Labor Market

Highlights Why did S&P 500 profit margins fall in 2019?: Compensation gains, trade tensions and spotty growth were the most likely culprits, though the absence of standardized disclosure hinders full attribution. Was it a one-off, or the beginning of a trend?: We believe that profit margins have likely peaked, though we expect that they will contract only modestly this year. The outcome of the election could have a significant margin impact going forward. The coronavirus outbreak may be worsening around Wuhan, but it does not appear to be metastasizing elsewhere: Our China strategists foresee an extended lockdown of Hubei province, but expect that the rest of the Chinese economy will be able to overcome it. They are cautiously optimistic about the prospects for containment. Sustainability What a difference a year makes. Last President’s Day, the S&P 500 was more than 5% below its September 2018 peak (18% below its current level), amidst widespread fears that the Fed may have tightened into a recession. The month-long government shutdown was an embarrassing own goal, and trade tensions loomed as a threat to corporate earnings and global growth. It would take another two months before the S&P 500 fully recovered, only to have the yield curve invert soon thereafter. The coronavirus epidemic (COVID-19) has the curve flirting with inversion again, but stocks have shrugged off the growth risks. They continue to scale the wall of worry as self-appointed bubble spotters’ blood pressure soars, leaving them sputtering like Judge Smails or the bank official overseeing Charles Foster Kane’s trust. While we acknowledge that COVID-19 and Bernie Sanders’ post-Iowa-and-New Hampshire position at the head of the Democratic pack could yet become problematic for markets and the economy, our take aligns much more closely with Fed Chair Powell’s House testimony last week. “There’s nothing about this expansion that is unstable or unsustainable.” COVID-19 Update Chart 1What Happens In Hubei Our China Investment Strategy colleagues were encouraged by the latest Chinese data on the outbreak. Although they foresee that Wuhan, and quite possibly all of Hubei province, will be shut down through the end of March, they do not think the action will thwart China’s nascent growth recovery. In their estimation, domestic companies will be able to reroute their supply chains with minimal disruption. If the equity market avoids a virus-related plunge, as they expect, the economy may dodge the deleterious impact on confidence that might otherwise emerge. Our sanguine China outlook encountered some resistance from clients, who have been surprised at how swiftly markets seemed to put the outbreak aside, and skeptical of official reports that seemed a little too good to be true. We suggested that they employ a trust-but-verify approach similar to ours. We are taking official data as given, while using other countries’ data as a reasonableness check. We are monitoring the magnitude of PRC policy efforts to mitigate the virus’ drag and remaining vigilant for any signs of global supply chain disruptions. Bottom Line: Our China strategists were heartened by official reports indicating that the coronavirus has been mostly contained in Hubei province (Chart 1), but are actively seeking out other evidence for corroboration before concluding that the worst is over. Making Sense Of Declining Profit Margins As we showed last week, S&P 500 profit margins narrowed across 2019, with 2% EPS growth lagging 5% growth in per-share revenue. Margins do not remain fixed over time, but the contraction represented a notable shift after several years of steady margin expansion. Even when EPS declined on a year-over-year basis for four straight quarters across 2015 and 2016, margins mainly held their own as revenues, which contracted year-over-year for six consecutive quarters, had it worse (Chart 2). Chart 2Fun While It Lasted We primarily attribute last year’s decline to gains in labor’s share of income. Although average hourly earnings growth decelerated from 2018 to 2019, real unit labor cost growth flipped from negative to positive. Tariffs also likely detracted from income, as domestic businesses were surely not able to pass through all of their increased cost of goods sold to their customers against a backdrop of persistently low inflation and limited pricing power. Decelerating US and global growth was also a drag (Chart 3). Chart 3Growth Decelerated Everywhere In 2019 Have Profit Margins Peaked? Excepting meaningful structural changes, profit margins are a mean-reverting series. Following steady margin expansion over three business cycle expansions spanning nearly three decades, mean reversion is an unappealing prospect for equity investors (Chart 4). Unless corporate tax rates are raised, though, the mean going forward will be higher than the mean established when federal taxation was more onerous. Additionally, an in-depth Bank Credit Analyst study argued that profit margins have not grown as much as it would appear to the naked eye,1 but they are elevated, and their future direction will influence prospective equity returns. Chart 4Margins Have Thrived In The Last Three Expansions A definitive analysis of S&P 500 margins would compile detailed revenue and expense data for each constituent in the index, but compiling the bottom-up data would repeatedly bump up against inconsistent disclosure conventions across companies and industries. For now, we will have to content ourselves with what we can glean from top-down analysis. Margins shrank in 2019 because of rising real unit labor costs, increased tariffs and global growth deceleration. Employee compensation is far and away the single biggest expense item for businesses as a whole. Changes in compensation are therefore the most consistently critical driver of changes in margins. Other key factors include: overall economic growth, growth relative to capacity, globalization, competitive intensity, and growth of the capital stock. GDP Growth Over time, growth in a company’s revenues should converge with the weighted average of economic growth in the countries in which it operates. The sensitivity of any given company’s net income to changes in sales revenue depends on its operating leverage, but any company with at least some fixed costs will see its margins expand as sales rise. We expect that US GDP growth will moderate going forward, given that hoped-for increases in economic capacity do not appear to have offset the growth overhang from the stimulus package’s increased deficits.2 For the current year, however, we expect that an acceleration in non-US growth may largely offset moderating US growth for the aggregate S&P 500. (Chart 5) Chart 5Sales Growth Feeds Operating Leverage The Output Gap The degree of excess capacity in the economy is most easily proxied by the output gap, the difference between the economy’s actual output and its long-run potential output, which is a function of productivity and labor force growth. Pricing power is directly related to the output gap; it’s weak when the gap is negative, and robust when the gap is positive. Excess capacity is the enemy of profits, and margins benefit when it is worked off, even if positive output gaps can’t persist indefinitely (Chart 6). With the economy continuing to grow at close to its estimated trend rate, the output gap isn’t likely to have an impact this year. Globalization allows US companies to tap lower-cost inputs in the developing world. Chart 6Excess Capacity Erodes Pricing Power Globalization Globalization has been a major force promoting margin expansion over the last 20 to 30 years, granting US-domiciled businesses access to the developing world’s lower-cost inputs. Outsourcing saves money and global supply chains have significantly reduced product costs. Tariffs and other trade barriers are an obstacle to outsourcing, and it is our in-house geopolitical strategists’ view that the US will continue to backtrack from globalization no matter which party captures the White House in November. Changes in the sum of exports and imports as a share of GDP provide a simple proxy for changes in the intensity of globalization (Chart 7). Chart 7More Open Borders = Higher Margins Competitiveness Margins are directly related to the intensity of globalization, but they are inversely related to the intensity of competition, which is itself inversely related to the degree of industry concentration. The laissez-faire approach to anti-trust enforcement which has generally prevailed since the Reagan administration has promoted concentration. Businesses gain pricing power as their industries move along the spectrum from perfect competition toward monopoly, just as they gain increasing power to set wages as individual labor markets move toward monopsony. Pressure for federal action to reverse the four-decade trend toward concentration will rise if the Democrats win the White House, especially as our Geopolitical Strategy service holds that the party that takes the presidency will also take the Senate. Productivity Changes in margins are directly related to the pace of productivity gains. Workers are able to do more in a given period of time when they’re endowed with more and/or better tools, and investment provides those tools. Increases in the size of the capital stock lead to productivity gains. The NFIB survey suggests that small businesses are poised to increase capital expenditures, and the capex intentions components of the regional Fed manufacturing surveys have begun pointing in that direction as well, but investment has consistently disappointed since the crisis (Chart 8), and productivity growth has been tepid for an extended period of time as a result. Chart 8Investment Pays Off In Higher Margins Unit Labor Costs Rising labor costs by themselves do not necessarily mean that margins will contract. If output increases more than rising wages, margins will expand. We therefore watch unit labor costs, which measure output-adjusted changes in compensation. Growth in real unit labor costs is our preferred measure for their additional insight into profitability, given that changes in the overall price level are a solid proxy for changes in sales prices. When real unit labor costs are falling, corporate margins are likely expanding as revenue gains can be expected to outpace employees’ compensation per unit of output. Given the especially tight labor market, we expect real unit labor costs to continue to rise, chipping away at profit margins (Chart 9). Chart 9Persistently Negative Real Unit Labor Costs Have Boosted Margins Taxes, Interest Rates And The Dollar The biggest driver of after-tax margins in recent years has been the 40% reduction in the top marginal federal corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21% beginning in 2018. We expect no material corporate tax changes if the president wins re-election, while we would expect that an incoming Democratic administration, fortified by House and Senate majorities, would prioritize increasing corporate tax revenues. We expect a modest rise in interest rates over the year, which is unlikely to materially impact firms’ interest expense. We expect that the dollar will weaken in 2020, as incremental growth in the rest of the world exceeds incremental growth in the US, providing the S&P 500 with a modest margin tailwind. Bottom Line: On balance, we expect that the S&P 500 will face modest margin headwinds in 2020. If the Democrats assume control of the White House and both houses of Congress next January, downward pressure on margins could intensify. Investment Implications Falling margins against a backdrop of tepid revenue growth suggest that 2020 S&P 500 earnings growth will be nothing to write home about. Stocks will have to get an assist from multiple expansion if they are to continue producing double-digit annual returns. We do not think multiple expansion is much of a stretch – it would be consistent with the latter stages of previous bull markets – but equities do not need to generate double-digit returns to top the prospective returns on offer from Treasuries, credit-sensitive fixed income or cash. As long as the margin compression unfolds slowly, equities will merit at least an equal-weight allocation in balanced portfolios as will spread product in dedicated fixed income portfolios. Corporate profit margins would quickly feel the burn in a Sanders administration. We expect that profit margins will compress slowly, as it remains our base case (albeit with limited conviction) that the president will win re-election. Under a Democratic regime, however, corporate tax rates would likely rise, anti-trust enforcement would likely unwind some of the buildup in industry concentration, and organized labor would gain a more sympathetic ear in Washington. If Bernie Sanders were to win the presidency instead of one of the Democratic moderates, margin compression would likely unfold much more rapidly (and multiples would be at immediate risk, to boot). The upcoming election is thus approaching something of a binary outcome for equities. We still see monetary policy as the swing factor for the ongoing expansion, and financial market returns, and we therefore remain constructive on the economy and risk assets. The election could upend that framework, however, passing the baton from the Fed to elected officials. We will be tracking the primary and general election ups and downs closely.   Doug Peta, CFA Chief US Investment Strategist dougp@bcaresearch.com Footnotes 1 Please see the October 2012 Bank Credit Analyst Special Report, "Are US Corporate Profit Margins Really All That High?" available at www.bcaresearch.com. 2 The economic case for the stimulus package rested on the expectation that it would promote investment in the capital stock that would not otherwise occur (via immediate expensing of investments and repatriation of capital held overseas) and facilitate labor force participation. A capex burst that followed its passage quickly fizzled, and we are of the opinion that the minor provisions intended to expand labor force participation have had little effect.

