Signs of Economic Recovery?

[Shaun @ Tru6]

I've been shipping our fall orders for the last 3 weeks, boys tops and bottoms, mainly to high end, small Main Street stores around the country.

This was a small sales season for me, really to be expected given the economy in January - April when all buying was done. And in a down economy, Boys is the first to be dropped and the last to be picked up again. Girls is where the real money is.

But I've been seeing some really positive signs talking with my customers:

One of my largest customers, Chasing Fireflies, a national print catalogue and online retailer shipped their fall catalog 3 weeks ago. 2 weeks after ship, they placed a re-order for the same quantity of one of my Urban Dino T's.

I stagger ship to both get products into stores as early as possible and to keep fresh goods coming into a store. Talking with several of my stores in Chicago and the East Coast, they are placing reorders for our cords (nicest in the country) and some T's. I have actually sold out of some of our styles. This is all low volume, some hand-made, stuff catering to upper-middle and upper class households.


Anyone else have some signs that people are spending and the economy is coming back?

[onewhippedpuppy]

We're laying off more employees, does that count?

Glad to hear things are going well for you Shaun.

[cmccuist]

Shaun, that is great news. How much of that could be back-to-school? Do you usually see an increase at this time of year?

Regardless, hope that trend continues.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

There is and can ultimately be no such thing as a "jobless recovery". This is artificial.

[jyl]

So the economic recoveries after 1991 and after 2001 didn't really happen, and neither did the stock market runs in those periods? Those were so-called "jobless recoveries" too.

Which were not actually "jobless", since employment was very strong by the latter part of the 1990s and the latter part of the 2000s. They are better called "jobs later" recoveries.

The economy has changed over the past several decades. Instead of bouncing right back, coincident with GDP and other coincident measures, employment takes longer to turn around.

And even the employment situation is getting less bad than it was. Initial unemployment claims peaked some months ago and have been falling ever since - that is a good indicator of recession-end. Job losses have recently started slowing, even before the sharp drop in the July number released today. We may be seeing the climb in the unemployment rate start to slow, again, see the July number.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Oh yeah, only about 600,000 more jobs lost last month. Let's throw a fkin party.

[jyl]

Here is the latest - not sure where your 600,000 comes from?

Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- The pace of U.S. job losses slowed more than forecast last month and the unemployment rate dropped for the first time since April 2008, the clearest signs yet that the worst recession since the Great Depression is easing.

Payrolls fell by 247,000, after a 443,000 loss in June, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The jobless rate dropped to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent.

[kmhemi]

The company I work for just called back over 400 workers who had been laid off....

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by cmccuist

Shaun, that is great news. How much of that could be back-to-school? Do you usually see an increase at this time of year?

Regardless, hope that trend continues.

Thanks Craig, and yes, it's almost entirely back to school. Fall is my biggest season. Just talked with a customer in West Bloomfield, MI. She said "it's sucky here" but she's paying the bills and we both agreed that in this economy, as local small business people, that's sometimes the best you can expect.

I've had two competitors go out of business recently. they had great clothing and cool designs, I can only think their burn rates were too high. Anyone getting through 2009 will be rewarded in 2010.

thank you for the kind words.

[widebody911]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

There is and can ultimately be no such thing as a "jobless recovery". This is artificial.

+1

A "jobless recovery" is simply a bubble in a new sector.

The massive layoffs actually just perpetuate the cycle. Company A lays off a bunch of people in order to protect profits, but all those people are consumers of Company X, Company Y, and Company Z's products, who in turn lay off to protect profits. Before long, Companies B and C are laying off, and around we go. If nobody has jobs, nobody can buy your stuff.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Exactly. A true "recovery" cannot occur until jobs have been created and people are re-absorbed into the workplace.

You simply can't sustain an economy trying to drag along the cost of unproductive (economic defintion, not a disparaging remark) individuals.

In this way I'd say any announcement of "recovery" is way premature and conditional on a turnaround in unemployment within a few months of the other indicators - otherwise the "recovery" will stall and probably even reverse.

