Earlier this week in an article on rising consumer debt I wrote that as a consumption-driven economy, the US economy needs consumers to do the heavy-lifting. So far consumer are doing their part and the economy is recovering. But the question is: How big is consumption spending in terms of the total economic output? Or put another way, how important is consumption to the overall US economy?

The following chart from Lord Abbett shows the components of the US GDP:

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Source: U.S. Stocks: Small- and Mid-Caps’ Home-Court Advantage, Lord Abbett, May 31, 2016

According to the article, the US economy is uniquely dependent on the consumer. In fact, consumption accounts for about two-thirds(or 68.5%) of the US GDP as shown above.

Unlike the US, Germany and China are export-driven economies. So total US exports account for only 13% of US GDP. Germany’s export sector comprises about 46% of the German GDP and China’s exports constitutes about 23% of the economic output.

From an investment standpoint, the important point to remember is as long as the American consumer is able to have a job and access cheap credit, housing values remain stable and the consumer feels confident about the future, US economy will continue to remain strong.

The Unemployment Rate in the US stood at 4.7% according to the BLS. The long-term term in unemployment since 1999 is shown in the chart below:

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Source: BLS

Since the peak of the Global Financial Crisis unemployment level has slowly declined to reach almost closer to the 1999 levels. However most workers don’t feel like it is 1999 and competition is still fierce for any job open.

According to one expert at Blackrock, most people have missed one great statistic on the US economy. From an article published in April by Rick Rieder:

Many commentators seem to be pessimistically focused on the U.S. economy’s weak wage growth and manufacturing sector trouble. They don’t appear to be paying attention to the signs that the U.S. economy has actually been operating at a very high level in recent years, including one statistic that shows the economy’s true strength.

This statistic, which may surprise you: In aggregate, the hiring of 8.1 million people over the past three years is equal to all the U.S. job creation accomplished in the 14 years prior, according to a BlackRock analysis of jobs data following the March employment situation report. See the chart below.

In recent years, the U.S. economy has operated at much better levels than many market watchers gave it credit for. It has displayed quite remarkable labor market strength considering the secular headwinds to growth, such as an aging demographic, and it has been growing much faster than traditional metrics depict. This is because, as I’ve noted before, new technologies provide services at a much lower cost, and deliver efficiencies and productivity enhancements that are not captured in traditional economic data.

Source: A statistic about the U.S. economy that may surprise you, Blackrock Blog, April 7, 2016

So based on the charts above one can argue that all the jobs lost in the past 14 years have been recreated. But that does not tell the whole story. Millions of Americans are still looking for jobs that they lost during the great recession. Some factors that are not shown in cool looking charts like the above are things like the quality of jobs created, full-time or part-time, jobs with benefits paid or no benefits, etc. For instance, someone losing a well-paid job in a stable industry and getting a job as a hourly sales person at a department store or flipping burgers at a fast-food place for minimum wage is not the same thing.While it is true the person is employed and working, it is the quality of job that matters.

Many Americans including Presidential contender Donald Trump consider the real unemployment rate is much higher. His success in winning many state primaries confirms that many do not believe it is 1999 and everything is great. In fact, his campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again”which implies that that is average or not great now.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Barry, a fellow blogger and a Wall Street veteran on this topic:

By now, we have become almost used to a steady stream of inaccurate statements from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Most are not worth correcting. However, Donald Trump’s recent comments on the federal government’s unemployment data, so reminiscent of those made a few years ago by former General Electric chief Jack Welch, deserve a rejoinder. (He called today’s report that employers added just 38,000 jobs “terrible” — but only if you ignore the 35,000 striking Verizon workers. Still, 73,000 new jobs is pretty meh.)

The New York Post’s John Crudele last week interviewed Trump, who said he thinks the jobless rate is close to 20 percent and not the roughly 5 percent reported by the Labor Department. And, of course, Crudele reported, anyone who buys the 5 percent figure is a “dummy,” according to Trump.

This, in a nutshell, is typical of the usual economic conspiracy theories we have discussed in the past; it is obvious political bias corrupting economic analysis. It plays upon people’s recent post-traumatic stress from the financial crisis first and exploits their anxiety about the future. It also reveals deep ignorance about how employment data is assembled.

Source: Trump Finds Cooking in the Unemployment Numbers, Barry Ritholtz, June 2, 2016, Bloomberg

In summary, if one believes the official figures then probably so many millions of jobs have been created in recent years. Otherwise it is a fiction.

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) occurred just a few years ago. One of the reasons for that crisis was American consumers piling up excessive debt. For a short time after the crisis, the personal savings ratio started rising. However Americans are back to old habits again as they gorge on debt like there is no tomorrow. As the US is a consumption-based economy when consumers tighten their wallets the economy suffers. Much of the current rising consumption is fueled by debt as opposed to funded with income. With lending standards loosened again US consumers are willing taking on more debt even while their wages have stagnated for years. For most workers, real wages have been stagnant for years especially since the dot-com crash of 2000. But functional illiteracy with financial matters and high-octane gimmicks by marketers have made workers accumulate additional debt considering stagnant wages, pathetic quality of jobs being created, destroyed retirement savings, soaring taxes, etc.

From an article in the journal article discussing rising debt levels:

If current trends persist through the end of the year, U.S. households will owe as much as they did at the peak of borrowing in 2008.

Global debt has already topped 2008 levels and keeps rising. That’s pretty astonishing so soon after debt-driven crises in the U.S. and Europe and endless worries about too much borrowing in Japan, China and emerging markets.

But for all the hand-wringing, a near-term debt crisis is unlikely. Lower interest rates mean debt payments are far lower than they were before the crisis. In the U.S., household debt compared with the overall economy is way down. And overseas, loans can easily be rolled over.

Yet even with low rates, the cycle of borrowing and rolling over loans has a cost. People, governments and businesses spend now instead of later, likely reducing future growth. The cycle also allows borrowing to go on for years, which can be good—allowing reform to take hold—or not, allowing bad policies go on almost indefinitely.

U.S. households owed $12.25 trillion at the end of the first quarter, up 1.1% from the end of 2015, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, released Tuesday. If the first quarter repeats itself through the end of the year, U.S. household debt will approach its peak of $12.68 trillion, which it hit in the third quarter of 2008.

Source: Trillions in Debt—but for Now, No Reason to Worry, WSJ, May 25, 2016

One of the major source of the debt binge by Americans is the small plastic card called as the credit card  or more correctly the debt card. Here is a chart shows the growing debt mountain in this category of debt:

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Source: Balance Due: Credit-Card Debt Nears $1 Trillion as Banks Push Plastic, WSJ, May 20, 2016

According to the above article, the total outstanding balances in credit card debt is poised to hit $1.0 Trillion this year. That would be close enough to the $1.02 Trillion reached before the GFC in 2008.

The soaring debt levels at the consumer level is not good for the economy as a while. Since wages are not rising and expenses are increasing exponentially for middle class and poor Americans, another crisis can be expect to occur in the future unless changes happen that can support the current high standard of living in this country.