20 Signs The U.S. Economy Is Heading For Big Trouble In The Months Ahead

Michael T. Snyder

Is the U.S. economy about to experience a major downturn? Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of signs that economic activity in the United States is really slowing down right now. Freight volumes and freight expenditures are way down, consumer confidence has declined sharply, major retail chains all over America are closing hundreds of stores, and the "sequester" threatens to give the American people their first significant opportunity to experience what "austerity" tastes like. Gas prices are going up rapidly, corporate insiders are dumping massive amounts of stock, and there are high-profile corporate bankruptcies in the news almost every single day now.

In many ways, what we are going through right now feels very similar to 2008 before the crash happened. Back then, the warning signs of economic trouble were very obvious, but our politicians and the mainstream media insisted that everything was just fine, and the stock market was very much detached from reality. When the stock market did finally catch up with reality, it happened very rapidly. Sadly, most people do not appear to have learned any lessons from the crisis of 2008. Americans continue to rack up staggering amounts of debt, and Wall Street is more reckless than ever. As a society, we seem to have concluded that 2008 was just a temporary malfunction rather than an indication that our entire system was fundamentally flawed. In the end, we will pay a great price for our overconfidence and our recklessness.

So, what will the rest of 2013 bring? Hopefully the economy will remain stable for as long as possible, but right now things do not look particularly promising.

The following are 20 signs that the U.S. economy is heading for big trouble in the months ahead:

1. Freight shipment volumes have hit their lowest level in two years, and freight expenditures have gone negative for the first time since the last recession.

2. The average price of a gallon of gasoline has risen by more than 50 cents over the past two months. This is making things tougher on our economy, because nearly every form of economic activity involves moving people or goods around.

3. "Reader's Digest," once one of the most popular magazines in the world, has filed for bankruptcy.

4. Atlantic City's newest casino, Revel, has just filed for bankruptcy. It had been hoped that Revel would help lead a turnaround for Atlantic City.

5. A state-appointed review board has determined that there is "no satisfactory plan" to solve Detroit's financial emergency, and many believe that bankruptcy is imminent. If Detroit does declare bankruptcy, it will be the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

6. David Gallagher, the CEO of Town Sports International, recently said that his company is struggling right now because consumers simply do not have as much disposable income anymore:

As we moved into January, membership trends were tracking to expectations in the first half of the month, but fell off track and did not meet our expectations in the second half of the month. We believe the driver of this was the rapid decline in consumer sentiment that has been reported and is connected to the reduction in net pay consumers earn given the changes in tax rates that went into effect in January.

7. According to the Conference Board, consumer confidence in the U.S. has hit its lowest level in more than a year.

8. Sales of the iPhone have been slower than projected, and as a result Chinese manufacturing giant Foxconn has instituted a hiring freeze. The following is from a CNET report that was posted on Wednesday:

The Financial Times noted that it was the first time since a 2009 downturn that the company opted to halt hiring in all of its facilities across the country. The publication talked to multiple recruiters.

The actions taken by Foxconn fuel the concern over the perceived weakened demand for the iPhone 5 and slumping sentiment around Apple in general, with production activity a leading indicator of interest in the product.

9. In 2012, global cell phone sales posted their first decline since the end of the last recession.

10. We appear to be in the midst of a "retail apocalypse." It is being projected that Sears (SHLD), J.C. Penney (JCP), Best Buy (BBY), and RadioShack (RSH) will also close hundreds of stores by the end of 2013.

11. An internal memo authored by a Wal-Mart (WMT) executive that was recently leaked to the press said that February sales were a "total disaster" and that the beginning of February was the "worst start to a month I have seen in my ~seven years with the company."

12. If Congress does not do anything and "sequestration" goes into effect on March 1, the Pentagon says that approximately 800,000 civilian employees will be facing mandatory furloughs.

13. Barack Obama is admitting that the "sequester" could have a crippling impact on the U.S. economy. The following is from a recent CNBC article:

Obama cautioned that if the $85 billion in immediate cuts -- known as the sequester -- occur, the full range of government would feel the effects. Among those he listed: furloughed FBI agents, reductions in spending for communities to pay police and fire personnel and teachers, and decreased ability to respond to threats around the world.

He said the consequences would be felt across the economy.

'People will lose their jobs,' he said. 'The unemployment rate might tick up again.'

14. If the "sequester" is allowed to go into effect, the CBO is projecting that it will cause U.S. GDP growth to go down by at least 0.6% and that it will "reduce job growth by 750,000 jobs."

15. According to a recent Gallup survey, 65% of all Americans believe that 2013 will be a year of "economic difficulty," and 50% of all Americans believe that the "best days" of America are now in the past.

16. U.S. GDP actually contracted at an annual rate of 0.1% during the fourth quarter of 2012. This was the first GDP contraction that the official numbers have shown in more than three years.

17. For the entire year of 2012, U.S. GDP growth was only about 1.5%. According to Art Cashin, every time GDP growth has fallen this low for an entire year, the U.S. economy has always ended up going into a recession.

18. The global economy overall is really starting to slow down:

The world's richest countries saw their economies contract for the first time in almost four years during the final three months of 2012, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said.

The Paris-based think-tank said gross domestic product across its 34 member states fell by 0.2% - breaking a period of rising activity stretching back to a 2.3% slump in output in the first quarter of 2009.

