The recent rise in initial jobless claims: signal or noise? Yesterday initial jobless claims for the prior week were reported at 234,000, a six month high. That’s 32,000 above the recent one week low. The four week moving average rose to 223,250, more than 15,000 higher than its recent low: Is it cause for concern? […]
October personal income and spending strong In October personal income increased 0.5%, and personal spending increased 0.6%. These are both very strong increases. Further, as the graph below shows, real inflation adjusted income and spending both also rose: These are coincident indicators that form part of the quintessential nowcast. Real personal income adjusted by transfer […]
Q3 corporate profits increase Third quarter corporate profits were released as part of the first revision of GDP this morning. Since corporate profits deflated by unit labor costs are a long leading indicator, let’s take a look. Here is the raw corporate profits table released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis: Lines #3 and #11 […]
October new home sales plummet — but take it with a big grain of salt As you may have already read elsewhere, new home sales plunged -8.9% in October to the seasonally adjusted annual rate of 544,000. Here’s the accompanying graph: BUT … take this with a big grain of salt. The reason I rely […]
“On my wall, the colors on the maps are running” Two years ago in a post entitled “Those who cannot see must feel”, I wrote: That’s the translation of an old German saying that I used to hear from my grandmother when I misbehaved. It is pretty clear that, over the next four years, the American public […]
October housing permits and starts flat vs. trend This morning’s report on housing permits and starts will do nothing to stop the now-received wisdom that higher interest rates, higher prices, (and the impact of the cap on the mortgage tax deduction) has caused this most important cyclical market to cool. On the other hand, they […]
Good payroll reports will probably coninue until next spring One of my continuing mantras over the years has been that spending leads hiring. It is simply demonstrable fact that, going back over 50 years, upward or downward changes in trend in consumer spending as revealed by retail sales, happen before similar changes in trend by […]
Real wages unchanged, real money supply increases in October With October consumer price inflation reported, let’s update a few metrics. First of all, while the YoY% growth in real wages increased: real wages were unchanged month over month, as both nominal wages and consumer inflation both increased by +0.3%:
Initial markers for a manufacturing slowdown now hit I have a new article that hopefully will get posted by Seeking Alpha later today. In the meantime … Two weeks ago I wrote an article establishing a manufacturing baseline for my forecast of an economic slowdown by about the middle of next year. I concluded that by saying: […]
Changes in labor bargaining power take up to a decade to be fully effective Sorry for the recent lack of posting on economic matters. Partly it is ennui, and partly it is a near total dearth of data in between the employment report a week ago Friday and tomorrow’s CPI report. Even a couple of […]