USA was surprising. No Dorothy, all countries trade - and items get all intermixed (the supply chain is just not geared to retaining source documentation, isolating batches, and continually passing documentation on origin along). My point here is that if you buy an item from an American source - and it is not marked or labeled as "Made in Some-other-Country" - it is assumed you are buying an USA made product. The data to say otherwise does not exist.
In data gathering - many holes exist because the data is too hard or expensive to gather - or it is just better politically not to know.
So you might understand why I would be skeptical of: The Percentage Of Workers In Government Is At A 54-Year Low
I believe this data point, but I disagree with the implication that government employment is shrinking. Adding to this discussion, below find the graph of government employment (not percentage of workforce).
We KNOW that government employment is not growing as fast as private sector employment - what we do NOT KNOW is the size of the pool of private sector employees who are working under government contracts. They fall into several general groups:
- Contractors who are delivering a product to the government (such as an airplane or a missile);
- Contractors doing research and development under government grants;
- Contractors who literally operate as the arms and legs of the government (operate a government function).
As an example, in 2000 most of the top 10 government contractors according to usaspending.gov were providing goods to the Department of Defense. In f/y 2015 most contractors were managing a government operation. You can find articles hereand there on the subject of the size of government contractor workforce. [hat tip to foreffectivegov.org for the graph below and their post on this subject].
The market was expecting the weekly initial unemployment claims at 281,000 to 325,000 (consensus 295,000) vs the 316,000 reported. The more important (because of the volatility in the weekly reported claims and seasonality errors in adjusting the data) 4 week moving average moved from 291,250 (reported last week as 290,500) to 298,000. Rolling averages under 300,000 are excellent.
Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims - 4 Week Average - Seasonally Adjusted - 2011 (red line), 2012 (green line), 2013 (blue line), 2014 (orange line), 2015 (violet line)
Bankruptcies this Week: Caesars Entertainment Operating Company (CEOC) (aka Harrah's Operating Company), Privately-held Suntech America (aka Suntech Power)
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The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
