The Daily Update: US Retirements / Things That Go Bump In The Night

Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester warned yesterday that the U.S. labour force participation rate may not recover to pre-pandemic levels due to a wave of retirements in the past year, whilst also saying that currently job recovery still falls short of the ‘substantial further progress’ benchmark for tapering asset purchases. ‘Some conditions will be back where they were in February 2020, but there's reason to believe the labour market participation rate won't necessarily get back to the February level. A lot of people retired, and we'd like to see some people do better than the February level’ she told reporters.

Mester went on to lay out certain labour market metrics, including the unemployment rate, employment-to-population ratio and prime-age labour force participation, by which she is ‘using to inform my judgment’ on the recovery. She added ‘I don't believe the progress we've made constitutes having met the guidance we put out for our asset purchase taper’.

Lastly, things that go bump in the night usually refers to unexplainable supernatural noises in the dead of night. However, if it happens to you over the weekend you might want to have a look in your garden before calling Ghostbusters. A Chinese rocket that launched a building block for the country's first permanent space station is making an uncontrolled reentry back to Earth this weekend - and there is no way of knowing where the debris might land. The roughly 30-metre-long rocket will be among the biggest space debris ever to fall to Earth.