All the major economies of the OECD - the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Italy, and the U.K. - have already reported falls in output at the end of 2012, with the think-tank noting that the steepest declines had been seen in the European Union, where GDP fell by 0.5%. Canada is the only member of the G7 currently on course to register an increase in national output.

19. Corporate insiders are dumping enormous amounts of stock right now. Do they know something that we don't?

20. Even some of the biggest names on Wall Street are warning that we are heading for an economic collapse. For example, Seth Klarman, one of the most respected investors on Wall Street, said in his year-end letter that the collapse of the U.S. financial system could happen at any time:

'Investing today may well be harder than it has been at any time in our three decades of existence,' writes Seth Klarman in his year-end letter. The Fed's 'relentless interventions and manipulations' have left few purchase targets for Baupost, he laments. '[The] underpinnings of our economy and financial system are so precarious that the unabating risks of collapse dwarf all other factors.'

So what do you think is going to happen to the U.S. economy in the months ahead? Please feel free to express your opinion by leaving a comment below.

Slow Growth Amid Sluggish Job Gains

The U.S. economy slowed more than initially thought in the first quarter amid smaller gains in consumption and inventories, while corporate profits picked up. Separately, two measures of the labor market indicated continued sluggish job growth.

Gross domestic product increased at a 1.9% annual rate from January through March, the Commerce Department said Thursday. In its original report a month ago, the department estimated an increase of 2.2% in first-quarter GDP, the broadest measure of all the goods and services produced in an economy.

The number of U.S. workers filing new applications for unemployment benefits jumped last week, a potential signal that job creation continues to slow. Meanwhile, Private businesses hired at a very modest pace in May and manufacturers let go of workers, according to a report released Thursday by payroll giant Automatic Data Processing Inc. and consultancy Macroeconomic Advisers.

Still, companies registered their biggest quarterly gain in profits since the end of 2009 in the first three months of 2012. Corporate profits—after tax and unadjusted for inventories and capital consumption—increased at an 11.7% annual rate from the previous quarter. Profits were up 14.8% year on year in the first quarter, Commerce said.

The economy has cooled off since expanding at the fastest pace in a year and a half in the final quarter of 2011, with a 3.0% growth rate. But the fourth-quarter acceleration was driven partly by companies aggressively restocking inventories to catch up with demand.

Thursday's report showed that the inventory buildup was even less than expected in the first quarter, with the contribution to GDP falling to just 0.2 percentage point from 0.6 percentage point.

Consumer spending was also slightly weaker than expected, rising 2.7% instead of 2.9% as initially thought. Still, that marked the biggest gain in consumption since the fourth quarter of 2010.

Meanwhile, government spending continued to weigh on the recovery, with the drop revised down to 3.9% from 3.0%, mostly on the back of weakening state and local finances.

An unexpected pickup in business spending helped to partially offset downward revisions elsewhere, with investment in areas like software and industrial equipment rising 1.9%. Nonresidential fixed investment was initially estimated to have declined 2.1% in the first quarter.

Last month, Federal Reserve lifted its forecast on growth for this year, to between 2.4% and 2.9%. But Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned after the policy-setting meeting that "it's a little premature to declare victory."

One lingering uncertainty is whether the moderate pace of growth would be enough to bring down unemployment and spur demand. Friday's monthly employment report is expected to show a modest pickup in job creation, with the addition of 155,000 nonfarm payrolls in May. But the unemployment rate is expected to remain at 8.1%.

Another concern is the recent flare-up in inflation, though the most recent data have largely validated the Fed's view that the pressures would be temporary, as oil prices have receded from their highs.

The GDP report continued to show a buildup in inflationary pressures in the first quarter. The price index for personal consumption increased 2.4%, as previously estimated. That was double the rate of the fourth quarter.

The closely watched core PCE gauge, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, remained up 2.1%. That was up from the 1.3% rise in the fourth quarter.

Jobless Claims Increase

Initial jobless claims rose by 10,000 to seasonally adjusted 383,000 in the week ended May 26, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the biggest jump in claims since the first week of April.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast 370,000 new claims would be filed last week.

The four-week moving average of claims, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, increased by 3,750 last week to 374,500. Claims for the week ended May 19 were upwardly revised to 373,000 from the initially reported 370,000.

Labor officials said there was nothing unusual about the weekly data but numbers from five states were estimated due to the Memorial Day holiday.

Before this week, the pace of layoffs had leveled off during May after a spike in April. That gave hope that the economy would add more jobs in May after a lackluster reading the prior month. The government releases the latest payroll figures Friday.

In April, the economy added just 115,000 jobs, the second consecutive month job creation failed to top the 200,000.

The slowdown in hiring, coupled with worries about the ability of the U.S. and Europe to tackle fiscal challenges has caused increased concern among some economists in recent months.

The Federal Reserve, charged with maintaining price stability and achieving maximum employment, forecasts that unemployment will only edge down to between 7.8% and 8.0% by the end of this year. April's unemployment reading was 8.1% and economists expect it to remain unchanged in May.

If the labor market doesn't improve, the Fed could reconsider measures to stimulate the economy, such as another round of bond buying.

Thursday's report showed the number of continuing unemployment benefit claims—those drawn by workers for more than a week—decreased by 36,000 3,242,000 in the week ended May 19. Continuing claims are reported with a one-week lag.

The number of workers requesting unemployment insurance was equivalent to 2.6% of employed workers paying into the system in the week ended May 19, the same as the prior week.

