Rising Wages = Shrinking Corporate Profit Margins … And Falling Stock Prices?

Wednesday, July 11, 2018
By Paul Martin

By: John Rubino
GoldSeek.com
Wednesday, 11 July 2018

Today’s Wall Street Journal contains a couple of charts that illustrate a relationship that’s not getting much media attention these days: The fact that tightening labor markets are forcing companies to raise wages, in the process squeezing their own profit margins.

Historically this margin compression has been either a cause of or contributor to cyclical turning points — in other words it coincides with recessions and equity bear markets.

The first chart shows wages rising after an unusually long period in which they didn’t rise much at all. They’ve still yet to achieve the velocity of previous recoveries, but anecdotal evidence of desperate employers raising wages and lowering standards (see here, here and here) is now so widespread that continued wage gains are pretty much baked into the cake.

What has this meant for corporate profit margins in the past? Big drops, as higher wages combined with an inability to raise prices commensurately left corporations with less money at the end of the day.

The Rest…HERE

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