March jobs report: yet another strong showing for jobs and unemployment; while strong wage growth nevertheless likely lags inflation Here are the three main trends I was most interested in this month: 1. Is the pace of job growth beginning to decelerate? 2. Is wage growth holding up? Is it accelerating? 3. Are the leading […]
Consumer spending continues OK, while income continues its seemingly relentless decline Nominally personal income rose 0.5%, and spending rose 0.2% in February. That’s the good news. The bad news is the personal consumption deflator, i.e., the relevant measure of inflation, rose 0.6%, so real income declined -01%, and real personal spending declined -0.4%. While both […]
Jobless claims continue near or at record lows Initial claims (blue) rose to 14,000 to 202,000, just above last week’s 50 year low. The 4 week average (red) declined 3, 500 to 208,500 (vs. the pandemic low of 199,750 on December 25). Continuing claims (gold, right scale) declined 35,000 to 1,307,000, the lowest number since […]
February JOLTS report: the game of musical chairs in the jobs market goes on This morning (Tuesday) the Census Bureau JOLTS report for February shows that the game of musical job chairs continues. As a refresher, several months ago I introduced the idea of a game similar to musical chairs, where employers added or […]
Coronavirus dashboard for March 28: I’ll take the “under” for the severity of any BA.2 wave Very few US States reported over the weekend. The decline in new cases has stalled at roughly 30,000 per day. Deaths are still declining, and are currently just below 800 per day. Since the BA.2 variant continues to generate […]
An update on the yield curve This is an update on my yield curve post from earlier this week.As had happened in the previous few days, the 3 to 5 year Treasury yield spread, which was inverted intraday, un-inverted by the close of the trading day. Here is what the US Treasury yield curve looked […]
The housing market’s downward turn begins: new home sales in February, plus a comment about affordability As of this morning Mortgage News Daily shows the 30 year mortgage rate up to 4.72%, 1.9% higher than their lows 15 months ago, and the highest in four years. That means the housing market is in some serious […]
The US Treasury yield curve is on the verge of inverting My graphing issue hasn’t resolved yet. Fortunately there is no big new economic news today, and there is something I’ve been following with particular interest in the past week that doesn’t require any graphing: namely, the Treasury bond yield curve is on the verge […]
Housing permits and starts: still an economic positive – for the moment As you know, I consider housing, and in particular single-family housing permits, one of the very best long leading indicators for the economy. In the past year, however, there has been a unique divergence between housing permits and housing starts, necessitating some adjustments. […]
Industrial production nowcasts that the economy continues to perform well Industrial production increased in February by 0.5%, its highest reading ever with the exception of two months in 2014, and the second half of 2018. Manufacturing production increased 1.2%, also its highest ever with the exception of 24 months from late 2006 through early 2008: […]