Private Sector Adds 133,000 Jobs

Private-sector jobs in the U.S. increased 133,000 this month, according to a national employment report calculated by payroll processor Automatic Data Processing Inc. and consultancy Macroeconomic Advisers.

The gain was below economists' median expectation of 150,000 contained in a survey done by Dow Jones Newswires.

The April data were revised to show an advance of only 113,000 instead of the 119,000 increase reported earlier.

The ADP survey tallies only private-sector jobs, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics' nonfarm payroll data, to be released Friday, include government workers.

Growth in nonfarm payrolls has been anemic over the past two months. In April, only 115,000 jobs were created.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expect total nonfarm payrolls increased by 155,000 in May, and the jobless rate is projected to remain at 8.1%.

The weak ADP measure may cause economists to alter their payrolls forecast.

The latest ADP report showed large businesses with 500 employees or more added 9,000 employees in May, while medium-size businesses added 57,000 workers and small businesses that employ fewer than 50 workers hired 67,000 new workers.

Service-sector jobs increased by 132,000, and factory jobs fell by 2,000.

ADP, of Roseland, N.J., says it processes payments of one in six U.S. workers. Macroeconomic Advisers, based in St. Louis, is an economic-consulting firm.

On Wednesday, TrimTabs Investment Research said its calculation of May payrolls showed a "disappointing" gain of only 124,000.

Trimtabs uses daily tax deposits to calculate the monthly change in payrolls.

—Kathleen Madigan, Jeffrey Sparshott and Andrew Ackerman contributed to this article.

Write to Tom Barkley at tom.barkley@dowjones.com and Eric Morath at eric.morath@dowjones.com

Detroit's Wages Take on China's (US Becoming New Source of Cheap Labor!)

CANTON, Mich.—For the past four weeks, a team of 45 workers in gray smocks have been doing something here that hasn't been attempted on a large scale in America for at least four years.

They're making TVs.

The new assembly line is tucked inside a cavernous factory in this Detroit suburb that once made old-style tube televisions. Their first product: a 46-inch flat-screen model going on sale soon at Target stores for $499.

The project is the unusual result of a partnership between a U.S. branding company and a Chinese producer and is as much about marketing a U.S.-made television as it is about a global shift in manufacturing costs.

Making TVs in the U.S.A.

View Slideshow

Brian Widdis for The Wall Street Journal

Justin Parks worked at Element Electronics in Canton, Mich.

.

 More photos and interactive graphics

.

"We think the economics favor this," says Michael O'Shaughnessy, chief executive of Element Electronics Corp., the Eden Prairie, Minn., company that has sold Chinese-made televisions in the U.S. under its Element brand name for six years.

To be sure, costs in China are going up as worker pay and other expenses, such as transportation, rise. Meanwhile, muted wage gains in the U.S. and fast productivity advances have reshaped many U.S. factories into tougher competitors. A recent survey of large U.S.-based producers by the Boston Consulting Group found more than a third plan to or actively considering bringing work home from China.

But Element's televisions also illustrate the limitations in restoring some types of production on U.S. soil. The only other domestically assembled televisions today come from a tiny California producer of waterproof models designed for use outdoors and there is virtually no domestic supply base for crucial parts, such as glass screens. The upshot: Virtually all the key parts needed to make a television today are imported.

Few industries have fallen as hard as television manufacturing. In the 1950s, there were some 150 domestic producers and with employment peaking at about 100,000 people in the 1960s. Then came the imports, first from Japan and later from other parts of Asia. TV manufacturing in the U.S. went all but extinct in the last decade. Syntax-Brillian Corp., a Tempe, Ariz.-based, company opened a production facility in Ontario, Calif., in 2006 to much fanfare—but that operation lasted only two years.

Flat screens tipped the scales even more in favor of the Far East, because as tube televisions grew bigger, the weight and size of the glass made shipping increasingly costly. That was the one thing that kept U.S. production going even in the face of imports. Flat screens, however, are a fraction of the weight and much more compact.

Element says the decision to produce in Detroit hinges on savings they gained by avoiding the roughly 5% duty on imported televisions and the reduced cost of shipping final products from the heartland of the U.S. to retailers. All the parts are initially being imported—which is one reason the products can only be marketed as "U.S. assembled."

Mr. O'Shaughnessy estimates the average savings on duties is about $27 for a 46-inch television—enough "to account for the increase in labor costs" in Detroit. The company declined to give more specifics, but noted that production methods in the U.S. are streamlined, involving component assemblies that in China might be separate steps on the production line.

The first televisions being made for Target have 52 pieces and require 24 production steps, including testing and final packaging.

Mickey Cho, chief operating officer of Tongfang-Global, the television-making arm of state-owned Tsinghua Tongfang Co., the Chinese partner, says Canton is only its first move toward what he calls global localization, making more products closer to where they are sold.

"Our Chinese suppliers want to invest domestically, too," he said. "They'll follow someone who shows them how to do it."

Shawn DuBravac, chief economist for trade group Consumer Electronics Association, says there are "definitely financial reasons" television companies are looking again at domestic production—though so far only Element has taken the plunge with a U.S. factory. "The labor cost differential isn't as great as it once was" compared with China, he says, and automation has reduced the amount of labor needed in to put together a television in any locale.

 .

More in the Series

Globalization Spurs Steel Mill

Jobs Trickle Back to U.S. Plants (5/22/2012)

A Crib for Baby: Made in China or Made in USA? (5/22/2012)

.

