I have been following the whirlwind that is the stock market lately and cannot make sense of it. I know that Greece is teetering on a default and the indicators for the U.S. economy are showing that we are returning to a recession, yet the stock market is still increasing.
Today the job figures were released and that is boosting the stock market. I am not sure why though. The unemployment rate did not go down, it just stayed the same. In fact, the whole job situation confuses me considering the number of baby boomers that are reaching retirement age.
According to several news sources, they estimate that 10,000 baby boomers will reach the age of 65 everyday for the next 19 years. Here is one article that I read that states that fact. If you think about it, not all of those baby boomers are probably working. The rest are either stay-at-home parents, unemployed, took early retirement, or disabled. So, for the sake of making this easy, let's say 50% are still working. So we are down to 5,000 working baby boomers that turn 65 every day. Of those, let's say half can afford to retire, so we are down to 2,500. Of those that retire (2,500) let's say that companies only refill half those jobs, so for every 2 that retire, only 1 will be hired, so now we are at 1,250 jobs per day that will have to be filled. That is 35,000 jobs a month (for a 28 day month) without any business growth.
So, now I am wondering how many are entering the work force every day. Wikianswers states that there are between 25 and 28 million teens in the U.S. If you consider the teen years as being 13-19, that consists of 7 years. If you divide 25 mil by 7 (years) you get about 3.5 mil teens for each year. So, if you divide that number by the number of months in any year, and you have approx. 300,0000 kids coming of age every month (looking for jobs). So, why would the stock market be excited with an increase of just over 100,000 jobs being created in a month if that is not even enough to cover everybody entering the job market? And, why wouldn't unemployment still be increasing if there is a deficit of jobs every month without even considering layoffs.
Okay, that is my vent of the day. I guess there is something else at play here that I just don't see, so if you would like to enlighten me, feel free.
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