The GAO statistics are bunk. They do not account for those persons underemployed or who have exhausted their benefits (I know two people personally in that boat). I believe the "real" unemployment number for CA is somewhere around 16%-17% right now. Don't know what it is nationally, but I'd speculate somewhere around 13%-14%. Don't play games with me over the bullschit manipulated statistics used. For practical purposes an "unemployed" person is one with no income coming from working (i.e. not welfare, governement assistance or relatives).

Until we see a couple of consecutive quarters of POSITIVE numbers, this ain't a recovery. That's a real-world, common-sense definition, even if it disagrees with what the ulterior-motivated spin machine statisticians' methodologies say.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

hey, here's a thought. You folks who don't have any actual positive experience with economic recovery, take your bitterness, anger and bile and go somewhere else.

Thanks!

[Rick Lee]

I'm not bitter at all. I survived the latest round in which 30 of my co-workers got laid off. Yesterday I got my commission file and was 80.9% of goal, which keeps me as one of the top performers in the company. Sure is gonna be a bleak December when all the pep talks about finishing the year at or above 100% of goal are laughed off while everyone puts their speaker phones on mute for that conf. call.

[widebody911]

In this way I'd say any announcement of "recovery" is way premature and conditional on a turnaround in unemployment within a few months of the other indicators - otherwise the "recovery" will stall and probably even reverse.

I'll go as far as to say we never truly recovered from the 2000 recession. Sure, a lot of 'jobs' were created in the RE bubble, but a lot of those jobs were 'parasitic' in nature - RE agents, loan processors, mortgage brokers, telephone sanitizers, mortgage call center boiler rooms, etc. Yes, a lot of construction jobs were created, which were also filled by a lot of illegals.

[Z-man]

Well, MB sold 16,333 cars in the US in July - the highest month of the year so far. And July typically isn't our best month. And the SAR number seems to be going up ever so slightly.

And while the "Cash for Clunkers" program may have caused a spike in the national autosales numbers, it is doubtful it made a major impact in Mercedes-Benz sales.

So 16,000+ cars for July is a strong number. We did just launch the new E-class at the end of June, so that probably contributted to the sales numbers.

-Z-man.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Shaun, nobody is saying anything "bitter" here. For one I'm actually glad you've found yourself some refuge from the storm and are doing well. That's great news. However, you did kind of open the door to larger scale discussion by calling it "economic recovery". Anyone will tell you that it's inappropriate to make judgements about the economy as a whole based on one person's limited and myopic view of what's happening.

I have a good job offer on the table. Big deal. Does it make me feel even one bit better about our economy? No way. There is no recovery. It's smoke and mirrors made to create a "feel good" in the hope that the optimism will get people out and spending. Well the problem with that is that "getting people out and spending" does NOTHING to solve the underlying problems with our economy that created this recession. Nothing. Not a single thing is being done to fight the disease - instead we're focusing on symptoms. Ultimately that will only put us right back here - worse off - before too long. That's not a "recovery".

All this "recovery" talk is a bunch of poppycock. Utter rubbish. Until we have better employment and we're actually attacking our deficit and restoring trades/manufacturing to this country, there won't be any sort of real "recovery".

That said, I like your work and I'm glad you're selling and making some money. That's good to hear and I can certainly appreciate an artist's product being appreciated and yielding dividends.

[VINMAN]

My company ( the biggest US telecom) just anounced 8,000 layoffs. 2,000 in the NYC area alone.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by Z-man

So 16,000+ cars for July is a strong number. We did just launch the new E-class at the end of June, so that probably contributted to the sales numbers.

-Z-man.

I looked at the first new E-class sedan that my local dealer received, that is a stunning car. I predict you will sell a lot of those. Not to me, unfortunately.

Honestly, I think that a large part of the challenge is perception. Right now anyone with money, be it businesses or individuals, is sitting on it to ride out the storm. Getting people to think positive again and start spending money is a big part of the challenge.

[s_morrison57]

I got called back to work, but gold has always had an impact on my work this is the first time in 33 years I've been doing this that gold is high and work is not totally booming, for me its high gold price lots of work - low gold price not so much work, so I'm not sure if this a recouvery or just a slowing of the decline

[cgarr]

Some areas have not seen any downturn at all, we are in the snack food business and have never had so much work! But we are not adding to staff right now, only temps so far until we see how things shake out.