Highlights Provided that the coronavirus outbreak is contained, global growth should accelerate over the course of 2020. Stocks usually rise when the economy is strengthening. But could this time be different? We explore five scenarios in which the stock market could decouple from the economy: 1) The economy holds up, but stretched valuations bring down equities, especially high-flying growth stocks; 2) Bond yields rise in response to faster growth, hurting equities in the process; 3) A strong US economy lifts the value of the dollar, denting multinational profits and tightening financial conditions abroad; 4) Faster wage growth cuts into corporate profits; and 5) Redistributionist politicians seek to shift income from capital to labor. We are not too concerned about the first four scenarios, but we do worry about the fifth, especially now that betting markets are giving Bernie Sanders a nearly 50% chance of becoming the Democratic nominee. Matters should be clearer by mid-March, by which time more than 60% of Democratic delegates will have been awarded. If Bernie Sanders does emerge as the nominee at that point, we will consider trimming back our bullish cyclical bias towards stocks. Coronavirus: A Break In The Clouds? Chart 1Coronavirus Remains Mostly Contained To China Investors continue to grapple with two distinct narratives about how the coronavirus outbreak is unfolding. On the pessimistic side, some contend that the true number of infections in China is much higher than the Chinese authorities are disclosing. How else, they ask, can one explain why the government has taken the extreme step of imposing some form of quarantine on 400 million of its own people? More optimistic observers argue that the Chinese government is simply being proactive. While the number of cases in Hubei province spiked yesterday, this was due to a loosening in the definition for what constitutes a confirmed infection. Whereas previously a positive laboratory test was required, now a positive imaging-based clinical examination will suffice. Under the new definition, the number of newly confirmed cases fell from 6,528 on February 11th to 4,273 on February 12th. Under the old definition, newly diagnosed cases peaked on February 2nd (Chart 1). The revised definition adopted in Hubei brought the mortality rate in the province down to 2.7%. The mortality rate observed in the rest of China is 0.5%. The share of all cases in China originating in Hubei also rose to 81%. Even before the rule change, the share of cases diagnosed in Hubei had risen from 52% on January 26th to 75% on February 11th. This suggests progress in limiting the outbreak to the province. Critically, the number of cases in the rest of the world remains low. In the US, a total of 13 cases have been confirmed as of February 12th, just two more than the 11 reported on February 2nd. The Exception To The Rule? Provided that the coronavirus outbreak is contained, global growth should bounce back forcefully in the second quarter. If that were to occur, history suggests that equities will continue to rally, while bond prices will fall (Chart 2). But could history fail to repeat itself? In this week’s report, we explore five scenarios in which that may happen. Scenario 1: Stretched valuations bring down equities, especially high-flying growth stocks Stocks have moved up considerably since their December 2018 lows. This suggests that investors have become more confident about the economic outlook. Nevertheless, while most investors may no longer be worried about an imminent recession, they do not foresee a sharp acceleration in global growth either. This is evidenced by the fact that cyclical stocks have generally underperformed defensives (Chart 3). Oil prices have also languished, while copper prices are back near a 2.5-year low (Chart 4). Chart 2Stocks Usually Outperform Bonds When Global Growth Is Accelerating Chart 3Cyclicals Have Failed To Outperform Defensives   At the broad index level, global equities trade at 16.7-times forward earnings. Conceptually, the inverse of the PE ratio – the earnings yield – should serve as a reasonable guide for the total real return that equities will deliver over the long haul.1 At 6%, the global earnings yield still points to decent returns for global stocks. Relative to bonds, the case for owning stocks is even more compelling. The equity risk premium, which one can compute as the earnings yield minus the real bond yield, remains well above its historic average (Chart 5). Chart 4Commodity Prices Have Taken It On The Chin Chart 5Relative Valuations Favor Equities   That said, there are pockets where valuations have gotten stretched. US equities trade at 19.5-times forward earnings compared to 14.1-times in the rest of the world. Growth stocks, in particular, have gotten very expensive (Chart 6). The five largest stocks in the S&P 500 (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook) now account for 18% of the index, the same share that the top five stocks (Microsoft, Cisco, GE, Intel, and Exxon) commanded in 2000. The big risk for stocks is that wages go up not because the overall size of the economic pie is growing, but because policies are implemented that shift a bigger share of the pie from capital to labor. Despite the similarities between today and the dotcom era, there are a few critical differences – most of which make us less worried about the current state of affairs. First, while tech valuations are currently stretched, they are not in bubble territory. The NASDAQ Composite trades at 30-times trailing earnings. At its peak in March 2000, the tech-heavy index traded at more than 70-times earnings (Chart 7). Chart 6Growth Stocks Have Become Expensive Relative To Value Stocks Chart 7Not Yet Partying Like 1999   Second, IPO activity has also been more muted today than during the dotcom boom (Chart 8). Only 110 companies went public last year, with the gain on the first day of trading averaging 24%. In 1999, 476 companies went public. The average first day gain was 71%. Meanwhile, companies continue to buy up their shares. The buyback yield stands at 3%, twice as high as in the late 1990s. Third, there is no capex overhang like in the late 1990s (Chart 9). This reduces the odds of a 2001-recession scenario where falling equity prices prompted companies to pare back capital expenditures, leading to rising unemployment and even lower equity prices. Chart 8IPO Activity Is Muted Today Compared To The Late 1990s Chart 9No Capex Boom This Time   Scenario 2: Bond yields rise in response to faster growth, hurting equities in the process The period between November 2018 and September 2019 was an odd one for the stock-to-bond correlation. If one looks at daily data, stocks did best when bond yields were rising. Yet, for the period as a whole, stocks finished higher while bond yields finished lower (Chart 10). Chart 10Daily Changes: S&P 500 Vs. 10-Year Treasury Yield How can one explain this seeming paradox? The answer is that the underlying trend in bond yields was squarely to the downside last year. While yields did rise modestly on days when equities rallied, yields fell sharply on days when equities swooned. If one zooms out, one sees the underlying trend, whereas if one zooms in, one only sees the wiggles around the trend. Bond yields trended lower last year because the Fed and most other central banks were delivering one dose of dovish medicine after another. This year, however, the Fed is on hold, and while a few central banks may still cut rates, global monetary policy is unlikely to become much looser. This means that bond yields are likely to drift higher if economic growth surprises on the upside. Will rising bond yields sabotage the stock market? We do not think so. Stocks crashed in late 2018 because investors became convinced that US monetary policy had turned restrictive after the Fed had raised rates by a cumulative 200 basis points over the prior two years. The fact that the Laubach-Williams model, one of the most widely followed models of the neutral rate, showed that real rates had moved above their equilibrium level did not help sentiment (Chart 11). Chart 11The Fed Will Keep Policy Easy For The Time Being Chart 12Stocks Do Well When Earnings And Growth Surprise On The Upside Today, real rates are about 100 basis points below the Laubach-Williams estimate. This will not change anytime soon, given that the Fed is likely to remain on hold at least until the end of the year. So long as rates stay put, monetary policy will remain accommodative, allowing the economy to grow at a solid pace. Granted, rising long-term bond yields will reduce the present value of future cash flows, thus potentially hurting stocks. However, as we discussed three weeks ago, the discount rate is not the only thing that affects equity valuations.2 The expected growth rate of earnings matters too. As Chart 12 shows, global equity returns are highly sensitive to earning revisions. While earnings may disappoint in the first quarter due to the economic damage from the coronavirus, they should bounce back during the remainder of this year. This should pave the way for higher equity prices. Scenario 3: A strong US economy lifts the value of the dollar, denting multinational profits and tightening financial conditions abroad The US is a fairly closed economy. Imports and exports account for only 14.6% and 11.7% of GDP, respectively. In contrast, the US stock market is very exposed to the rest of the world. S&P 500 companies derive over 40% of their sales from abroad. As such, changes in the value of the dollar tend to have a bigger impact on Wall Street than on Main Street. Estimating the degree to which a stronger dollar reduces S&P 500 profits is no easy task. Direct estimates that measure the currency translation effect on overseas profits from a stronger dollar tend to yield fairly modest results, typically showing that a 10% appreciation in the trade-weighted dollar reduces S&P 500 profits by about 2%. These estimates, however, generally do not take into account feedback loops between a strengthening dollar and global financial conditions (Chart 13). According to the Bank of International Settlements, $12 trillion of dollar-denominated debt has been issued outside the US. A stronger dollar makes it more challenging to service this debt, which can put a significant strain on borrowers. As a result, a vicious cycle can erupt where a stronger dollar leads to tighter financial conditions, which in turn lead to weaker global growth and an even stronger dollar. Chart 13A Strong US Dollar Could Tighten Global Financial Conditions, Leading To Lower Equity Prices, Especially In EM Such an outcome cannot be dismissed, especially if the spread of the coronavirus fuels significant foreign inflows into the safe-haven US Treasury market. Nevertheless, we continue to see it as a low-probability event given the tailwinds to global growth, including the lagged effects of last year’s decline in bond yields, an improvement in the global manufacturing inventory cycle, diminished Brexit and trade war risks, and ongoing policy stimulus out of China. In fact, one can more easily envision the opposite outcome – a virtuous cycle of dollar weakness, leading to easier global financial conditions, stronger growth, and ultimately, an even weaker dollar (Chart 14). In such an environment, earnings growth is likely to accelerate (Chart 15). Chart 14The Dollar Is A Countercyclical Currency Chart 15The Virtuous Cycle Of Dollar Easing     Scenario 4: Faster wage growth cuts into corporate profits Labor compensation is the largest expense for most companies. Thus, it stands to reason that faster wage growth could depress earnings, and by extension, share prices. Although this is possible conceptually, in practice, it happens less often than one might guess. Chart 16 shows that rising wage growth is positively correlated with earnings. The bottom panel of the chart explains why: Wages tend to rise most quickly when sales are growing rapidly. Strong demand growth adds to revenues, while allowing companies to spread fixed costs over a large amount of output. The resulting improvement in “operating leverage” helps buffer profit margins from higher wages. Scenario 5: Redistributionist politicians seek to shift income from capital to labor As long as wages are rising against a backdrop of fast sales growth, equities will fare well. The big risk for stocks is that wages go up not because the overall size of the economic pie is growing, but because policies are implemented that shift a bigger share of the pie from capital to labor. Bernie Sanders has promised to do just that. The S&P 500 has tended to increase when Sanders’ perceived chances of winning the Democrat nomination have risen (Chart 17). Investors have apparently concluded that Trump would clobber Sanders in a presidential race. Hence, the better Sanders performs in the primaries, the more likely Trump is to be re-elected. Chart 16Stocks Tend To Do Best When Wage Growth Is Rising Chart 17The Sanders Effect On Stocks   Is this really a safe assumption? We are not so sure. Sanders has still beaten Trump in 49 of the last 54 head-to-head polls tracked by Realclearpolitics over the past 12 months. Sanders tends to appeal to white working class voters – the same demographic that propelled Trump into office. Sanders is also benefiting from a secular leftward shift in voter attitudes on economic issues. According to a recent Gallup poll, 47% of Americans believe that governments should do more to solve problems, up from 36% in 2010. Almost 40% of Americans have a positive view on socialism (Chart 18). Today’s youth in particular is enamored with left-wing ideology (Chart 19). Chart 18The US Is Moving To The Left Chart 19Woke Millennials Cozying Up To Socialism It’s not just the Democratic voters who are trending left. Some prominent Republicans are having second thoughts too. Tucker Carlson is probably the best leading indicator for where the Republican Party is heading. His attacks on “woke capitalism” have become a staple of his popular evening show.3 It is not surprising why many Republicans are having a change of heart. For decades, the Republican Party has been a cheap date for corporate interests: It has given businesses what they want – lower taxes, less regulation, etc. – without asking for much in return (aside from campaign contributions, of course). This has allowed corporations to focus on appealing to left-wing interests by taking increasingly strident positions on a variety of social issues. The fact that some of these positions – such as support for open-border immigration policies – are a boon for profits has only increased their appeal. The risk for corporations is that they end up with no real political support. If the Democrats move further to the left, “soak the rich” policies will become popular no matter how much virtue signaling corporate leaders deliver. Likewise, if Republicans abandon big businesses, today’s fat profit margins will become a thing of the past. When The Music Ends The current market climate resembles a Parisian ball on the eve of the French Revolution. The music is still playing, but the discontent among the commoners outside is growing. The question is when will this discontent boil over? Trump’s victory in 2016 represented a shot across the bow of the political establishment. Fortunately for corporate interests, aside from his protectionist impulses, Trump has been on their side. Bernie Sanders would not be so friendly. Matters should be clearer by mid-March. Super Tuesday takes place on March 3rd. By March 17th, more than 60% of Democratic delegates will have been awarded. If Bernie Sanders emerges as the likely nominee at that point, we will consider trimming back our bullish cyclical 12-month bias towards stocks. Peter Berezin Chief Global Strategist peterb@bcaresearch.com   Footnotes 1  Please see Global Investment Strategy Special Report, “TINA To The Rescue?” dated August 23, 2019. 2  Please see Global investment Strategy Weekly Report, “Bond Yields: How High Is Too High?” dated January 17, 2020. 3  Ian Schwartz, “Tucker Carlson: Elizabeth Warren's "Economic Patriotism" Plan "Sounds Like Donald Trump At His Best," realclearpolitics, June 6, 2019. Global Investment Strategy View Matrix MacroQuant Model And Current Subjective Scores Strategic Recommendations Closed Trades

Special Report

Highlights Public opinion has a significant impact on labor-management outcomes: Organized labor cannot make any headway unless elected officials and the courts give it a fighting chance. They will only do so if the public desires it. The face of organized labor is changing: Manufacturing’s decline does not ensure the demise of organized labor. Unions have already pivoted to services, just like the overall economy. Elections have consequences: The power to pass legislation, staff departments and agencies, and exert control over judicial appointments can have a tremendous workplace impact. Organized labor isn’t dead: We do not expect a return to unions’ heyday, but we are convinced that labor’s potential to achieve significant incremental progress is much larger than most investors believe. The election could serve as a catalyst for tapping that potential. Feature We have read quite a bit about US labor relations over the last month and a half. Several themes were apparent, but the most basic was a constant from the 1800s to today: For-profit employers will seek the most favorable terms they can get, to the extent that they are socially acceptable. This is not to say that management is out to get labor, or that Marx might have had a point; it simply acknowledges the pre-New Deal and post-Reagan empirical record. Before the legal and social buffers that sheltered labor were put in place, and after they began to be eroded, employees found themselves steadily losing ground. Capturing Hearts And Minds Public opinion has shaped the outcomes of labor-management contests throughout US labor relations history. Labor was continually outgunned before the New Deal, coming up against private security forces, local police and/or the National Guard when they struck. Employers were able to turn to hired muscle, or request the deployment of public resources on their behalf, because the public had few qualms about using force to break strikes. College athletes were even pressed into service as strikebreakers after the turn of the century for what was viewed at the time as good, clean fun.1 Public opinion is not immutable, however, and by the time of the Flint sit-down strike, it had begun to shift in the direction of labor. The widespread misery of the Depression went a long way to overcoming Americans’ deep-seated suspicion of the labor movement and the fringe elements associated with it. Some employers were slow to pick up on the change in the public mood, however, and Ford’s security force thuggishly beat Walter Reuther and other UAW organizers while they oversaw the distribution of union leaflets outside a massive Ford plant just three months after Flint. Ford won the Battle of the Overpass, but its heavy-handed, retrograde tactics helped cost it the war. Reuther, who later led the UAW in its ‘50s and ‘60s golden age, was a master strategist with a knack for public relations. Writing the playbook later used to great effect by civil rights leaders, Reuther invited clergymen, Senate staffers and the press to accompany the largely female team of leafleteers. When the Ford heavies commenced beating the men, and roughly scattering the women, photographers were on hand to document it all.2 The photos helped unions capture public sympathy, just as televised images of dogs and fire hoses would later help secure passage of landmark civil rights legislation. Unions’ Fall From Grace Labor unions enjoyed their greatest public support in the mid-fifties, and largely maintained it well into the sixties (Chart 1), until rampant corruption and ties to organized crime undermined their public appeal. The shoddy quality of American autos further turned opinion against the UAW, the nation’s most prominent union, and a college football star named Brian Bosworth caused a mid-eighties furor by claiming that he had deliberately sought to prank new car buyers during his summer job on a Chevrolet assembly line. Bosworth later retracted the claim that GM workers had shown him how to insert stray bolts in inaccessible parts of car bodies to create a maddening mystery rattling, but the fact that so many Sports Illustrated readers found it credible eloquently testified to the UAW’s image problem. Chart 1Unions' Public Image Has Recovered Nicely Since The Crisis Figure 1Unions' 1980s Public Opinion Vortex President Reagan accelerated the trend when he successfully stood up to the striking air traffic controllers, but his administration could not have taken such a hard line if unions hadn’t already been weakened by declining public support. In the final analysis, it was PATCO’s disastrous misreading of public opinion – fed-up voters supported the White House, and other air travel unions refused to strike in sympathy with the controllers – that led it to spurn the administration’s generous initial offer and brought about its demise. Together, the public’s waning support for unions and the Reagan administration’s antipathy for them were powerfully self-reinforcing, and they fueled a vicious circle that powered four decades of union reversals (Figure 1). Companies will do whatever they perceive to be socially acceptable in conflicts with employees, but no more. As a prescient November 1981 Fortune report put it, “‘Managers are discovering that strikes can be broken, … and that strike-breaking (assuming it to be legal and nonviolent) doesn’t have to be a dirty word. In the long run, this new perception by business could turn out to be big news.’”3 Emboldened by the federal government’s replacement of the controllers, and the growing public perception that unions had devolved into an insular interest group driving the cost of living higher for everyone else, businesses began turning to permanent replacement workers to counter strikes.4 As an attorney that represented management in labor disputes told The New York Times in 1986, “If the President of the United States can replace [strikers], this must be socially acceptable, politically