A snaphsot on the current employment picture ...

Consumer spending is a complex beast to gauge as it is influenced by;  unemployment levels, debt service levels, wealth effect, tax and governmental policies (ie. home price and investment values) etc etc. 

In the attached graphic we look at one very important and contributing factor employment levels via continuous and initial claims.  While both shot up to levels never seen before since the government started tracking the statistics (note: these figures are not adjusted for labor market size for nor population), the important point to note is that they have both started to revert back to the mean very quickly suggesting that the employment picture is improving albeit from very bad conditions. 

If these trends continue in this direction we can expect consumer spending to remain strong and support equity prices (albeit with pullbacks)

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