The project does have skeptics. Paul Gagnon, director of North American TV research at NPD DisplaySearch, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based market research company, says the real competition for Element is factories just over the border in Mexico, not China. About half the televisions sold in the U.S. every year are made in Mexico, using parts imported from Asia—a model that avoids import tariffs and benefits from lower-cost Mexican labor.

"I just don't see any advantage to doing it here, other than for marketing purposes," says Mr. Gagnon.

Mr. O'Shaughnessy, however, insists there is reason to do it here. He notes that televisions made in Mexico, though benefiting from cheaper labor, end up costing more to ship to customers. The final cost of a set made in Mexico or Michigan "would be very similar," he says.

Enlarge Image

Close

Brian Widdis for The Wall Street Journal

An Element worker in Michigan inspected a flat-panel set last month.

.

To be sure, being able to market a U.S. assembled product is part of Element's strategy which the company is convinced also carries value. The company's U.S.-made televisions are being sold in boxes emblazoned with a red-white-and-blue flag splashed across the side. Mr. O'Shaughnessy says he began by showing retailers a more subtle design, but they requested the big flag. The image of a television on the box, meanwhile, displays a picture of American workers on the line assembling televisions in Detroit. The company had to hire actors to stage the work when they were developing the packaging because production hadn't yet begun.

But even the boxes illustrate the difficulty of sourcing things domestically. The first wave of product is going out in boxes imported from China. Mr. O'Shaughnessy says he hopes to have a domestic supplier for those and the plastic pads and other packaging by the end of the year.

Scott Nygaard, Target Corp.'s TGT -0.58%vice president of electronics, said in a statement that he views the domestic origins of the televisions an "added bonus" to the product. QVC Inc., which also plans to market the Detroit-made sets, said the new factory shows how Element can "zig while others zag."

For now, the production is starting small, but could rise to 200,000 TVs a year if a second shift were added on the line. The factory, owned by Lotus International Co., a U.S. company that mostly does television repair on behalf of Element and other TV producers, has opened up floor space for up to five assembly lines.

Walking through the factory, Mr. O'Shaughnessy stops next to one of the flag-splashed boxes near the assembly line. "You get no points for subtlety in the TV market," he says

Flat U.S. Wages Help Fuel Rebound in Manufacturing

The celebrated revival of U.S. manufacturing employment has been accompanied by a less-lauded fact: Wages for many manufacturing workers aren't keeping up with inflation.

The wage lag is a key factor contributing to the rebounding competitiveness of U.S. industry. A recent uptick in factory employment and the return of some production to U.S. shores from abroad both added jobs that probably otherwise wouldn't exist. But sluggish wages also are squeezing workers' incomes and spending. That, in turn, hurts retailers who target middle-income earners and restrains the vigor of the economic recovery.

Overall compensation to factory workers doesn't come close to the impressive productivity gains that American factories have enjoyed over the past year. WSJ's David Wessel reports. (Photo: AP)

.

"The U.S. has held manufacturing wages in check while there has been strong wage growth in China and moderate wage growth in Mexico," says economist Gordon Hanson of the University of California, San Diego, referring to two of the U.S.'s biggest lower-wage competitors.

With unemployment still high and global competition intense, employers have the upper hand in asking unions to relax work rules and restrain, or reduce, wages and benefits. Scores of U.S. companies have negotiated two-tier contracts with unions that allow them to pay new hires less than existing workers or otherwise restrain wage and benefit costs.

At American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc.'s AXL -7.45%plant in Three Rivers, Mich., new hires for assembly start at $10 an hour. Those hired before 2008 get a "legacy" rate of about $18 an hour.

 .

More in the Series

A Crib for Baby: Made in China or Made in USA? (5/22/2012)

Once Made in China: Jobs Trickle Back to U.S. Plants (5/22/2012)

Indiana Steel Mill Revived With Lessons From Abroad (5/21/2012)

.

General Electric Co. GE -1.60%announced plans to move production of electric water heaters to Louisville, Ky., from Mexico after U.S. unions agreed to a $13-an-hour starting wage for new hires, $8 to $10 or more an hour below the previous contract.

Without such concessions from workers, company executives say, they would be less likely to expand employment in the U.S. at all. After a 35% decline in the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs between 1998 and the trough in 2010, the total since has risen by 4.3% to 11.9 million in April.

Across the country, earnings for production and other nonsupervisory workers in manufacturing averaged $19.15 an hour in April, 3.2% below their recent March 2009 peak and back to where they were in 2000, adjusted for inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. In contrast, average hourly earnings for all private-sector production and nonsupervisory workers across the economy have risen 5.3% to $19.72 since 2000.

But averages can be misleading because there has been so much change in the industry, and wages measures don't count health or retirement benefits. The Employment Cost Index, a government measure that includes benefits and is adjusted for the changing mix of occupations and industries, shows that, adjusted for inflation, manufacturers' labor costs were 2.7% lower in the first quarter of 2012 than in 2005, when the economy was stronger and unemployment lower.

 .

For public and private civilian employers of all sorts, labor costs were basically flat—down 0.3%.

At the Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co. plant in Galax, Va., where 635 workers make wooden bedroom furniture, workers went without any raise for two years. At the end of 2011 they got a 3% raise, on average. That isn't enough to keep up with the 7%-plus increase in consumer prices over those three years. Starting pay today for hourly workers in the nonunion plant is about $9 an hour, plus health insurance and other benefits. The most experienced typically get $14 to $15, plus benefits.