acceptable, and we can do it, also.”5 Labor’s New Face … Polling data indicate that unions have been recovering in the court of public opinion since the crisis, when the public presumably soured on them over the perception that the UAW was selfishly impeding the auto industry bailout. Their image got a boost in 2018 (Chart 2), as striking red-state teachers embodied the shift from unions’ factory past to their service-provider present. “The teachers, many of them women, are redefining attitudes about organized labor, replacing negative stereotypes of overpaid and underperforming blue-collar workers with a more sympathetic face: overworked and underappreciated nurturers who say they’re fighting for their students as much as they’re fighting for themselves.”6 Chart 2Feeling The Bern? Several commentators have heard organized labor’s death knell in US manufacturing’s irreversible decline. Unions gained critical mass on docks, factory floors, steel mills and coal mines, but few of today’s workers make their living there. Those who remain have little recourse other than to accept whatever terms management offers, as their jobs can easily be outsourced to lower-cost jurisdictions. The decline in private-sector union membership has traced the steady diminution of factory workers’ leverage (Chart 3). Chart 3Tracking Manufacturing's Slide Service workers represent unions’ future, and they have two important advantages over their manufacturing counterparts: many of their functions cannot be offshored, and a great deal of them are customer-facing. When MGM’s chairman was ousted from his job after clashing with Las Vegas’ potent UNITE-HERE local over the new MGM Grand Hotel’s nonunion policy, his successor explained why he immediately came to terms with the union. “‘The last thing you want is for people who are coming to enjoy themselves to see pickets and unhappy workers blocking driveways. … When you’re in the service business, the first contact our guests have is with the guest-room attendants or the food and beverage servers, and if that person’s [sic] unhappy, that comes across to the guests very quickly.’”7 … Management’s New Leaf … The Business Roundtable’s latest statement on corporate governance principles laid out a new stakeholder vision, displacing the Milton Friedman view that corporations are solely responsible for maximizing shareholder wealth. The statement itself is pretty bland, but the preamble in the press release accompanying it sounds as if it had been developed with labor advocates’ help (Box 1). It is a stretch to think that the ideals in the Roundtable’s communications will take precedence over investment returns, but they may signal that management fears the labor-management rubber band has been stretched too far.8 Box 1 Farewell, Milton Friedman America’s economic model, which is based on freedom, liberty and other enduring principles of our democracy, has raised standards of living for generations, while promoting competition, consumer choice and innovation. America’s businesses have been a critical engine to its success. Yet we know that many Americans are struggling. Too often hard work is not rewarded, and not enough is being done for workers to adjust to the rapid pace of change in the economy. If companies fail to recognize that the success of our system is dependent on inclusive long-term growth, many will raise legitimate questions about the role of large employers in our society. With these concerns in mind, Business Roundtable is modernizing its principles on the role of a corporation. Since 1978, Business Roundtable has periodically issued Principles of Corporate Governance that include language on the purpose of a corporation. Each version of that document issued since 1997 has stated that corporations exist principally to serve their shareholders. It has become clear that this language on corporate purpose does not accurately describe the ways in which we and our fellow CEOs endeavor every day to create value for all our stakeholders, whose long-term interests are inseparable. We therefore provide the following Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, which supersedes previous Business Roundtable statements and more accurately reflects our commitment to a free market economy that serves all Americans. This statement represents only one element of Business Roundtable’s work to ensure more inclusive prosperity, and we are continuing to challenge ourselves to do more. Just as we are committed to doing our part as corporate CEOs, we call on others to do their part as well. In particular, we urge leading investors to support companies that build long-term value by investing in their employees and communities. The Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) movement has the potential to improve rank-and-file workers’ wages and working conditions. ESG proponents have steadily groused about outsized executive pay packages, but if asset owners and institutional investors were to begin pushing for higher entry-level pay to narrow the income-inequality gap, unions could gain some powerful allies. … And The Public’s Left Turn Chart 4Help! As our Geopolitical Strategy colleagues have argued since the 2016 primaries, the median voter in the US has been moving to the left as the financial crisis, the hollowing out of the middle class and the widening wealth gap have dimmed the luster of Reagan-Thatcher free-market policies.9 Globalization has squeezed unskilled labor everywhere in the developed world, and white-collar workers are starting to look over their shoulders at artificial intelligence programs that may render them obsolete as surely as voice mail and word processing decimated secretaries and typists. Banding together hasn’t sounded so good since the Depression, and nearly half of all workers polled in 2017 said they would join a union if they could (Chart 4). Millennials are poised to become the single biggest voting bloc in the country. They were born between 1981 and 1996, and their lives have spanned two equity market crashes, the September 11th attacks, and the financial crisis, instilling them with a keen awareness of the way that remote events can upend the best-laid plans. Many of them emerged from college with sizable debt and dim earnings prospects. They would welcome more government involvement in the economy, and their enthusiastic embrace of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (Chart 5) indicates they’re on unions’ side. Chart 5No "Third Way" For Millennials Elections Have (Considerable Regulatory) Consequences Electoral outcomes influence the division of the economic pie between employers and employees. Labor-friendly presidents, governors and legislatures are more likely to expand employee protections, while more vigilantly enforcing the employment laws and regulations that are already on the books. The White House appoints top leadership at the Labor Department, the National Labor Review Board (NLRB), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), along with the attorney general, who dictates the effort devoted to anti-trust enforcement. It's no surprise that unions have started to look pretty good to workers after a decade of sluggish growth and widening inequality. The differences can be stark. Justice Scalia’s son would no more have led the Obama Department of Labor than Scott Pruitt (EPA), Wilbur Ross (Commerce) or Betsy Devos (Education) would have found employment anywhere in the Obama administration. McDonald’s has good reason to be happy with the outcome of the 2016 election; its business before the NLRB wound up being resolved much more favorably in 2019 than it would have been when it began in 2014 (Box 2). At the state level, Wisconsin public employees suffered a previously unimaginable setback when Scott Walker won the 2010 gubernatorial election, along with sizable legislative majorities (Box 3). Box 2 The Right Referee Makes All The Difference The Fight for $15 movement that began in 2012 aimed to nearly double the median fast-food worker’s wages. A raise of that magnitude would pose an existential threat to fast-food’s business model, and McDonald’s and its franchisees sought to stymie the movement’s momentum. The NLRB opened an investigation in 2014 following allegations that employees were fired for participating in organizing activities. McDonald’s vigorously contested the case in an effort to avoid the joint-employer designation that would open the door for franchise employees to bargain collectively with the parent company. (Absent a joint-employer ruling, a union would have to organize the McDonald’s work force one franchise at a time.) When the case was decided in McDonald’s favor in December, the headline and sub-header on the Bloomberg story reporting the outcome crystallized our elections-matter thesis: McDonald’s Gets Win Under Trump That Proved Elusive With Obama Board led by Trump appointees overrules judge in case that threatened business model Box 3 Wisconsin Guts Public-Sector Unions Soon after Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker took office in January 2011, backed by sizable Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature, he sent a bill to legislators that would cripple the state’s public-sector unions. Protestors swarmed Madison and filled the capitol building every day for a month to contest the bill, and Democratic legislators fled the state to forestall a vote, but it eventually passed nonetheless. The bill struck at a rare union success story; nearly one-third of public-sector employees are union members and that ratio has remained fairly steady over the last 40 years (Chart 6). Wisconsin’s public-sector unions now do little more than advocate for their members in disciplinary and grievance proceedings, and overall union membership in the state has fallen by a whopping 43% since the end of 2009. Chart 6Public-Sector Union Membership Has Held Up Well Judicial appointments make a difference, too. The Supreme Court’s Janus decision in April 2018, banning any requirement that public employees pay dues to the unions that bargain for them on not-so-readily-apparent First Amendment grounds,10 was widely viewed as a body blow to public-sector unions. The 5-4 decision would certainly have gone the other way had President Obama’s nominee to succeed the late Justice Scalia been confirmed by the Senate. Final Takeaways Six weeks of reading about US labor history, considering the game theory underlying employment negotiations, and examining the current landscape for insight into the drivers of management and labor leverage have left us pretty much where we started. We do not anticipate that organized labor will regain the position it enjoyed in the fifties and sixties, when global competition was weak and shareholders and consumers were anything but vigilant about corporate operations. Even a more modest flexing of labor muscle that pushes wages higher across the entire economy has a probability of less than one half. Investors seem to think the probability is negligible, though, and therein lies an opportunity. We stated two major themes at the outset. One, employees have little chance of gaining ground if government