Wayne Ayers Business Quotations

Productivity growth helps keep inflation at bay and allows real incomes to grow, but it makes businesses even slower to hire than usual.

The second half will show some better growth. Will that be sustained past the second half? For that, two things have to happen: we have to see a pickup in business spending, and the labor market has to stabilize and improve, creating permanent employment. We don't expect to see that until year-end.

To me, the business cycle is working as it always does, absent an external shock. Inventory liquidation means firms have to increase production, and they're already doing that. They're also increasing the length of the work week and hiring temporary workers. All these things support income and spending.

Inventories are at rock-bottom levels -- even if economic growth slows in the fourth quarter, those inventories will have to be rebuilt, otherwise businesses risk losing business.

At labor market turning points, the household survey does better because it picks up self-employed workers and others not reflected in the business survey. But I'm still not convinced the labor market is quite as strong as the household data say it is.