Good workers are easy to find in Galax, says Wyatt Bassett, the firm's chief executive. Five other furniture firms have closed plants there, leaving Vaughan-Bassett as the last local survivor. The firm is in the midst of an $8 million expansion that it expects will create more than 100 jobs. Modest wage growth and worker willingness to embrace more efficient production methods have allowed the company to compete with imports from Asia, Mr. Bassett says. The message from the workers, he adds, has been: "You all tell us what you need and we'll work with you."

The absence of wage growth may make manufacturers more likely to hire. But for workers, it means less income, and thus less to spend.

Harley Gannon, sole breadwinner for a family of five in Union City, Mich., got an assembly job 14 months ago at an International Automotive Components plant in Mendon, Mich., that pays $9.67 per hour, less than $21,000 per year. That is down sharply from the $15 per hour he earned repairing electronic games at a Chuck E. Cheese outlet before losing that job six years ago. "Our hourly wage structure is competitive in the industry," an IAC spokesman said.

 .

Mr. Gannon, 32 years old, who has a community college degree in electronics, hopes to be promoted to higher-paying maintenance work at IAC. For now, he is watching his pennies. Just filling the tank in his 1996 Ford Windstar eats up about a third of his take-home pay, he says. The family rents a three-bedroom home for $625 a month and relies on food stamps to stretch his paycheck. "My two older kids have just had birthdays, and I haven't been able to buy them presents yet," he says.

For some manufacturers, the key has been encouraging older workers to retire and hiring new ones at lower wages.

In 2010 and 2011, new hires by manufacturers of durable goods, those meant to last three years or more, were paid an average of 0.3% less than workers who were newly hired in 2007 and 2008, adjusted for inflation, according to an analysis of government data by Jesse Rothstein of the University of California, Berkeley. New hires in nondurable manufacturing were paid 1.7% less.

Despite their near-death experiences of recent years, the Big Three U.S. auto makers still pay some of the highest wages in manufacturing, but the average is declining. General Motors Co., GM -2.10%Ford Motor Co. F -1.66%and Chrysler Group LLC have a mix of veteran workers making around $29 to $33 an hour in base pay; recent hires earn $16 to $19, according to the Center for Automotive Research, an Ann Arbor, Mich., research group.

"Workers really understand the global economy," says Cindy Estrada, a 43-year-old vice president of the United Auto Workers. The rank and file know they need to be competitive on wages, she says. But some companies are pushing pay down so far—$10 or $11 an hour with monthly health care contributions of as much as $400 a month—that workers can't afford to buy the cars they build, she adds.

Of course in today's economy, many Americans are glad just to have a job. Joey Payton of Detroit says he earned $17.11 an hour at a Lear Corp. LEA -2.87%plant in Warren, Mich., assembling instrument panels for trucks, until he was laid off in late 2007. In July 2009, he got a job at Johnson Controls Inc. JCI -2.37%in Highland Park, Mich., where he assembles the same type of products—for $12.25 an hour. Mr. Payton, 31, has cut back on family trips and on buying electronic gadgets.

A spokeswoman for Johnson Controls says the company believes its "wages and benefits are competitive within the automotive industry."

The high school graduate says he is angry about having to work for less but says, "People will take anything just to get their bills paid and food on the table."

Amid complaints of "skill shortages" from U.S. manufacturers, workers with highly sought-after skills are doing better. Alle-Kiski Industries, a Leechburg, Pa., machine shop, cut wages for the operators of the computer-controlled machines that shape metal parts by about 5% in 2009 when orders slumped. Partly to keep those workers from leaving for other plants, the company since has increased pay about 20%, to an average of about $18 an hour, says Kevin Hartford, the company's president. Employment at the plant has risen to 37 from a low of 22 in 2009.

The sluggish wage growth coincides with an impressive burst of rising factory productivity. Output per hour in American manufacturing has increased by 13% in the past five years and 21% in the five years before that.

William Strauss, a Chicago Federal Reserve Bank economist, expects the pace of wage increases to quicken eventually if productivity gains persist. "Already, you hear about the dearth of certain kinds of workers," he says. "There's a recognition that as we train workers to be more productive and more skilled, you'd better compensate them so that they stay with you."

Indeed, Germany offers a relevant example. Inflation-adjusted wages there didn't rise much after the reunification of east and west in 1989 and declined in the mid-2000s. Holding the line on wage increases and altering union work rules made German factories more efficient and competitive—particularly in contrast to southern European factories—and contributed to the nation's export boom. But now German manufacturers are being pushed to increase wages.

Sometimes with conflict and strikes, sometimes without, many manufacturers have pressed unions to accept changes that reduce labor costs and improve efficiency. About 11% of U.S. manufacturing workers are represented by unions.

Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc., SPR -1.45%a Wichita, Kan., maker of aircraft parts, says many of its hourly workers earn roughly 5% to 10% above market levels so it is trying—gradually—to restrain base pay while giving workers upside based on quality and productivity. Over the past two years, Spirit has reached unusually long, 10-year pacts with its major unions that, the company says, will keep labor costs "stable and predictable."

