Courier and Delivery Driver Employment Fall; Warehouse Employment Up

Post the holiday e-commerce surge, the inevitable arrived.  According to the Wall Street Journal, courier and delivery jobs were shed quickly by companies with lower demand.

Warehouse employment continues to outpace the overall economy.  Just go to towns like Lakeland, FL, Memphis, TN or Nashville and you can see that for mile upon miles.

What is fascinating about all this is this means buffer inventory is increasing. The graph below shows the incredible climb of inventory relative to sales in our economy.  Wasn't this what all this fancy supply chain software was supposed to solve?

Inventory to Sales Ratio

We are back to roughly 2002 levels which, if you measure supply chain efficiency by inventory levels you could say that we are in a "lost decade" of supply chain improvement.

Wal-Mart Guides Lower - Sales Weaker

Reporting this morning, Wal-Mart is describing slow sales, and it has guided the street lower for the remainder part of the year.  This is not good news but not unexpected for my readers.  Until unemployment gets to 6% or lower you can expect to see a slow tough slog on consumer goods and that will deflate the demand for trucks. If you have to continue to look at one economic number which ultimately will drive the demand for transportation, look at unemployment.

If Wal-Mart guides down 1.5% to 3%, which is roughly what the news is saying this morning, that is a lot of empty trucks and containers on the road looking for freight.

Consumer durables appears to still be a strong point in the market but overall the story of a tough slog continues to hold true.

The Jobs Report Relative to Logistics: Families Enjoy Life More With Less?

The major economic news yesterday which, for a short period of time shattered the markets, was the jobs report.  Some key statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) press release:

• Employment up 88K (Far below estimates)
• Long Term unemployed remained constant at about 4.6M
• Unemployment rate ticked down ever so slightly 7.6%

However the big number people were concerned with was the level of unemployed people who have dropped out of the labor market.  This number was a whopping 496K.  And of course this brings huge concerns to those of us (logisticians) involved in moving goods to market.  If the market shrinks then there are less goods to move to market - it is that simple.

What this jobs report reinforces are two major headwinds to the economy:

• Level of unemployed is staying relatively flat 
• Those who are employed will continue to feel restrained as they feel their employment could be at risk. 

Both of these mean that demand will continue to be stubbornly low and freight volumes will continue to be restrained.  Having said that, what I am most concerned about is the graph below:

 

This graph highlights the issue of those who have dropped out of the employment market.  As you can see we are bouncing around a bottom but the number is around the level we were at in the mid 1980's.  Two causes for this and both are a headwind for logistics:

• People cannot find employment - restrained spending
• People do not want to find work - A major societal shift. 

 Of these, I am most interested in the second one which could have long term and structural consequences to the economy and to the freight enviornment.  To be clear, this is not a judgement and I am not saying these are freeloaders.  What I am saying is just like companies have now become used to producing more with less, families have now realized they can enjoy life more with less.   Families that felt it was necessary to buy a lot of "things" and thus demanded two incomes have found out one income with a lot less "things" is actually pretty enjoyable.

No matter which way you look at this, we know this is not a good sign for a robust freight recovery. 

Unemployment Claims Plummet

The singular biggest metric to watch for business activity (IMHO) is the first time unemployment claims number.  This number is going down consistently which means business activity will pick up.  Unemployed people will begin working and employed people will feel more confident.

The graph below from Northern Trust tells the story:

Since September we have been going straight down with the initial claims.  Don't let the naysayers fool you by saying "people are dropping out of the market".  These are first time claims so just about everyone files their initial claim.  Firing slows way down and therefore we know the economy is stabilizing.

Good news for everyone and especially trucking and logistics firms.  More workers, more confidence, more buying, more freight.. it is that simple.