Higher Taxes Mean Sluggish Employment

If you are a regular reader of this StreetWise column, you know the importance that I believe the employment picture has on our commercial real estate markets. In fact, there is no other metric that more profoundly impacts the fundamentals of both residential and commercial real estate.

This is why last Friday’s jobs report was particularly troubling. In June, U.S. payrolls lost 125,000 jobs, the first monthly loss of 2010. These losses were due, mainly, to the elimination of 225,000 temporary government census workers. Just as 441,000 new census temporary jobs skewed the numbers higher months ago (and the administration seemed downright giddy over this “job growth”), June’s job eliminations have skewed the numbers to the downside.