Hoarding, Not Hiring – Corporations Stockpile Mountain of Cash

April 1, 2010 — -- Hopes are running high that Friday's jobs data will bring happy news.

Economists predict the Labor Department will announce that 190,000 jobs were added in March, according to a Reuters poll. If true, it would be only the second monthly payroll gain since the recession began in 2007. The forecast is especially optimistic, considering that ADP Employer Services reported Wednesday that U.S. companies had slashed a surprisingly high 23,000 positions in March.

But even if labor's numbers turn out positive, Wilton, Conn., resident Sean Byrnes won't pay it much attention.

About a month ago, the 41-year-old father of four lost his job as a salesman at a Manhattan-based financial research firm. He has struggled to find so much as even a job interview since then.

"I talk to headhunters and they say the same thing," he says. "No one is hiring."

One piece of economic data that has caught the attention of Byrnes, and others in his predicament, is a fairly staggering figure that comes out of the Bureau of Economic Analysis: Despite widespread unemployment, the BEA reports that U.S. corporations, reluctant to expand in an uncertain economy, are sitting on $1.6 trillion in cash reserves, a record amount, according to BEA economist Greg Key.

Even looking at the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index of blue chips -- and stripping out financials, which are required by regulators to keep large cash reserves in order to cushion against risk -- the cash on hand number is still rather monstrous: $1.1 trillion. To put that in perspective, as a percentage of companies' total market capitalization, that $1.1 trillion is more than double the ratio seen before the crisis.

"Cash is piling up faster than companies can figure out what to do with it," said David Bianco, head of U.S. equity strategy at Bank of America.

Asked about the mountain of corporate money sitting on the sidelines, the out-of-work Byrnes offered his own suggestion for what to do with it.

"Companies should absolutely spend some of that money to put people back to work," Byrnes said by telephone earlier this week, clearly frustrated. "I suppose they need to make shareholders happy, but come on already."