Some unions are agreeing to the use of lower-paid temporary workers. Tony Wilson, president of the Machinists union local in Kansas City, Mo., estimates the temporary, or "casual," assembly workers at the Harley Davidson Inc. HOG -2.41%motorcycle plant there get about $14 an hour while union members get $22 an hour. "Obviously," he says, "the folks that are coming in as 'casuals' are victims of the economy."

A Harley spokeswoman said temporary workers who stay at the plant for more than nine weeks get raises to at least $16 an hour.

Angry Caterpillar Strikers Hunkering Down

By JAMES R. HAGERTY

JOLIET, Ill.—At a time when many Americans are willing to work on almost any terms, workers at a Caterpillar Inc. CAT -2.53%factory here are settling in for what could be a very long and costly strike. Their reasons include anger, a slim hope for a better deal and, for some, a feeling that they have enough skills to get jobs elsewhere if need be.

"To me, right now this is a pride thing," said David Downs, who has been at the plant for seven years. "On their part," he added. But members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, known as IAM, also have made resisting Caterpillar a matter of pride, voting overwhelmingly Wednesday morning to reject a slightly revised company offer and to continue their month-old strike. About 81% of the 620 people voting rejected the offer, down from 94% in a late April vote, just before the union went on strike.

About 770 workers are on strike, a union official estimated, adding that about a dozen have crossed the picket line. Caterpillar, the world's largest maker of construction and mining equipment, has cited a similar number of strikers.

Steve Jones, an IAM official, said the union stood ready to resume talks with Caterpillar. Caterpillar rebuffed the suggestion and said the union "has not offered any type of realistic proposal."

Caterpillar faced down strikes by the United Auto Workers in the 1990s and forced that union to make concessions, including sharply lower pay for newer workers. Earlier this year, Caterpillar closed a locomotive plant in London, Ontario, after workers refused to accept a pay cut of about 50%.

The Joliet strikers shrug off such history lessons. "Somebody's got to make a stand," said Brenda Baloy, who has worked there for 17 years. She and others are angry that Caterpillar is asking for concessions even as it projects record profit for 2012 and gave top executives big raises last year.

"We gave concessions when the company was struggling and now that they're doing well they want more concessions," said Terry Rieck, a 40-year veteran at the plant. "It's just time to share the wealth."

Some of the most skilled workers are confident they could get jobs elsewhere. Ryan Daggett, 37, whose father and grandfather worked at the plant, said he makes nearly $27 per hour operating complex machinery. A smaller shop probably would pay him $20, he said. Despite high unemployment, smaller manufacturers have had trouble finding enough experienced operators of some types of sophisticated equipment.

Some of the least experienced people are low-paid temporary workers with little job security and so they feel they don't have much to lose.

Caterpillar has gradually reduced its exposure to unions by opening plants in states with low union support and using more outside contractors. At the end of 2011, about 53% of Caterpillar's 27,000 production workers were covered by union contract agreements. Most of those union members belong to the UAW, which ratified a six-year contract in March 2011 after unusually smooth negotiations.

Caterpillar tweaked its offer to the Joliet workers last week, but the IAM strikers said the changes were minimal. For instance, the company offered a $1,000 bonus for each worker if the union ratified the agreement promptly. That was up from zero in recent weeks but down from the $5,000 signing bonus offered in April. The six-year contract would allow Caterpillar to freeze wages for workers hired before May 2005. For those hired since then, the company could adjust wages based on its assessment of the labor market. Workers would pay more for health insurance, and Caterpillar would have more flexibility to require workers to change shifts.

Workers in the plant, which makes hydraulic pumps for Caterpillar machinery, generally earn around $13 to $28 per hour.

Caterpillar has continued to operate the plant by using white-collar employees. Workers have erected a giant inflatable rat outside the plant gates. One held aloft a sign reading "IAM Stands, Scabs Kneel."

"They're making a hard-line stand," Mr. Rieck, the veteran worker, said of Caterpillar. Which side is more stubborn? "We'll find out," he said.

U.S. Firms Add Jobs, but Mostly Overseas

By SCOTT THURM

Thirty-five big U.S.-based multinational companies added jobs much faster than other U.S. employers in the past two years, but nearly three-fourths of those jobs were overseas, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

Those companies, which include Wal-Mart Stores Inc., WMT +0.14%International Paper Co., Honeywell International Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc., boosted their employment at home by 3.1%, or 113,000 jobs, between 2009 and 2011, the same rate of increase as the nation's other employers. But they also added more than 333,000 jobs in their far-flung—and faster-growing— foreign operations.

The biggest U.S. companies added foreign jobs at three times the rate they added domestic jobs, according to a WSJ analysis. Scott Thurm has details on The News Hub. Photo: AP

.

The companies included in the analysis were the largest of those that disclose their U.S. and non-U.S. employment in annual securities filings. All of them have at least 50,000 employees. Collectively, they employed roughly 6.4 million workers world-wide last year, up 7.7% from two years earlier. Over the same period, the total number of U.S. jobs increased 3.1%, according to the Labor Department.

The data show that global companies, aided by overseas revenue, are faring better than purely domestic companies during the economic recovery. Nearly 60% of the revenue growth between 2009 and 2011 at the companies in the Journal's analysis came from outside the U.S.

Partly as a result, these companies are more likely to focus their resources and people outside the U.S. The nation's largest private-sector employer, Wal-Mart, added 100,000 jobs outside the U.S. last year; its head count in the U.S. has been flat at 1.4 million since 2007.

..

