The NewsRoom Syndicate

The Bureau of Labor Services released its annual report today documenting the number of labor strikes and disruptions in the previous year. They found that last year marked the third fewest number of strikes in an annual period since 1947.

The year began, though, with a large number of workers on strike:

There were 27,000 workers involved in major work stoppages that began in 2020. The education and health services industry supersector accounted for over 75 percent of idled workers. Within these sectors, 21,700 workers were idled for 26 cumulative days. In 2017, 25,300 workers were idled and the information sector accounted for the majority of idled workers at 15,000 workers. In 2009, 12,500 workers were idled with almost half of the idled workers coming from one stoppage in the transportation and warehousing sector.

Overall, though, last year had eight major work stoppages, defined by 1,000 or more workers on strike. The lowest annual total was five in 2009, the year after the 2008 stock market crash and real estate meltdown. Last year of course unemployment exploded to even higher levels than it did in that economic slowdown and today the real unemployment level remains around 11-12%.

Donald Trump’s once-majestic Atlantic City casino, later bankrupt and crumbling from disrepair, was imploded this morning about 90 minutes ago. NBC New York covered the event with the help of helicopter photography. It took 3,000 sticks of dynamite to bring it to the ground.

The Trump Plaza was built by Donald Trump and opened up in May of 1984 and operated until 2014. Trump also built the Trump Marina casino and Trump Taj Mahal. All three of them failed as business ventures and went under, because of an overbuilding of casinos in Atlantic City. By building three big casinos he actually competed against himself and was forced to sell them off one by one. Carl Ichan bought the Trump Plaza from him a few years ago for future development.

Now people in Atlantic City are hoping that something new will finally come after the removal of this deteriorating hulk on the Board Walk. Its closure in 2014 put 1,300 people out of work. Those that point at this as a failure for Trump do not realize that the Trump Plaza was one of his first steps into becoming a mega celebrity through the usage of casinos and gambling operations. That image helped him to raise money for other projects and eventually become President of the United States with millions of people looking up to him as their leader.

The new administration of President Biden is facing a blizzard of troubles left over from the previous administration as it begins its term. The economy is in shambles, the Covid vaccine roll-out has proven to be slower than many predicted a year ago, and there was turmoil in Washington around the Capitol. In many ways Biden risks being overwhelmed by the depth of the trouble.

The Biden administration immediately put stricter travel regulations for people coming into the United States with mandatory quarantines and Covid testing requirements. There was talk of mandating that all passengers taking airplane flights inside the United States take a Covid test before flying in order to halt the spread of the virus.

That talk has now seemed to have a hit a wall after a meeting with top airline executives and Biden administration Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigiege and several members of the CDC took place over zoom last Friday.

Among those attending were the CEOs of American, United, Southwest, Alaska, and JetBlue along with airline union leaders.

“We had a very positive, constructive conversation focused on our shared commitment to science-based policies as we work together to end the pandemic, restore air travel and lead our nation toward recovery,” Nick Calio, head of the trade group Airlines for America, said after the meeting.

A leader of the Southwest Airlines pilots’ union said that a testing mandate “would decimate domestic air travel demand, put aviation jobs at risk, and create serious unintended consequences.”

No changes after this meeting took place and it now seems unlikely that further testing mandates will be demanded for internal domestic travel. The situation for incoming international travel into the US remains the same with the following CDC guidance: “All air passengers coming to the United States, including U.S. citizens, are required to have a negative COVID-19 test result or documentation of recovery from COVID-19 before they board a flight to the United States.”

United Airlines (NASDAQ: UAL), however just launched Covid testing access integrated with an App as part of its passenger operations as reported by CBS.

Apps increasingly are becoming the key mechanism for corporations to market to Americans and to monitor them.

On February 2, 2021, the U.S. Labor Department reported monthly unemployment numbers for January and said that nonfarm payrolls increased by 49,000 and the unemployment rate was only 6.3%. The increase in jobs and such a low unemployment rate was championed by some in the financial markets as a reason to buy stocks. On CNBC, as the report came out, economics reporter Steve Liesman stated the numbers and also some of his concerns, but the market futures shot up as he spoke, showing that traders focused on the headlines and job growth talk.

These headline numbers do not reflect economic reality, because they are created by not counting people who lost their jobs and have been out of the workforce so long that they no longer are getting unemployment and are not looking for a new job, because they don’t believe any are available for them or are working part-time, but would rather have a full-time job. The Labor Department calls these people “discourage workers” and does not count them in their headline unemployment statistics. When you factor in these people the real unemployment rate is 11.7%.

The Labor Department also altered the way the numbers were counted this month to help create new headline numbers, which help pump up stock market players. You have to go through the entire official release to fully understand what they did, but it helped to increase the job loss numbers in prior months and boost January numbers, which makes it look like the job situation is getting better than it really is.

The 11.7% rate is a disaster, and historically unemployment rates over ten percent have created intense social stress in the United States, such as seen during the Great Depression and thirty years of labor strife from the 1870’s to 1900’s, typified by such as events as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and Coxey’s Army of 1898.

