Progress in our economic recovery?

Could a positive trend in rehires after the coronavirus shutdown be the beginning of an uptick in our economy? 

Full Transcript:

Scott Rasmussen  0:07  

Good morning, Scott Rasmussen here. Welcome to my podcast: Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day. You know, there's all kinds of numbers about the economy flying around right now. And it seems every time a new economic statistic comes out, we say, 'Wow, it's never been this big before.' You know, for a while it was there have never been this many job losses in any jobs report in the history of our record-keeping in the United States. And then this last month, it was there have never been so many jobs created in the history in any jobs report. Now, you know, there's a sense of scale here. 40 million jobs were lost and the last report said just two and a half million regain. But it's still the biggest ever. Or we had a retail report came out recently that said retail sales were up by a record amount. Well, that's because they've fallen by a record amount before. One of the challenges with this obviously political partisans used these numbers for their own advantage. But one of the real problems is, it's hard to get a sense of what's really going on with the economy. We hear conflicting stories. And these official statistics just aren't really good enough to give us a handle on the dynamics. And the reason for that, is these statistics are designed for normal times. You know, it's good to know if retail sales increased 3% year over year, and an economist will see a big difference between 4% and 3% or 1%. Most people won't, you know, they just can't, they'll talk about what's happening in their own community instead. So, you've got these numbers that were designed to measure marginal changes, and we're talking about an unprecedented pandemic, and an unprecedented level of government ordered lockdowns of the economy, unprecedented job losses, all kinds of things happening. So, none of the official measures work too well. I've been looking for different ways to gauge what's happening in the economy. And one tool that I found that might be useful, at least for a few months, came from a survey I conducted for Ballotpedia. And that's our Number of the Day today: 42. 42% of voters nationwide say that they know somebody who has lost their job during the shutdown and then been rehired. I'm going to be talking about why this might be a good measure and what it can tell us about the economy in the B-block. And while you're waiting for that, I hope you'll take a moment, share this podcast with your friends. And subscribe to Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day.

Welcome back to Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day. I'm Scott and the number today is 42. A Ballotpedia survey found that 42% of voters know someone a close friend or a relative who lost their job during the shutdown and has since been rehired. I happen to think this might be a decent measure or decent way to measure progress in our economic recovery. It'll be really fascinating to see what this number looks like in a month or in two months. Now, look, I really don't know how to put it in context. I don't know how to compare it to prior times, because we've never had anything like this before. How could I have ever asked about government shutdowns and pandemics in this sense? You know, when the Spanish Flu hit in 1918, the unemployment statistics that we rely on hadn't even been invented. So, why do I think this is a decent number to kind of track and pay attention to? Well, first, it's because when I look at the details, they ring true. Younger folks, people under 45, are more likely than older folks to know someone who's lost their job and been rehired. Among people under 45, 51% say, 'yep, I know someone that's happened to; they lost their job and boy, they're happy to be rehired.' When you get to senior citizens, that number falls to 27%. And again, it makes sense because they may know a child or a grandchild who's in the workforce who's lost their job and been rehired. But it's not part of their peer group. It's not something that's a part of their day-to-day existence. In fact, seniors are among those who had some income stability during this troubled time, because of their retirement benefits and social security and things of that sort. 

