Does the US Corporate Saving Rate Portend a Lower Unemployment Rate?: An interesting thing happened in Q4 2011: the corporate saving rate declined following two quarters of gains. Nominal net saving by the domestic business sector fell 3%, while nominal gross fixed investment and inventories surged 6% – the two pushed the saving rate down nearly 40 bps to 2.94% of GDP. The corporate saving rate (gross saving less gross investment) has been on a downward trend since the end of 2009, a welcomed trend by the labor market.
...The point here is that the trend in corporate saving has fallen sufficiently to portend some material declines in the unemployment rate in coming quarters….ALL ELSE EQUAL. For example, a simple bivariate regression would forecast a 7.5% unemployment rate if the corporate saving rate falls another 30 bps to 2.6%...[Continue]