Real average and aggregate wages continue decline in November; a sharp deceleration in the consumer sector now appears likely As you may already know, consumer prices increased 0.8% in November. In the past two months, there has been a re-acceleration in CPI, with the monthly numbers equal to earlier this year and the worst since […]
The Great Resignation and jobless claims Initial and continuing jobless claims continue at or near their best levels in the past half-century. Initial claims declined 43,000 to 184,000, a new 50 year low, while the 4 week average declined 21,250 to 218,750, also a new pandemic low, and in the past 50 years only bettered […]
October JOLTS report: at least the jobs market isn’t getting any worse in disequilibrium The JOLTS report for October was released this morning. While it did not indicate any significant progress towards a new labor equilibrium, at least the trends did not get any more destabilized. Job openings (blue in the graph below) increased to […]
Coronavirus dashboard for December 7: since further mass vaccination could only happen at gunpoint, the Biden Administration had better come up with a ‘Plan B, New Deal democrat No significant economic news today, so let’s catch up a little bit with Covid. There are still distortions in the 7 day average data, as States did […]
November jobs report: the only thing keeping the jobs market completely recovering to pre-pandemic levels, is the pandemic itself One month ago, we got very large upward revisions to previous data. This month the big questions I had were whether that would continue and whether the bulge decrease in new jobless claims to a half-century […]
Manufacturing still red hot; construction still very cool Our first November data is out this morning with the forward-looking ISM manufacturing report for October, as well as construction spending for October. Let’s take the ISM report first, since it is an important short leading indicator for the production sector, and in particular its new orders […]
Clear signs of *deceleration* in house price increases, but no sign of actual declines yet The veritable explosive increase in house prices has been one of the biggest economic stories of the past year. And because it feeds into “owner’s equivalent rent” with a lag, is likely to have a big effect on consumer inflation […]
The Debut of the Deranged DOOOMers, 2021 edition: No, the strong advance of the Index of Leading Indicators is not forecasting a recession Five to ten years ago, I used to have a lot of fun taking the hide off DOOOMers. You know, the pundits who always find some new statistic or other that absolutely […]
Coronavirus dashboard for November 29: half of what you read about Omicron is wrong, but you won’t know which half for weeks, New Deal democrat As with any “Breaking News!” event, about half of what you read will be wrong. The problem is, nobody knows which item falls in which half. Recognizing that you need to step […]
Coronavirus dashboard for November 26: pessimistic and optimistic scenarios for the winter wave, New Deal democrat I hope all of you had a Happy Thanksgiving. Since I haven’t posted one in a bit, here is an update on the pandemic.As an initial matter, in the last day or two, there has been a mini-panic about […]