is disposed to side with employers, and, two, successful strikes beget strikes. Public opinion is the tissue that connects the two themes. Elected officials deliver what their constituents want, as do the courts, albeit with a longer lag. Society’s view of striking/strikebreaking tactics heavily influences how they’re deployed and whether or not they’ll be successful. If the electorate has had enough of Reagan-Thatcher policies, elected officials will stop implementing them. We believe that public opinion is beginning to coalesce on employees’ side as labor puts on a more appealing face; as businesses increasingly fret about inequality’s consequences; and as millennials swoon over progressives, undeterred by labels that would have left their Cold War ancestors reaching for weapons. The median voter theory has importance beyond predicting future outcomes; it directly influences them. As the center of the electorate leans to the left, elected officials will have to deliver more liberal outcomes if they want to keep their jobs. If the electorate has given up on Reagan-Thatcher principles, organized labor is bound to get a break from the four-decade onslaught that has left it shrunken and feeble. There is one overriding market takeaway from our view that a labor recovery is more likely than investors realize: long-run inflation expectations are way too low. Although we do not expect wage growth to rise enough this year to give rise to sustainable upward inflation pressures that force the Fed to come off of the sidelines, we do think investors are overly complacent about inflation. We continue to advocate for below-benchmark duration positioning over a cyclical timeframe and for owning TIPS in place of longer-maturity Treasury bonds over all timeframes. Watch the election, as it may reveal that labor’s demise has been greatly exaggerated.   Doug Peta, CFA Chief US Investment Strategist dougp@bcaresearch.com Footnotes 1 Students were excused from classes and exams and sometimes even received academic credit for their work. 2 King, Gilbert, “How The Ford Motor Company Won a Battle and Lost Ground,” Smithsonian.com, April 30, 2013. 3 Greenhouse, Steven, Beaten Down, Worked Up, Alfred A. Knopf: New York (2019), pp. 137-8. 4 High unemployment, in addition to declining respect for unions, helped erase the stigma of crossing picket lines. 5 Serrin, William, “Industries, in Shift, Aren’t Letting Strikes Stop Them,” New York Times, September 30, 1986, p. A18. 6 Emma, Caitlin, “Teachers Are Going on Strike in Trump’s America,” Politico, April 12, 2018. 7 Greenhouse, p. 44. 8 Please see the January 20, 2020 US Investment Strategy Special Report, “Labor Strikes Back, Part 2: Where Strikes Come From And Who Wins Them,” available at usis.bcaresearch.com. 9 Please see the June 8, 2016 Geopolitical Strategy Monthly Report, “Introducing The Median Voter Theory,” available at gps.bcaresearch.com. 10 The Court found for the plaintiff in Janus, who bridled at the closed-shop law that forced him to join the union that bargained on his and his colleagues’ behalf, because the union’s espousal of views with which he disagreed constituted a violation of his free-speech rights as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Bibliography Aamidor, Abe and Evanoff, Ted. At The Crossroads: Middle America and the Battle to Save the Car Industry. Toronto: ECW Press (2010). Allegretto, S.A.; Doussard, M.; Graham-Squire, D.; Jacobs, K.; Thompson, D.; and Thompson, J. Fast Food, Poverty Wages: The Public Cost of Low-Wage Jobs in the Fast-Food Industry. Berkeley, CA. UC-Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, October 2013. Bernstein, Irving. The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933. Boston: Houghton Mifflin (1960). Blanc, Eric. Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics. Brooklyn, NY: Verso (2019). Emma, Caitlin. “Teachers Are Going on Strike in Trump’s America.” Politico, April 12, 2018, accessed January 20, 2020. Finnegan, William. “Dignity: Fast-Food Workers and a New Form of Labor Activism.” The New Yorker, September 15, 2014 Greenhouse, Steven. Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present and Future of American Labor. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (2019). Greenhouse, Steven. “The Return of the Strike.” The American Prospect, Winter 2019 Ingrassia, Paul. Crash Course: The American Auto Industry’s Road from Glory to Disaster. New York: Random House (2010). King, Gilbert. “How the Ford Motor Company Won a Battle and Lost Ground.” smithsonianmag.com, April 30, 2013, accessed January 24, 2020. Loomis, Erik. A History of America in Ten Strikes. New York: The New Press (2018). Manchester, William. The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972. New York: Bantam (1974). Norwood, Stephen H. “The Student As Strikebreaker: College Youth and the Crisis of Masculinity in the Early Twentieth Century. Journal of Social History Winter 1994: pp. 331-49. Sears, Stephen W. “Shut the Goddam Plant!” American Heritage Volume 33, Issue 3 (April/May 1982) Serrin, William. “Industries, in Shift, Aren’t Letting Strikes Stop Them.” The New York Times, September 30, 1986 Wolff, Leon. “Battle at Homestead.” American Heritage Volume 16, Issue 3 (April 1965) *Current newspaper and Bloomberg articles omitted.

Highlights Global growth is poised to accelerate this year, although the spread of the coronavirus could dampen spending in the very short term. History suggests that the likelihood of a recession rises when unemployment falls to very low levels. Three channels have been proposed to explain why that is: 1) Low unemployment can prompt households and businesses to overextend themselves, making the economy more fragile; 2) Faster wage growth stemming from a tight labor market can compress profit margins, leading to less capital spending and hiring; 3) Shrinking spare capacity can fuel inflation, forcing central banks to raise rates. The first channel is highly relevant for some smaller, developed economies where housing bubbles have formed and household debt has reached very high levels. However, it is not an immediate concern in the US, Japan, and most of the euro area. We would downplay the importance of the second channel, as faster wage growth is also likely to raise aggregate demand and incentivize firms to increase capital spending on labor-saving technologies. The third channel poses the greatest long-term risk, but is unlikely to be market-relevant this year. Investors should remain bullish on global equities over the next 12-to-18 months. A more prudent stance will be warranted starting in the second half of 2021. Global Equities: Sticking With Bullish Global equities are vulnerable to a short-term correction after having gained 16% since their August lows. Nevertheless, we continue to maintain a positive outlook on stocks for the next 12 months due to our expectation that global growth will gather steam over the course of the year. The latest data on global manufacturing activity has generally been supportive of our constructive thesis. The New York Fed Manufacturing PMI beat expectations, while the Philly Fed PMI jumped nearly 15 points to the highest level in eight months. The business outlook (six months ahead) component of the Philly Fed index rose to its best level since May 2018. European manufacturing should also improve this year. Growth expectations for Germany in the ZEW index surged in January, rising to the highest level since July 2015 (Chart 1). The Sentix and IFO indices have also moved higher. Encouragingly, euro area car registrations rose by 22% year-over-year in December. In the UK, business confidence in the CBI survey of manufacturers surged from -44 in Q3 of 2019 to +23 in Q4, the largest increase in the 62-year history of the survey. Fiscal stimulus and diminished risk of a disorderly Brexit should also bolster growth this year. Chart 1Some Green Shoots Emerging In The Euro Area Chart 2EM Asia Is Rebounding The manufacturing and trade data in Asia have been improving. Following last week’s better Chinese trade data, Korean exports recovered on a rate-of-change basis for a fourth month in a row. Japanese exports to China increased for the first time since last February. In Taiwan, industrial production increased by more than expected in December, as did export orders. Our EM Asia Economic Diffusion Index has risen to the highest level since October 2018 (Chart 2). Coronavirus: Nothing To Sneeze At? The outbreak of the coronavirus represents a potential short-term threat to the budding global economic recovery. Conceptually, outbreaks can affect the economy in two ways. One, they can reduce demand by curtailing spending on travel, entertainment, restaurants, or anything that requires close proximity to others. Two, they can reduce supply by causing people to avoid going to work. In practice, the first effect usually dominates the second. As a result, such outbreaks tend to have a deflationary impact. The Brookings Institution estimates that the 2003 SARS epidemic shaved about one percentage point from Chinese growth that year.1 The fact that this outbreak is happening during the Chinese New Year celebrations, when over 400 million people will be on the move, has the potential to exacerbate the transmission of the virus, and in the process, amplify the economic damage. That said, while it is from the same class of zoonotic viruses, early indications suggest that this particular strain is less lethal than SARS. In addition, the Chinese authorities have moved faster to address the risks than they did during the SARS outbreak. The government has effectively quarantined Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, where the virus appears to have originated. They have also sequenced the virus and shared the information with the global medical community. This has allowed the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to develop a test for the virus, which is likely to become available over the coming weeks. The Dark Side Of Low Unemployment Provided the coronavirus outbreak is contained, stronger global growth should continue to soak up lingering labor market slack. This raises the question of whether, at some point, declining unemployment could become counterproductive. The outbreak of the coronavirus represents a potential short-term threat to the budding global economic recovery. The unemployment rate in the OECD currently stands at 5.1%, below the low of 5.5% set in 2007 (Chart 3). In the US, the unemployment rate has dropped to a 50-year low. Chart 3Unemployment Rates Are Below Their Pre-Crisis Lows In Most Economies No one would deny that the decline in unemployment since the financial crisis has been a welcome development. However, it does carry one major risk: Historically, the likelihood of a recession has risen when unemployment has fallen to very low levels (Chart 4). Chart 4Recessions Become More Likely When The Labor Market Begins To Overheat Three channels have been proposed to explain this positive correlation: 1) Low unemployment can prompt households and businesses to overextend themselves, making the economy more fragile; 2) Faster wage growth stemming from a tight labor market can compress profit margins, leading to less capital spending and hiring; 3) Shrinking spare capacity can fuel inflation.  