The millions of jobs lost and not replaced yet is why the US economy would collapse completely without the stimulus aid being given to people. However, the virus situation appears to have finally peaked and more jobs and growth should be ahead of us, but the past year has caused incredible damage to the US economy, which will have ramifications going forward. Most Americans expect inflation to impact them before this year is over. This is the cost of stimulus and programs launched last year, such as Federal Reserve bond buying, to bailout giant corporations.

The headline unemployment rate gives a totally misleading picture of economic reality in the United States.

On Thursday morning the US Labor Department released its weekly jobless report, which reported that 779,000 Americans made first time unemployment claims. This was below the consensus estimates among economists for a 830,000 print on this number. That better than expected result helped to fuel a lot of excitement in the financial markets and helped to creating a morning rally in the S&P 500 and the US stock market.

However, the numbers also showed a huge drop in productivity per work and a jump in Labor Unit costs. Nasdaq.com reported, “unit labor costs skyrocketed by 6.8 percent in the fourth quarter after plummeting by a revised 7.7 percent in the third quarter.”

The unit labor costs were only expected to jump by 3.9%. This is a sign of inflation ticking up in the US economy, a process that most Americans expect will begin to impact them before the year is over, according to a survey done by the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently released its December survey of over 1,300 households on their expectations for their own economic well being and that of the national economy of the United States.

They found that consumers are expecting inflation to rise to over 3% over the next few years, a jump from previous surveys. They reported that “the increase was driven by respondents without a college degree. Our measure of disagreement across respondents (the difference between the 75th and 25th percentile of inflation expectations) declined slightly at the one-year horizon but increased at the three-year horizon to its highest level since May 2020.”

They expect medical care costs to rise from 7.1% a year to 9.1% and also see a coming rise in real estate prices as with “median home price change expectations, which have been trending upward after reaching a series’ low of 0% in April 2020, increased sharply from 3.0% in November to 3.6% in December, the highest reading since July 2018. The increase was broad based across age groups, income groups, and Census regions.”

With the 10-year Treasury bond trading below 1.10%, as of Monday’s closing price, it is clear that the US government and corporate bond markets are not priced for 3% inflation growth. If the consumers are correct eventually there will be a decline in the value of bonds across the board as they will need to return higher yields to attract investors. For the Federal Reserve that may mean implementing “yield control” at some point to rig bond prices at artificially high levels.

The recently deceased Sheldon Adelson was a mainstay of right-wing politics in the United Sstates with his support of neoconservative American politicians, the state of Israel, and Donald Trump with his source of wealth his creation of the Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS) casino empire. He always looked after his business interests first and this led him to be one of the most effective opponents against online gaming in the United States, helping to end American online poker on “black Friday” of April 15, 2011. He wanted people inside his casinos playing and not at their homes where he could not get a piece of the action.

The new CEO of Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS), Rob Goldstein, however, has now made a receptive turn towards online gaming. The company released its quarterly earnings report last week and held an analyst conference call. On this call Goldstein stated that as a company they want to get involved in it, saying “we are going to explore it. And again, the cab is we are in the making-money business. So there’s a way to make money, it’s intelligent and prudent,” although, “there’s nothing concrete. We’re simply looking, learning, observing, and just — there’s been some commentary that it’s my suggestion.”

In a way he may be have no choice as his competitors have been opening online sports betting apps in multiple states across the United States. The gaming industry when it comes to Las Vegas is at a low point right now. December showed the fewest number of visitors since May as the pandemic has rolled on. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has reported a grand total of 19 million visitors for all of 2020, a plunge of 55% from 2019 and its lowest level in 31 years, according to LasVegasAdvisor.com.

However, this isn’t going to be a permanent situation. Rob Goldstein said, “there’s no question about it struggling. But you can’t help but think, there’s this thing that is the vaccine or whatever it’s going to take to fix this problem someday. Again, I want to reassure that we believe Las Vegas has plenty of gas in the tank. Our demand for ’22 through ’27 convention is unbelievable. Our customers want to come, and we remain very bullish on the return of Las Vegas. It may take longer than we want it to. It may take till the end of this year, as we see a visitation spike. But please don’t be among those people who have these ideas that this pandemic would put a hole in Las Vegas. And just the opposite, the demand will be there. This is a unique town.”

Last month, the number of December home sales hit a record high for that month, as the boom in real estate simply continues. Last year, real estate prices went up $2.5 trillion in value, which is the most in a single year since 2005, according to a Zillow analysis.

Home prices nationally rose 12.9% from where they were a year ago in December, according to an Associated Press story today. Contract signings are a sign for future purchases to take place within 30-60 days, so today’s report suggests more sales are coming to take more homes off of the market.

The gains are expected to continue in 2021 “Builder confidence, perhaps in reaction to the boosted demand, hit record highs and more homes are being built as a result,” said Zillow economist Treh Manhertz.

Of course, the gains are being fueled by zero interest rates, which is making it easier for people to buy homes and attracting money into the real estate market for investment purposes. News4 AJAX did a segment on how the market is booming in northeast Florida.

Despite the rise in real estate prices there is blaring weakness in most of the US economy as fourth quarter GDP numbers released yesterday showed a big reduction in the growth rebound that took place in the third quarter and a continued decline in personnel incomes.