Rebecca Wilder — Does the US Corporate Saving Rate Portend a Lower Unemployment Rate?

There’s a very strong correlation between the corporate saving rate and the unemployment rate, 80% according to a simple bivariate OLS regression. I’ve argued in the past that there is some causation to this relationship – but that’s not the point of this post. The point here is that the trend in corporate saving has fallen sufficiently to portend some material declines in the unemployment rate in coming quarters….ALL ELSE EQUAL. For example, a simple bivariate regression would forecast a 7.5% unemployment rate if the corporate saving rate falls another 30 bps to 2.6%.

The all else equal is important. The primary driver of this quarter’s decline in the corporate saving rate was the 6% increase in nominal investment spending, the largest quarterly gain since 2010 Q2. Amid relatively weak manufacturing orders and the expiration of the depreciation allowance, I expect that this momentum is unlikely to be matched in coming quarters. Will firms start drawing down nominal saving to finance new hires?

Read it at Economonitor | The Wilder View

Does the US Corporate Saving Rate Portend a Lower Unemployment Rate?
by Rebecca Wilder