This can force central banks to raise rates, choking off growth. Let’s examine each in turn. Unemployment And Irrational Exuberance Chart 5Growing Housing Imbalances In Some Economies A strong economy promotes risk-taking. While some risk-taking is essential for capitalism, an excessive amount can lead to the buildup of imbalances, thereby setting the stage for an eventual downturn. In Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the Scandinavian economies, the combination of low interest rates and strong economic growth has stoked debt-fueled housing bubbles (Chart 5, panel 3). As we discussed last week, higher interest rates in those economies could sow the seeds for economic distress.2 In most other countries, financial imbalances are not severe enough to trigger recessions. Chart 6 shows that the private-sector financial balance – the difference between what the private sector earns and spends – still stands at a healthy surplus of 3.4% of GDP in advanced economies. In 2007, the private-sector financial balance fell to 0.4% in advanced economies, reaching a deficit of 2% in the US. The private-sector balance also deteriorated sharply in the lead-up to the 2001 recession (Chart 7). Chart 6The Private Sector Spends Less Than It Earns In Most Economies Chart 7The Private-Sector Surplus Is Larger Than It Was Before The End Of Previous Expansions   In the US, the personal savings rate has risen to nearly 8%, much higher than one would expect based on the level of household net worth (Chart 8). Despite growing at around 2.5% in 2018/19, real personal consumption has increased at a slower pace than predicted by the level of consumer confidence. This suggests that households have maintained a fairly prudent disposition. Consistent with this, the ratio of household debt-to-disposable income has declined by 32 percentage points since 2008. Chart 8Households Are Saving More Than One Would Expect Granted, some credit categories have seen large increases (Chart 9). Student debt has risen to 9% of disposable income. Auto loans have moved back to their pre-recession highs. We would not worry too much about the former, as the vast majority of student debt is guaranteed by the government. Auto loans are more of a concern. However, it is important to keep in mind that the auto loan market is less than one-sixth as large as the mortgage market. Moreover, after loosening lending standards for vehicle loans between 2011 and 2016, banks have since tightened them. This adjustment appears to be largely complete. Lending standards did not tighten any further in the latest Senior Loan Officer Survey, while demand for auto loans rose at the fastest pace in two years. The share of auto loans falling into delinquency has been trending lower, which suggests that delinquency rates are peaking (Chart 10). Chart 9US Household Debt Levels Have Fallen, Despite Increases in Student And Auto Loans Chart 10Auto Loans: Monitoring Trends In Credit Standards And Delinquency Rates Lastly, we would point out that despite all the hoopla over the state of the auto market, auto loan asset-backed securities have performed well (Chart 11). While default rates have risen, lenders have generally set interest rates high enough to absorb incoming losses. Chart 11Securitized Auto Loans Have Performed Well Will Falling Profit Margins Derail The Expansion? Profit margins usually peak a few years before the onset of a recessions (Chart 12, top panel). This has led some to speculate that falling margins could usher in a recession by curbing companies’ willingness to hire workers and invest in new capacity. Chart 12A Peak In Profit Margins: An Ominous Sign? While it is an interesting theory, it does not stand up to closer scrutiny. Surveys of business sentiment clearly show that capital spending intentions are positively correlated with plans to raise wages (Chart 13, left panel). Far from cutting capital expenditures in response to rising wages, firms are more likely to boost capex if they are also planning to increase labor compensation.  Chart 13AFaster Wage Growth, Increased Hiring, And More Capex Go Hand In Hand (I) Chart 13BFaster Wage Growth, Increased Hiring, And More Capex Go Hand In Hand (II) One reason for this is that rising wages make automation more attractive. By definition, automation requires more capital spending. However, that is not the entire story because firms also tend to hire more workers during periods when wage growth is rising (Chart 13, right panel). This implies that a third factor – strong economic growth – is responsible for both accelerating wages and rising hiring intentions. The fact that real business sales are strongly correlated with both employment growth and nonresidential investment is evidence for this claim (Chart 12, bottom panel). Falling Margins: A Symptom Of A Problem The discussion above suggests that faster wage growth is unlikely to dissuade firms from either hiring more workers or boosting capital spending. Indeed, the opposite is probably true: Since workers normally spend more of every dollar of income than firms do, an increase in the share of national income flowing to workers will lift aggregate demand. So why do profit margins usually peak before recessions? The answer is that declining labor market slack tends to push up unit labor costs, forcing central banks to hike interest rates in an effort to stave off rising inflation. Thus, falling margins are just a symptom of an underlying problem: economic overheating. Don’t blame lower margins for recessions. Blame central banks. Inflation Is Not A Threat... Yet For now, unit labor cost inflation remains reasonably well contained in the major economies (Chart 14). However, there is little evidence to suggest that the historic relationship between labor market slack and wage growth has broken down (Chart 15). Barring a major surge in productivity growth, inflation is likely to accelerate eventually as companies try to pass on higher labor costs to their customers. Chart 14AUnit Labor Costs Are Well Behaved For Now (I) Chart 14BUnit Labor Costs Are Well Behaved For Now (II)       Chart 15Correlation Between Labor Market Slack And Wage Growth Remains Intact We do not know exactly when such a price-wage spiral will emerge. Inflation is a notoriously lagging indicator (Chart 16). Our best guess is that inflation could become a serious risk for investors in late 2021 or 2022. Thus, investors should remain overweight global equities for the next 12-to-18 months, but be prepared to turn more cautious in the second half of 2021.  Chart 16Inflation Is A Lagging Indicator   Peter Berezin Chief Global Strategist peterb@bcaresearch.com   Footnotes 1   Jong-Wha Lee and Warwick J. McKibbin, “Globalization and Disease: The Case of SARS,” Brookings Institution, dated February 2004. 2  Please see Global Investment Strategy Weekly Report, “Bond Yields: How High Is Too High?” dated January 17, 2020.   Global Investment Strategy View Matrix MacroQuant Model And Current Subjective Scores Strategic Recommendations Closed Trades

Special Report

Highlights Strikes result from divergent perceptions of bargaining power: A strike reflects a negotiating failure, and negotiations fail when parties cannot agree on which side has the stronger position, typically because at least one of them overestimates its leverage. Once a strike starts, broad macro factors influence the outcome: Labor market slack, economic concentration, trends in labor relations law and regulations, and the gap between labor’s and management’s fortunes (if extreme) are the key macro determinants of negotiating leverage. Key factors that have bolstered management for decades are poised to reverse: Legal and regulatory trends have little room to improve from management’s perspective, and the gap between management’s and labor’s share of rewards is ripe for narrowing. A union resurgence is a low-probability, high-impact event: We view the potential for labor to gain the upper hand over management as a low-probability event that would have a significant impact on markets if it did come to pass, so it merits a close look. Feature We concluded Part 1 by highlighting two consistent themes from the modern history of the US labor movement: successful strikes beget strikes, and employees are unlikely to make gains if judges and government officials are disposed to favor management. In this installment, we will focus on the factors that encourage strikes and the non-government determinants of their success. Part 3 will focus on public opinion, elected officials and the judiciary. Our ultimate goal is to evaluate relative bargaining power, and the potential for organized labor to push wages significantly higher, upending the risk-friendly status quo. The Origin Of Strikes Strikes (and lockouts) occur when labor and management cannot reach a mutually acceptable settlement, often because at least one side overestimates its bargaining power. It is easy to agree when labor and management hold similar views about each side’s relative power, as when both perceive that one of them is considerably stronger. In that case, a settlement favoring the stronger side can be reached fairly quickly, especially if the stronger side exercises some restraint and does not seek to impose terms that the weaker side can scarcely abide. Restraint is rational in repeated games like employer-employee bargaining, and when both parties recognize that relative bargaining positions are fluid, they are likely to exercise it. History shows that the pendulum between labor and management swings, albeit slowly, as societal views evolve1 and the business cycle fluctuates. As a general rule, management will have the upper hand during recessions, when the supply of workers exceeds demand, and labor will have the advantage when expansions are well advanced, and capacity tightens. A high unemployment rate broadly favors employers, and a low unemployment rate favors employees. Neither the number of work stoppages (Chart 1, top panel), nor the number of workers involved (Chart 1, middle panel) correlates very well with the unemployment gap (Chart 1, bottom panel), in the Reagan-Thatcher era, however, as work stoppages have dwindled almost to zero. Chart 1Swamped By The Legal And Regulatory Tide Game theory is better equipped than simple regression models to offer insight into the origin of strikes. We posit a simple framework in which each side can hold any of five perceptions of its own bargaining power, resulting in a total of 25 possible joint perceptions. Management (M) can believe it is way stronger than Labor (L), M >> L; stronger than Labor, M > L; roughly equal, M ≈ L; weaker than Labor, L > M; or way weaker than Labor, L >> M. Labor also holds one of these five perceptions, and the interaction of the two sides’ perceptions establishes the path negotiations will follow. The fur flies when each party thinks the other should make the bulk of the concessions: labor negotiations over the next couple of years could be interesting. Limiting our focus to today’s