So, the numbers ring true when you look at the way they're answering, but there's something else really important that makes me like this as a potential indicator of progress. And that's the fact that the number hasn't yet been polluted by politics. And what I mean by that is, you know, when an issue becomes political, Republicans know how they're supposed to answer and Democrats know how they're supposed to answer. So, right now, if you talk about, you know, wearing masks, or is the government going to reopen too fast or too slow? The answers you get are Republicans give the Republican answer and Democrats give the Democratic answer, but we don't find that on this question. When we asked people about who they knew, or if they knew someone who was-- who had lost their job and was rehired, 43% of Republicans say 'yep.' And guess what so do 38% of Democrats and 44% of Independents. So, this suggests that right now, we are getting a measure of how they're perceiving the economy around them, we get a sense that they're answering the question that we're asking rather than answering the politically proper answer for their team. And it's very, very hard to find indicators like this. And so I think at the moment, this could be one of the best indicators about what's going on, or how people are perceiving the changing economy. You know, if a month from now, we find that, say, 60% of people know someone who's been rehired, and the month after that it jumps to 70%, wow, you know, almost everybody under 65. Then you think the economy's humming pretty well. Well, that's going to be really good news for Donald Trump and the Republican Party. And they could certainly use it. Our, you know, our current polling shows the Republicans are in a lot of trouble, the President is in a lot of trouble in his reelection bid. On the other hand, if this number doesn't shift all that much, if two months from now, we're still at 40 to 45% know, someone who has been rehired that might suggest the economy is stalling. And in that case, it'd be very bad news for the president in his reelection effort. And he probably dragged a lot of Republicans down with him. 

So this indicator, again, it's not perfect, there are no perfect indicators in unprecedented situations. What you need to do is look at all of the data and begin to try and understand. Look at it from you know, from different angles all the time and try to understand what it's telling you. But this indicator is something that we're going to track as we document America's road to reopening and to recovery. And it's something that I think will give us a pretty accurate measure of the economic perceptions. And again, I want to go back just to the basics. You know, when voters go to the polls, they may tell you it's because of the economy or something else, but a lot of it has to do with how they feel about things in their own lives. When Barack Obama was running for reelection, month by month down the stretch, the last six months, we found people were feeling better about their own personal finances, and the better they felt about their own personal finances, the better President Obama did in his reelection bid. And I think, in this case, the more that people get a sense of, yeah, people, it was horrible. It was terrible. 40 million people thrown out of work, small businesses were shut down, and some of them are never coming back. But okay, most people are getting rehired. If that's the feeling among most Americans, that's a real signal that the economy is recovering and that people will be kinder to incumbents. Now, I'm going to talk about other aspects of this in the C-block of the show. Well, you know, while you're waiting for that again, I hope you'll take a moment to share this podcast with your friends. Subscribe to Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day. And if you ever want to find details on the polling data that I cite, go to ScottRasmussen.com.

Welcome back to the C-block of Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day. I'm Scott and the number today: 42. A survey I conducted for Ballotpedia found that 42% of voters nationwide know someone who lost their job during the shutdowns and has since been rehired. Now, before I go into any more on that number, I gotta tell you, one of my pet peeves is when you get into the political world, and you start having discussions about things and people say, 'Wow, this election cycle, this is exactly the same as what happened in 1980 or 1968,' or whatever year they chose. And look, I'm a history buff, so I do like those historical comparisons. But you have to recognize that a presidential election in the 21st century has very little to do, very little in common with earlier times. I mean, an election held when you have social media dominating the conversation is much different than the 1980 Reagan/Carter election when most people actually watched the debates, when most people actually paid attention when a president spoke on TV, And why? Well, because there were only three television networks, you know, until the cable revolution took off in the 80s. So the comparisons, they fall a little bit flat. And that's the reason I think today's number is important. 42% of voters right now say that, you know, they know someone who has been rehired, The data hasn't yet been polluted by the political process. There are no other-- there are no numbers today that are a reasonable comparison to an earlier timeframe because we've never gone through a pandemic before like this. You know, I don't know if the magic number is 30 million of the 40 million jobs have to come back to change people's voting behavior or if it's 20 million or something else. But what I do believe is that a month from today, if we look at the same question and the same data and the results have changed, that will tell us if they've gotten better, it will tell us people are feeling better about the economy and that is good news for President Trump and the Republicans. That if it doesn't, if the opposite happens, well, then it's obviously good news for Joe Biden and the Democrats. This number is not perfect. But we do have to continually seek when we're when you're in uncharted waters, you need to figure out different ways, new ways to learn where you are on the map.

Now, tomorrow, I'm going to be talking about a different number and one that has been polluted by politics, but there are still a few things that we can learn from it. And that'll be the subject of tomorrow's Number the Day for now. I'm Scott Rasmussen. Have a great day.