Run With It:

Signs of Success in the U.S. Economy

By Neil George Jr.

Following is an excerpt of a Feb. 6 column in BY GEORGE!, a daily market intelligence e-letter written by Neil George Jr. and published by KCI Communications. George is an alum of the School of Business & Technology of Webster University in Europe and continues as an adjunct professor and advisor for the school. For more information on BY GEORGE! or Personal Finance, which George also edits, go to www.neilgeorge.com or www.pfnewsletter.com.

I know that there are still lots of folks who aren’t too happy with the current state of the U.S. economy. But for me, while nothing is perfect, it’s solid enough—and then some—to enable me to continue to run with improving prosperity.

In other words, I’m not battening down the hatches.

And this week has been providing even more reason to be upbeat. For the month of January, 112,000 of our fellow citizens found a new job to show up for on a daily basis. And for the prior month, while we originally were told that a meager 1,000 of us went back to work, the number swelled to a revised 16,000.

What does this do to the overall mix of employed and unemployed? Well, look at the fact that 94.4 percent of us are actually employed, up again from the prior month. This means that 5.6 percent of us would still like something else to do besides looking at the want ads every day. And for the vast majority of us who are hard at work, we’re continuing to work more hours each week—up again from the statistics of the prior month.

And during all of those long hours, we’re collectively making our employers happier as our rate of productivity keeps rising (though in my case, I know that I can only type so fast and so much for every hour on the job). The further gains in productivity are also helping to drive costs down for our employers. This is then measured in the unit labor cost data showing yet more months of falling costs, all working to promote improved margins and fatter operating margins.

This works well then for businesses trying to make more bucks for us as owner/shareholders. And since more of us have jobs that are making our employers more profits, the chances that we’ll be able to keep our jobs and maybe see a bit more in our pay envelope is driving our desire to spend more cash.

Spending is what we Americans do really well. Perhaps our biggest competitive advantage as a nation is spending, and even borrowing to spend, more and more cash. This is helping to drive credit balances higher and higher, from housing to consumer loans. All of this is good for the economy.

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