Economists who study global labor patterns say companies are creating jobs outside the U.S. mostly to pursue sales there, and not to cut costs by shifting work previously performed in the U.S., as has sometimes been the case.

"If you want to capture market share in China, you're going to have to hire lots of locals," says Arie Lewin, a professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business who has studied outsourcing and offshoring. "You just can't export that stuff."

Jobs added overseas "are not necessarily at the expense of U.S. workers," adds Martin Baily, of the Brookings Institution, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton. Mr. Baily says it is "almost inevitable" that the biggest and most successful U.S. companies would look beyond the nation's borders.

Where American companies are creating jobs is a hot political issue. President Barack Obama has proposed tax benefits for companies to create jobs in the U.S., and tax penalties for those with large operations in other countries. His tax-overhaul plan—which has no real chance of passing Congress this year—would require, for the first time, that U.S. companies operating overseas pay a minimum tax on their foreign earnings.

Republicans, including presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney, say excessive taxes and regulations are driving jobs overseas. Mr. Romney has suggested cutting the nation's 35% corporate tax, which he calls, "among the highest in the industrial world," to 25%, lower than the 28% Mr. Obama has proposed.

Of the 35 companies in the analysis, 16 added jobs both in the U.S. and abroad, while six of them cut both domestic and international jobs.

Seven companies reduced their workforces in the U.S., while expanding them elsewhere. They include International Paper, which has restructured as Americans use less office paper and demand rises overseas.

At the end of 2008, more than two-thirds of its 61,700 employees at the 114-year-old industrial stalwart were in the U.S. Since then, International Paper has closed U.S. mills and bolstered its packaging division through acquisitions in the U.S. and Asia.

Its total workforce—61,500 at the end of last year—hardly changed. But the location of those employees changed a lot, with 8,000 fewer in the U.S. and 8,000 more in other countries. So did International Paper's revenue.

Sales in the U.S. and Europe in 2011 were nearly unchanged from 2008. But revenue from Asia more than doubled over the period to $1.8 billion.

"We focused on capturing emerging-market growth of our core product lines by investing globally, while in the U.S., we doubled down in corrugated packaging where we see real opportunity," says Tom Ryan, an International Paper spokesman. He says the company's U.S. workforce has grown in 2012 with its acquisition of Temple Inland Inc.

The Journal's results are consistent with more extensive surveys by the U.S. Commerce Department, which found that U.S.-based multinational companies added jobs in the U.S. between 2004 and 2010, but added far more jobs overseas. That partly reversed the trend between 1999 and 2004, when the department said U.S.-based multinationals cut jobs in the U.S. while adding them overseas.

The biggest job losses in the earlier period were among manufacturers. More recently, some big manufacturers, including Caterpillar Inc. CAT +0.16%and General Electric Co., GE +0.82%have been expanding U.S. operations.

In its earnings report Wednesday, Caterpillar said it had added 6,500 U.S. jobs in the past year, along with 7,200 outside the U.S., to meet strong global demand for its mining equipment.

Excluding its NBCUniversal unit, which it sold last year, GE says it has added 14,000 jobs in the U.S. since 2009. GE has expanded U.S. factories that make appliances, locomotives and other products.

Overall, U.S. manufacturers have added 470,000 jobs since January 2010, after cutting nearly five million jobs over the prior decade.

Other companies report stable U.S. employment as they expand abroad. Diversified manufacturer Honeywell added 11,000 jobs outside the U.S. over the past two years, while U.S. employment shrank to 53,000, from 54,000. Over that period, Honeywell's overseas sales rose 28%, more than twice as fast as the 12% increase in U.S. sales.

A Honeywell spokesman says the company expects half of its revenue growth in the next five years to come from emerging markets such as China and India. "We must invest in building strong leadership teams and [research and development] and production capabilities where the growth is and our customers are," he says.

Historically, economists say, overseas hiring supported U.S. jobs in areas like sales, engineering and management. When Wal-Mart hires employees for new stores in China, it also needs more human-resources personnel at its headquarters in Arkansas, says Matthew Slaughter, associate dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a former economic adviser to President George W. Bush.

But Mr. Slaughter and Mr. Baily, the ex-Clinton adviser, say they worry that the relationship is weakening as U.S. companies shift more investment abroad. The Commerce Department estimates that roughly a third of spending on plants and equipment by U.S.-based multinationals went outside the U.S. in 2009, up from one-fourth of the total in 1999.

Publicly traded companies are required to disclose their total number of employees in their annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC doesn't require them to disclose how many of the jobs are in the U.S. An SEC spokesman says the rule probably dates from 1970s. The spokesman says he knows of no discussions about requiring disclosure of U.S.-based jobs.

At some companies, U.S. jobs are falling prey to technology, as well as global business trends. UPS delivered a record average of 15.8 million packages a day last year, slightly more than its previous record of 15.7 million in 2007. But shipping patterns changed: international traffic rose 26% from 2007, while shipments in the U.S. declined 3%.

UPS reorganized its U.S. operations to eliminate some management jobs and revise its route map. It also installed keyless remote entry systems on all its U.S. trucks. UPS says the keyless systems save drivers three seconds at every stop, the equivalent of six minutes per driver per day, or $70 million a year. As a result, it can handle more U.S. shipments "without adding as many people as we might overseas," says spokesman Norman Black.

