Barron’s: “Worried About a Recession? Watch These 5 Indicators”
By admin_45 in IN THE NEWS
Excerpt from Barron's quoting DataTrek's Nick Colas:
.... "Who: Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research
Indicator: Participation and unemployment rate among African-Americans.
Colas admits this is controversial: “Hiring works across all racial backgrounds, but African-Americans are often the first fired,” Colas says, citing research by Kenneth Couch and Robert Fairlie on employment trends going back to 1970. “It is a leading indicator—and looking back through the last couple cycles it works.”
Colas says the unemployment rate and participation rate among African-Americans are among the first data points he checks in the jobs data. African-American unemployment hit a low of 7.6% in the last economic cycle, in August 2007, and had risen to 9% by December of that year. Those looking at overall employment, though, may not have seen the weakness in the labor market because it sat at 4.6% in August and rose just modestly to 5% by that December"....
Read the full article here on Barron's!
