The numbers are the numbers Bryan. They are also taking the fires into account in their predictions. And I agree that they are certainly counter intuitive. But in your own post you actually outline one reason why things are as the numbers say. People have been predicting a serious tightening in the job market for sometime due to the rapid increase in interest rates. Historically, such changes would have killed the demand for workers and we would see a big recession. But this time has been different. The reason being the pandemic, the resulting stimulus and pent-up demand. The latter is a big driver of the numbers I posted. During the pandemic savings rates in North America skyrocketed because people had few outlets to spend their money. Then add in the stimulus and as a result household debt vs GDP dropped rapidly in the US from the peak in Jan 2021 to a value that is now lower than it was pre-pandemic. The pandemic also shut down a fair bit of immigration. Hence demand rose steeply but the number of people who could fill that demand dropped leading to inflation. This also led to higher wages. And not just for unionized employees. It may be different in the US than in Canada, but in Canada the gap between unionized and non-unionized wages has actually shrunk a fair bit in the last few years. That may be changing as more and more unions start to become more proactive. Even with inflation, and partly because of it the economy is still growing in good part because the shortage of labour is keeping people working and hence putting money in peoples pockets
None of this means that there are not going to be lots of people feeling a pinch, or really economic pain. And I don't mean to down play this at all. Even without a recession inflation can bite hard. And yes, it may impact the NHL revenues, but my point is that it is unlikely to make them drop even if it does slow growth modestly. The NHL primary market tends to be fairly affluent. They are still employed and many have more money to spend on discretionary things than they did pre-pandemic.
With respect to your first paragraph, the reference was to the period since the cap was implemented. The cap is set formulaically from the revenue. Because of that in almost all situations if the cap rises so did revenue and if the cap falls so did revenue. The two exceptions to this rule are transition from 2011-2012 to 2012-2013 and the period from the end of the 2019-2020 season through 2021-2022. In the former case, the cap did drop but not because revenues felt due to some economic downturn. This was a consequence of the new CBA reducing the player's share to 50%. NHL revenues still increased through the financial crisis, though very modestly. Since 2005 the only full year where revenues dropped from the previous year was the 2020-2021 season. And even then, the NHL used this as a driver to make big gains in out of arena revenue which they are continuing to do. The cap has remained flat or nearly so despite rater steep increases in revenue. As such I say again that since 2005 NHL revenues only dropped year over year for one year due to the pandemic.
I don't dispute the core comments you make in your last paragraph. There has been an erosion of the traditional middle class and a redistribution of wealth that favor's those in the upper tiers for quite a few years. Again, ironically part of this might be due to very low interest rates that have made it cheap for businesses to access capitol and have seen big gains in things like stocks, and have led to huge increases in the cost of housing while more traditional investments like GIC's have not even kept up with inflation. But all of that is separate from the potential for the NHL to raise revenue in this environment. Their target audience is not the group most impacted by inflation. Moreover, none of what I said about current real wage growth contradicts your view of the past. What it does show is that somewhat ironically, despite how it feels for a lot of people, there are lots of people whose actual financial situation is better than it was during the so called good times.
