My friend John Vogel constantly sends me interesting bits of data. We all know the consumer is struggling, especially those with student loans, but there are other worrisome developments, too. (Note, this piece is full of great charts. At a minimum you want to look at them.)

John writes:

The first sign of consumer over-indebtedness came from defaults in student loans; we have been watching this problem grow larger over the last decade.

Next, we started to see increased levels of defaults last year in auto loans.

Now, even as credit card debt is growing, so are delinquencies.

Eric Basmajian put together a good summary of flat income, growing credit card debt and really serious losses in the small bank sector.

Further, $3.2B in write offs by the 4 big banks in Q4 sounds an alarm in my mind.

Taken together, it would appear that the consumer is in a desperate endgame, using the most expensive form of credit to stay afloat.

And this is occurring when most people feel that the economy is accelerating higher and there is no recession in sight.

Against this backdrop, I hear that jobless claims are moving to all time lows on a seasonally adjusted basis. Of course, that is not the case if we use NSA numbers. Our NSA numbers tell us that real people, not seasonally adjusted people, are getting laid off in numbers that are equal to or exceed the number seen last year. While not alarming, neither are the numbers encouraging.

The rate of hiring has been down, although we need to wait to see the annual revisions coming in two weeks.

In short, the trends show strains in the economy that will limit growth and may start a process toward lower levels of consumption.