prevailing conditions, Figure 1 displays only the outcomes consistent with management’s belief that it has the upper hand. For completeness, the exhibit lists all of labor’s potential perceptions, but we deem the two in which labor is feeling its oats (circled) to be most likely, given the success of recent high-profile strikes.2 Management’s confidence follows logically from four decades of victories, but may prove to be unfounded if its power has already peaked. Figure 1The Eye Of The Beholder Strike outcomes turn on which side has overestimated its leverage. The broad factors we use to assess leverage are overall labor market slack; economic concentration; regulatory and legal trends; and the sustainability of either side’s accumulated advantage, which we describe as the labor-management rubber band. Other factors that matter on a case-by-case basis, but are beyond the scope of our analysis, include industry-level slack, a labor input’s susceptibility to automation, and the degree of labor specialization/skill involved in that input. For these micro-level factors, a given group of workers’ leverage is inversely related to the availability of substitutes for their input. Labor Market Slack Chart 2Surprise Wage Retracements Despite muted wage growth (Chart 2), the labor market is demonstrably tight. The unemployment rate is at a 50-year low, the broader definition of unemployment is at the lowest level in its 26-year history, and the prime-age employment-to-population ratio is back to its 2001 levels, having surpassed the previous cycle’s peak (Chart 3). The job openings rate is high, indicating that demand for workers is robust, and so is the quits rate, indicating that employers are competing vigorously to meet it. The NFIB survey’s job openings and hiring plans series (Chart 4) echo the JOLTS findings. Chart 3Prime-Age Employment Is At An 18-Year High ... Chart 4... But There Are Still Lots Of Help Wanted Signs The lack of labor market slack decisively favors workers’ negotiating position. It is a sellers’ market when demand outstrips supply, and labor victories tend to be self-reinforcing. Successful strikes beget strikes, and management volunteers concessions as labor peace becomes a competitive advantage during strike waves. Given that the crisis-driven damage to the labor force participation rate has healed as the gap between the actual part rate (Chart 5, solid line) and its demographically-determined structural proxy has closed (Chart 5, dashed line), the burden of proof rests squarely with those who argue that there is an ample supply of workers waiting to come off the sidelines. Chart 5The Labor Force Participation Gap Has Closed Economic Concentration Chart 6Less Competition = More Power The trend toward economic concentration (Chart 6) has endowed the largest companies with greater market power, as evidenced by surging corporate profit margins. The greater the concentration of employment opportunities in local labor markets, the more closely they resemble monopsonies.3 Unfortunately for labor, monopsonies restrain prices just as monopolies inflate them. As our Bank Credit Analyst colleagues have shown,4 there is a robust inverse relationship between employment concentration and real wages (Chart 7). Chart 7One Huge Buyer + Plus Multiple Small Sellers = Low Prices Economic concentration has been a major driver of management’s Reagan-Thatcher era dominance. Sleepy to indifferent antitrust enforcement has helped businesses capture market power, and it will continue to prevail through 2024 unless the Democrats take the White House in November. The silver lining for workers is that concentration could have the effect of promoting labor organization in services, where unions have heretofore made limited progress. The only way for employees to combat employers’ monopsony power is to organize their way to becoming a monopoly supplier of labor. Regulatory And Legal Trends Over the last four decades, unions have endured a near-constant drubbing from state capitols, federal agencies and the courts, as union and labor protections have been under siege from all sides. Since the air traffic controllers’ disastrous strike, labor’s regulatory and legal fortunes have most closely resembled the competitive fortunes of the Harlem Globetrotters’ beleaguered opposition. But the regulatory and legal tide has been such a huge benefit for management since the beginning of the Reagan administration that it cannot continue to maintain its pace. Employees and employers need each other, and their tether can only be stretched so far before it starts pulling them back together. Investors seem to assume that it will, however, to the extent that they think about it at all. It stands to reason that employers may be similarly complacent. We will look more closely at the presidential election and its potential consequences in Part 3, but labor concerns and inequality are capturing more attention, even among Republicans. With Republicans’ inclination to side with business only able to go in one direction, the chances are good that it has peaked. The Labor-Management Rubber Band For all of the romantic allure of labor’s battles with management in the Colosseum era, employees and employers have a deeply symbiotic relationship. One can’t exist without the other, and pursuing total victory in negotiations is folly. Even too many incremental wins can prove ruinous, as the UAW discovered to its chagrin in 2008. A half-century of generous compensation and stultifying work rules saddled Detroit automakers with a burden that would have put them out of business had the federal government not intervened. Table 1Average Salaries Of Public School Teachers By State We think of labor and management as being linked by a tether with a finite range. Since neither side can thrive for long if the other side is suffering, the tether pulls the two sides closer together when the gap between them threatens to become too wide. When labor does too well for too long at management’s expense, profit margins shrink and the company’s viability as a going concern is threatened. When management does too well, deteriorating living standards drive the best employees away, undermining productivity and profitability. Before the low-paying entity’s work force becomes a listless dumping ground for other firms’ castoffs, it may rise up and strike out of desperation. Teachers’ unions might have appeared to be setting themselves up for a fall in 2018 by illegally striking in staunchly conservative West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Per the National Education Association’s data for the 2017-18 academic year, average public school teacher pay in West Virginia ranked 50th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, Oklahoma ranked 49th and Arizona ranked 45th (Table 1). Adjusting the nominal salaries for cost disparities across states, West Virginia placed 41st, Oklahoma 44th and Arizona 48th. Given that real teacher salaries had declined by 8% and 9% since 2009-10 in West Virginia and Arizona, respectively, the labor-management rubber band had stretched nearly to the breaking point. Consolidating The Macro Message Parties to negotiations derive leverage from the availability of substitutes. When alternative employment opportunities are prevalent, workers have a lot of leverage, because they can credibly threaten to avail themselves of them. Teaching is a skill that transfers easily, and every state has a public school system, so teachers in low-salary states have a wealth of ready alternatives. The converse is true for low-salary states; despite much warmer temperatures, it is unlikely that teachers from top-quintile states will be willing to take a 25-33% cost-of-living-adjusted pay cut to decamp to Arizona (Table 2). Table 2Cost Of Living-Adjusted Public School Teacher Salaries By State It is easy to see from Figure 2 why management has had the upper hand. Economic concentration and the legal and regulatory climate have increasingly favored it for decades. The immediate future seems poised to favor labor, however, as the legal and regulatory climate cannot get materially better for employers, and the labor-management rubber band has become so stretched that some sort of mean reversion is inevitable. We have high conviction that labor’s one current advantage, a tight labor market, will remain in its column over the next year or two. On a forward-looking basis, the macro factors as a whole are poised to support labor. Figure 2Macro Drivers Of Negotiating Leverage​​​​​​​ Takeaways After discussing this Special Report series with clients, we realized our views could easily be misinterpreted. We are not calling for an imminent union revival that drives wages higher across industries. To be clear, we think it is more likely than not that the labor movement in the United States will remain weak relative to its 1950s to 1970s heyday. We do think, however, that the probability that unions could rise up to exert the leverage that accrues to workers in a tight labor market is considerably larger than the great majority of investors perceive. Alpha – market-beating return – arises from surprises. An investor captures excess returns when s/he successfully anticipates something that the consensus does not. If the disparity involves a trivial outcome, then any excess return is likely to be trivial, but if the outcome is significant, the investor who zigged when the rest of the market zagged stands to separate him/herself from the pack. Management has been in the driver's seat, but the factors that have kept it there have a high risk of reversing. We think the outcome of a shift in leverage from employers to employees would be very large indeed. We would expect that aggregate wage gains of 4% or higher would quickly drive the Fed to impose restrictive monetary policy settings, eventually inducing the next recession and the end of the bull markets in equities, credit and property. A union revival may be a low-probability event, but it would have considerable impact on markets and the economy. Given our conviction that the probability, albeit low, is much greater than investors expect, we think the subject is well worth sustained attention. We will examine public opinion and its effect on elected officials and the courts in Part 3, which will conclude our examination of labor-management dynamics. We will publish that installment on February 3rd; next week we will publish a joint US Investment Strategy – US Bond Strategy Special Report on commercial real estate, lead-authored by Jennifer Lacombe.   Doug Peta, CFA Chief US Investment Strategist dougp@bcaresearch.com Footnotes 1 We will discuss public opinion, and its impact on elected officials and courts, in Part 3. 2 Please see the January 13, 2020 US Investment Strategy Special Report, “Labor Strikes Back, Part 1: An Investor’s Guide To US Labor History,” available at www.bcaresearch.com. 3 A monopsony is a market with a single buyer, akin to a monopoly, which is a market with only one seller. 4 Please see the July 2019 Bank Credit Analyst Special Report, “The Productivity Puzzle: Competition Is The Missing Ingredient,” available at bcaresearch.com.

