More signs of an economic Boom
More signs of an economic Boom
I have a new article discussing Monday’s durable goods new orders report up at Seeking Alpha, explaining how this data fits into the overall picture of a production-side Boom continuing in the months ahead.
As usual, clicking over and reading will increase your knowledge of what to expect in the months ahead for the economy, and reward me with a few $$$ for the effort I put in.
While I am at it, the consumer side is Booming as well. Not only is personal spending at record levels (blue in the graph below), but personal saving is also much higher than it was before the pandemic (red), thanks to the stimulus payments:
And consumer confidence as at Boom levels as well:
The leading indicator among this data is the expectations subindex (blue), which at 109.8, is just barely visible at the right side. It has rarely been above 110 in the past 35 years.
In other words, short leading indicators for both the producer and consumer sides of the economy suggest not only Boom conditions now, but continuing through the summer at least.
Does boom mean more jobs AND higher pay or just more McJobs?
Good question Ron. From the NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/16/upshot/unemployment-pandemic-worker-shortages.html
Hi Dan:
Participation Rate is down 2% from a year or so ago. This represents ~ 5 million people who are not in the Labor Force (From which U3 is counted for Unemployment) actively looking for work much of which I believe is due to Covid. That could be the reason for Labor shortage.
@Dan,
THANKS and unfortunately not surprising.
My pool service tech from this past Monday told me that her wage was only $17/hour. National average is $24/hour with the high end twice that and central VA is roughly median on the wage per hour for the US. OTOH, she was a rookie that did not even know how to light a pool heater pilot. Her crew broke my chlorinator, so I will install a new one this afternoon. Pool service is the fastest growing niche wage occupation in my area. We were too cool for private pools here until the pandemic closed public pools. My pool was built in 2005. Last year pool builders were running out of building materials. This spring my water truck driver (for changing 1/3 of pool water each year) said that this spring was his biggest ever and he is almost 80 years old. Anyone that can fog a mirror can be pool tech here now.
Pool service update on my service crew from this week.
Turns out that the white lady that was the assigned crew chief knew less than her one black guy with dreadlocks. He and the other helper bee showed up today to fire my heater, which was of little use until the chlorinator had been replaced since it would pilot light but not fire until pump was restarted. We talked a bit and he was on target about everything. He installed the new chlorinator allowing me to skip ahead a day of work to cleaning, balancing, and rolling out the solar cover.
Why the white lady was crew chief must have been a reasoned decision based on the demographics of private pool owners, a terrible mistake of math in my book. Contrast the distribution by race might give that result, but figure the distribution by IQ would give another. Stupid knows no racial boundaries and judged in such a context as this then neither does competence.