- For example, as we noticed last week, the Christmas season - following the biggest burst of stimulus ever applied to an economy - produced almost no new jobs. Our friend John Mauldin, digging through last week's Dallas Fed report, noticed the average wage for temporary labor was $13.50, down a buck fifty from a year ago. And there were actually 72,000 fewer temp workers during the retail season than December 2002. Stephen Roach pointed out that 84% of the total non-farm increase in employment from August to November is traceable to one of four hiring segments:
temporary staffing, health, education and everyone's favorite sector, government.