Special Report

Highlights The balance of power in US labor negotiations has shifted infrequently in the industrial age: Management completely dominated labor before the New Deal, which gave rise to a 45-year labor golden age that lasted until the Reagan revolution and globalization put employers firmly back in control. Employees rarely make gains without sympathetic elected officials and judges: The New Deal was a watershed in labor relations history because it granted workers legal protections that leveled the playing field with employers. Successful strikes beget strikes: Momentum matters in labor negotiations. One union’s win may embolden other unions to strike, blazing a path for further gains by demonstrating that the price of labor peace has risen. The pendulum may be swinging back in labor’s favor: Unions still face formidable headwinds in Washington, DC and state capitals, but a run of successful strikes may signal that rumors of the labor movement's demise have been exaggerated. Feature Where will inflation come from, and when will it arrive? An investor who answers these questions will have advance notice of the end of the expansion and the bull markets in equities and credit. Per our base-case scenario, the expansion won’t end until monetary policy settings become restrictive, and the Fed won’t pursue restrictive policy unless inflation pressures force its hand. Inured by a decade of specious warnings that “money printing” would let the inflation genie out of the bottle, investors are skeptical that inflation will ever re-emerge. The inflation backdrop has become much more supportive in the last few years, however, upon the closing of the output gap, and the stimulus-driven jolt in aggregate demand. Output gaps in other major economies will have to narrow further (Chart 1) for global goods inflation to gain traction, and mild inflation elsewhere in the G7 (Chart 2) suggests that goods prices are not about to surge. Chart 1There's Still Enough Spare Capacity ... Chart 2... To Restrain Global Goods Inflation Services are not so easily imported, though, and services inflation is a more fully domestic phenomenon. Rising wages could be the spur for services inflation, and the labor market is tight on several counts: the unemployment rate is at a 50-year low; the broader definition of unemployment, also encompassing discouraged workers and the underemployed, reached a new all-time (25-year) low in December; the JOLTS job openings and quits rates at or near their all-time (19-year) highs; and the NFIB survey and a profusion of anecdotal reports suggest that employers are having a hard time finding quality candidates. With labor demand exceeding supply, wages for nonsupervisory workers have duly risen (Chart 3). Gains in other compensation series have been muted, however, and investors have come to yawn and roll their eyes at any mention of the Phillips Curve. Chart 3Wage Growth Is Solid, But It's Lost A Good Bit Of Momentum Perhaps it’s not the Phillips Curve that’s broken, but workers’ spirits. A supine organized labor movement could explain why the Phillips Curve itself is so flat. As the old saying goes, if you don’t ask, you know what you’re going to get, and beleaguered unions and their memberships, cowed by two decades of woe coinciding with China’s entry into the WTO (Chart 4), have been afraid to ask. Strikes are the most potent weapon in labor’s arsenal; if it can’t credibly wield them, it is sure to be steamrolled. Chart 4Globalization Has Been Unkind To Labor Two years of high-profile strike victories by public- and private-sector employees may suggest that the sands have begun to shift, however, and inspired our examination of labor’s muscle. This first installment of a multi-part Special Report focuses on the history of US labor relations, with an eye toward identifying themes that shape relative bargaining power. We will subsequently examine the factors influencing the propensity for labor and management militancy, with a focus on where wages are headed in the near future. The Colosseum Era (1800-1933) We view US industrial labor history as having three distinct phases. We label the first, which lasted until the New Dealers took over Washington, the Colosseum era (Figure 1), because labor and management were about as evenly matched as the Christians and the lions in ancient Rome. Uprisings in textile mills, steel factories, and mines were swiftly squelched, often violently. Management was able to draw on public resources like the police and state National Guard units to put down strikes, or was able to unleash its own security or ad hoc militia forces on strikers or union organizers without state interference. The public, staunchly opposed to anarchists and Communists, generally sided with employers. Figure 1Significant Events In The Colosseum Era Unions won some small-bore victories during the period, but they nearly all proved fleeting as companies regularly took back concessions and public officials and courts failed to enforce the loose patchwork of laws aimed at ameliorating industrial workers’ plight. Labor inevitably suffered the brunt of the casualties when conflicts turned violent. Workers were hardly choir boys, and seem to have initiated violence as often as employers’ proxies, but they were inevitably outgunned, especially when police, guardsmen or soldiers were marshaled against them. Societal norms have changed dramatically since the Colosseum era, but the lore of past “battles” encourages an us-versus-them union mentality that occasionally colors negotiations. The UAW Era (1933-1981) Established presumptions about the employer-employee relationship were upended when FDR entered the White House. Viewing labor organization as a way to ease national suffering, New Dealers passed the Wagner Act to grant private-sector workers unionization and collective bargaining rights, and created the National Labor Relations Board to ensure that employers respected them. The Wagner Act greatly aided labor organization, enabling unions to build up the heft to engage with employers on an equal footing. Unionized workers still fought an uphill battle in the wake of the Depression, but tactics like the sit-down strike (Box) produced some early labor victories that paved the way for more. The UAW signed a similar accord with Chrysler immediately after the Flint sit-down strike, and the CIO (the UAW’s parent union) swiftly reached an agreement with US Steel that significantly improved steelworkers’ pay and hours. Labor unions’ path wasn’t always smooth – Ford fiercely resisted unionization until 1941, and ten protesters were killed, and dozens injured, by Chicago police at a peaceful Memorial Day demonstration in support of strikers against the regional steelmakers that did not follow US Steel’s conciliatory lead – but it generally trended upward after the New Deal (Figure 2). From the 1950 signing of the Treaty of Detroit, a remarkably generous five-year agreement between the UAW and the Big Three automakers, the UAW ran roughshod over the US auto industry for three-plus decades. The New Deal’s encouragement of unionization had given labor a fighting chance, and was the foundation on which all of its subsequent gains were built. Figure 2Significant Events In The UAW Era Box David Topples Goliath: The Flint Sit-Down Strike The broad mass of factory workers had not been organized to any meaningful degree before the New Deal, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) was not formed until 1935. Despite federal protections, the fledgling UAW had to conduct its operations covertly, lest its members face employer reprisals. At the end of 1936, when it took on GM, only one in seven GM employees was a dues-paying member. The strike began the night of December 30th when workers in two of GM’s Flint auto body plants sat down at their posts, ignoring orders to return to work. The sit-down action was more effective than a conventional strike because it prevented GM from simply replacing the workers with strikebreakers. It also made GM think twice about attempting to remove them by force, lest valuable equipment be damaged. GM was unsure how to dislodge the workers after a court injunction it obtained on January 2nd went nowhere once the UAW publicized that the presiding judge held today’s equivalent of $4 million in GM shares. It turned off the heat in one of the plants on January 11th, before police armed with tear gas and riot guns stormed it. The police were rebuffed by strikers who threw bottles, rocks, and car parts from the plant’s upper windows while spraying torrents of water from its fire hoses. No one died in the melee, but the strike was already front-page news across the country, and the attack helped the strikers win public sympathy. Michigan’s governor responded by calling out the National Guard to prevent a rematch, shielding the strikers from any further violence. The strike was finally settled on February 11th when GM accepted the UAW as the workers’ exclusive bargaining agent and agreed not to hinder its attempts to organize its work force. The Reagan-Thatcher Era (1981 - ??) The disastrous strike by the air traffic controllers’ union (PATCO) is the watershed event that heralded the end of unions’ golden age. Strikes by federal employees were illegal, so PATCO broke the law when it went on strike in April 1981, spurning the generous contract terms its leaders had negotiated with the Reagan administration. PATCO had periodically held the flow of air traffic hostage throughout the seventies to extract concessions from its employer, earning the lasting enmity of airlines, government officials and the public. Other unions were aghast at PATCO’s openly contemptuous attitude, and declined to support it with sympathy strikes, while conservatives blasted the new administration behind closed doors for the profligacy of its initial PATCO offer. President Reagan therefore had an unfettered opportunity to make an example out of the controllers, and he seized it, firing those who failed to return to work within 48 hours and banning them from ever returning to government employment. A fed-up public supported the president’s hard line, and employers and unions got the message that a new sheriff was in town. His deputies were not inclined to enforce labor-friendly statues, or investigate labor grievances, with much vigor, and they would not necessarily look the other way when public sector unions illegally struck. Unions also found themselves on the wrong side of the growing disaffection with bureaucracy that was bound up with the push for deregulation. The globalization wave further eroded labor’s power. Unskilled workers in the developed world would be hammered by the flat world that allowed people, capital and information to hopscotch around the globe. Eight years of a Democratic presidency brought no relief, as the “Third Way” Clinton administration embraced the free-market tide (Chart 5), and the unionized share of employees has receded all the way back to mid-thirties levels (Chart 6). Chart 5Inequality Took Off ... Chart 6... As Unions Lost Their Way A Fourth Phase? A handful of data points do not make a trend, especially in a series that stands out for its persistence, but the bargaining power pendulum could be shifting. Public school teachers won improbable statewide victories with illegal strikes in three highly conservative states in the first half of 2018 (Table 1); a canny hotel workers union steered its members to big gains in their contract negotiations with Marriott in the second half of 2018; and the UAW bested General Motors and the rest of the Big Three automakers last fall. Unions may have more bargaining power than markets and employers realize, and they could be on the cusp of becoming more aggressive in flexing it. The next installment(s) in this series will examine the factors determining whether or not unions will become more assertive and the likelihood that more assertive bargaining would meet with success. Table 1Teachers' Unions Conquer The Red States Takeaways There is not sufficient space to explore those factors in this installment, but we conclude by highlighting two key themes that emerge from our historical review. US industrial history makes it clear that employees are unlikely to gain ground if government sides with employers. Employees no longer have to fear that the state will look the other way while strikers are beaten, or fail to prosecute those responsible for loss of life, but they face especially long odds when the government is inclined to favor employers. Its thumb weighs heavily on the scale when it drags its feet on enforcement; cuts funding to agencies policing workplace standards; and appoints agency or department heads that are conditioned to see things solely from employers’ perspective, shaped by long careers in management. Successful strikes beget strikes, and the converse is also true. Withholding their labor is employees’ most powerful weapon, and when employers can’t replace them cheaply and easily, strikes often succeed. Striking is frightening for an individual, however, because it cuts off his or her income (or sharply reduces it, if the striker’s union has a strike fund) until the strike is over. If the strike fails, the employee may find him/herself blacklisted, impairing his/her long-term income prospects on top of his/her short-term losses. Prudent workers should therefore strike sparingly, with the due consideration that a prudent poker player exercises before going all-in. When other unions facing comparable conditions pull off successful strikes, it makes it much easier for another union to take the leap, in addition to making success more likely, provided conditions truly are comparable. “Before they occur, successful strikes appear impossible. Afterward, they seem almost inevitable .”1 The retrospective inevitability stiffens the spine of potential strikers who observe successful outcomes, and raises the bar for action among potential strikers who observe failures. “Just as defeats in struggle lead to demoralization and resignation, victories tend to beget more victories .”2 Public opinion matters just as surely as momentum, and it proved decisive in the Flint sit-down strike and in the air traffic controllers’ showdown with President Reagan. According to Gallup’s annual poll, Americans now regard unions as favorably as they did before Thatcher and Reagan came to power (Chart 7). We will dive more deeply into the topic in our next installment, as we probe labor market conditions for insight into the direction of inflation, and its implications for Fed policy, the business cycle and markets. Chart 7Could Unions Make A Comeback?   Doug Peta, CFA Chief US Investment Strategist dougp@bcaresearch.com Footnotes 1 Blanc, Eric. Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics, Verso: New York (2019), p. 204. 2 Ibid, p. 209.