Retail hiring, Yellen on fiscal, Rep Williams on Fed hike, Fx chart

November 2016 Retail Hiring Falls To 6-Year Low

Dec 13 (Econintersect) — Retailers added fewer workers through the first two-thirds of the typical holiday hiring period – and is down nearly 10% from a year ago.

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The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed that employment in retail grew by 371,500 in November. That was down 9.3 percent from a year ago, when jobs in the sector increased by 409,500. It was the lowest November employment increase since 2010.

November followed equally anemic employment gains in October, when retailers added 154,600 workers. That figure has since been adjusted even lower to 150,300, which is 23 percent lower than the 194,800 retail employment gains recorded in October 2015.

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While seasonal hiring is down in retail, it is picking up in other areas; namely, transportation and warehousing. Employment in the sector increased by 96,200 workers in October and November, according to BLS data. That was up from 71,300 a year ago.

From Fed Chair Yellen:

The labor market has improved enough that the United States will not need big U.S. government spending to reach full employment, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said Wednesday.

“I would judge that the degree of slack has diminished. I would say at this point that fiscal policy is not, obviously, needed to help us get up to full employment,” the central bank chief told reporters after the Fed hiked interest rates.

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These charts indicate the extent to which central banks move foreign exchange levels. The Swiss National Bank has been selling their euro to buy dollars, as indicated in the first chart, and the second chart shows how CB’s shifted from euro to dollars when they feared ECB ‘money printing’ would be inflationary:

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