Could an Oil Patch decline turn a 2019 slowdown into an outright recession? One of the items I mentioned in my piece yesterday at Seeking Alpha was the recent big decline in oil prices. Please go read the piece, it puts a couple of pennies in my pocket! But in that article I referenced the […]
November housing permits boosted by multifamily dwellings November was a *relatively* good month for housing permits, as in, improved *relative* to most of this year, although not at the heights of last winter. Most importantly, the least volatile number, single family permits, was flat compared with last month, and down -2% from a year ago: […]
The US economy did not boom in 2018 At the beginning of each year, I try to identify economic series that I think will be most important in the next 12 months. This year I asked: Is the US economy going to enter a Boom in 2018? There is no standard definition of a Boom. But […]
A note on initial jobless claims Initial jobless claims for last week were reported at 206,000 this morning. That is one of the lowest weekly readings during this expansion.More significantly, the 4 week moving average is back below 10% off its low, within the range of typical noise: And it is down -4.6% YoY, which […]
Real wage growth: November 2018 update Now that November inflation has been reported (as unchanged), let’s update what that means for real wages. Nominally, wages for nonsupervisory workers grew +0.3% in November. With inflation flat, that means real wages also grew +0.3%: Even so, although they are at a new 40 year high, real hourly […]
The October JOLTS report: very good employment market continues, just below best levels Monday’s JOLTS report for October was, surprisingly, a little weaker than the employment report from one month ago, that I described at the time as perhaps the best in the entire expansion. But this is a relative statement; basically, most of the […]
November jobs report: another good report with some signs of deceleration HEADLINES: +155,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 3.7% U6 underemployment rate rose 0.2% from 7.4% to 7.6% Here are the headlines on wages and the broader measures of underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now: […]
A note about the financial markets The markets are closed today in observation of former President George H.W. Bush’s funeral. In the meantime, let me offer a brief few observations (pontifications?) about my sense of the immediate and longer term trend. First off, here is a broad look at the last 10 years for the […]
Strong manufacturers new orders in November ISM report There are a lot of economic writers who won’t tell you when something moves against their thesis. Those guys trumpeting a flatlining of commercial and industrial growth last year? They never heard of it this year (hint: because it’s up!). To the contrary, one of the reasons […]
Why this Friday I’ll pay particular attention to the temporary jobs number With the long leading indicators outside of corporate profits and ease of credit having turned neutral to negative, at least for now, my attention is turning more and more to the short leading indicators. And one of those — temporary employment — is […]