Housing construction continues to stabilize, but with record bottleneck in starts Last month I highlighted that housing constructions were stabilizing, following the stabilization in interest rates. This month continued that trend. In October, housing starts (green in the graphs below) decreased -0.7% m/m, while the more leading total permits (blue) increased 4.0%. The less volatile […]
Now *that’s* good news: another blockbuster real retail sales report Yesterday I wrote that the financial and production sides of the economy still looked very positive and that today’s retail sales number would be especially important. Well, they were very positive, clocking in at up 1.7% month over month in October. Even after inflation, “real” […]
Coronavirus dashboard for November 12: regional variations and the winter wave There’s a glitch in 91-Divoc collecting Johns Hopkins data, so the State by State totals have not been updated for several days, but here is Our World in Data’s update for the US as a whole: As of yesterday, cases are up only 3.5% […]
Dear Democrats: Yes, inflation is a problem [Update: I see where Larry Summers has obviously read my piece below, and says, “I agree with NDD!” (Just teasing)] In the past few days, I have seen a spate of articles and tweets from prominent partisans and economists telling Democrats not to worry about inflation, either because […]
September JOLTS report: slow progress towards a new equilibrium This morning’s JOLTS report covers September, at the beginning of which the Delta wave peaked and then gradually receded for the remainder of the month. It is also the month that the last of pandemic emergency benefits ended. We did see the second consecutive decline in […]
Nobody is (still) getting laid off [Note: This Nov. 10th consumer inflation report was very important, and not in a good way. So I plan on doing a more extensive post on it tomorrow, and I’ll probably put off the next “Coronavirus Dashboard” by Friday.] Initial claims declined another 4,000 this week to 267,000, and […]
Producer price inflation: it’s a gas! I normally do not pay much attention to producer prices, but with the huge increase in spending earlier this year and the ensuing supply bottlenecks taking center stage, the course of inflation has emerged as the most pressing economic issue. To recap briefly, with the second round of pandemic […]
‘Brutus,’ the anti-Federalist to presciently foresaw the Imperial Supreme Court As you may recall, for the past several years I have done a great deal of historical reading about Republics; how they were structured, what were their strengths and weaknesses, whether they were able to last a long time, and whether they were consistent […]
October jobs report: a very strong report putting to rest questions about the strength of the expansion In the light of the last two month’s relatively “poor” jobs readings, an important question was what was going to happen with revisions. As we will see below, they really delivered! – big positive revisions to both of […]
Layoffs, wages, and labor costs: three measures of the labor Boom, New Deal democrat Initial claims declined another 14,000 this week to 269,000, and the 4 week average declined 15,000 to 284,750, both new pandemic lows: For the past 50 years, initial claims have only been at these levels briefly at the peak of the […]