With its streamlined operations, and reduced domestic traffic, UPS cut its domestic workforce by 17,000 employees over the past two years, to 323,000. Outside the U.S., it added 7,000 jobs, to 75,000, not counting its planned acquisition of TNT Express NV TNTE.AE +0.05%of the Netherlands.

Those figures exclude seasonal hiring, which hit 55,000 jobs at the peak of the 2011 holiday season.

"This is a business you can only go so far with technology," Mr. Black says. "At a certain point, when volume starts to climb, we do add people

Consumer Price Rise Puts Fed in Quandary

Consumer prices rose 2.7% in March from a year ago,
presenting a quandary for Federal Reserve officials who say their mission is to
keep the inflation rate lower.

The Fed has been predicting since the 2008 crisis that
immense economic slack—in the form of unemployed workers, vacant homes and idle
factories— would hold inflation down because it would make it more difficult
for firms to raise prices or workers to win wage increases. But inflation has
repeatedly moved above the Fed's expectations during the recovery.

Fed officials have said they would consider another round of
bond-buying, known as quantitative easing, to bring down long-term interest
rates if the recovery falters. They continue to expect inflation to slow
because of underused resources such as idled plants. But if it remains above
2%, it could make the Fed less willing to do any more to boost economic growth.
.
The Labor Department reported Friday its consumer price
index rose 0.3% in March from February and has advanced at a 3.7% annual rate
in the past three months after slowing late last year. Rising energy prices
were a primary factor, with gasoline costs up 9% in March from a year earlier.
Inflation has slowed from higher levels—as the Fed predicted last year—and
other measures of inflation are a bit tamer. For example, the Fed's preferred
yardstick, the Commerce Department's personal consumption expenditure price
index, was up 2.3% in February from a year earlier. Moreover, measures that
exclude food and energy are lower.

The Fed says its goal is to keep inflation at 2% in the long
run. It has predicted consumer prices would settle at or below that rate during
much of the economic recovery. In January, for instance, officials forecast
inflation between 1.4% and 1.8% by year's end. They will update that forecast
at their next policy meeting April 24-25. The low-inflation expectation also
underpins their decision to hold short-term interest rates near zero for years
to come.

In recent years, Fed officials have largely seen jumps in
gasoline prices as temporary. They correctly predicted last year that oil and
other commodities prices would settle down after jumping in early 2011. But
inflation's recent return above 2% has reignited a broader debate inside the
central bank about whether factors other than short-term bursts of energy costs
might be at play.

Some officials argue that there isn't as much slack in the
economy as is commonly believed, and thus inflation pressures have been
stronger than expected. The recession and financial crisis, this group of
officials argues, left structural problems in some markets that are creating
price pressures.

Housing is one example. Millions of homes remain unoccupied
five years after the housing bust, representing a large stock of unused
capacity that should be putting substantial downward pressure on housing costs.
But many people have opted to rent where supply is tight, in part because of
under-building of rentals during the home-ownership boom.

Associated Estates Realty Corp., a 53-property apartment
owner based in Richmond Heights, Ohio, has a 97% occupancy rate. "There
hasn't been a lot of new product built in the last four or five years, and we
have more renters coming into the pool," said Jeffrey Friedman, the
company's chief executive. The firm expects to raise rents 4% to 5% this year
to an average rate of about $1,000 a month.

Nationwide, rental costs were up 2.5% from a year earlier in
March, the Labor Department said Friday. A wing of inflation-wary officials at
the Fed see this kind of example as a reason to worry the Fed's policies are
fanning inflation pressures.

"The economy has experienced both a reduction in the
demand for goods and damage to its productive capacity," Narayana
Kocherlakota, president of the Minneapolis Fed, said in a speech in Minnesota
this week. "It does not appear that demand is significantly below the
productive capacity of the United States." Because of that, inflation
hasn't receded as much as the Fed forecast, he argues.

.
Wal-Mart is still expanding in China, despite higher food
prices and rising labor costs. The WSJ's Deborah Kan and Laurie Burkitt speak
to Wal-Mart Asia CEO Scott Price.
.
Many others in the central bank, including the Fed's most
powerful decision makers, disagree with Mr. Kocherlakota, who declined to
comment for this story. These officials believe there is still a great deal of
spare capacity in the economy which will hold inflation down despite temporary
spikes. High unemployment—at 8.2% in March, well above its long-run average of
less than 6%—is their key piece of evidence.

"There is still slack in the U.S. economy, and this is
really the important thing to focus on," New York Fed President William
Dudley told students at Syracuse University Friday. Because of that, he said he
expects inflation to fall below 2% by next year.

He added that new efforts by the Fed to spur growth would
"absolutely" be considered if the economy shows signs of faltering
and inflation remains well-behaved. His camp of officials argues that inflation
is not falling more in part because consumers and businesses have become
conditioned by 30 years of inflation stability to expect prices to move
predictably.

During the 1970s, oil-price jumps spurred inflation fears,
prompting workers to demand higher wages and companies to raise prices in
anticipation. Today, in contrast, top Fed officials believe that stable-price
expectations have prevented such anticipatory moves, meaning inflation doesn't
rise by very much.

Fed researchers have been wrestling with this question, too.
Fed staff at the central bank's last policy meeting in March revised downward
their estimates of the economy's potential output, a slight nod to the
Kocherlakota argument.

But the revisions were small and the staff argued to
officials that there still are lots of underused assets holding back inflation,
minutes of the Fed's March meeting show.