Initial jobless claims continue in range, while continuing claims sharply decline Initial jobless claims declined another 14,000 this week to 385,000, still 17,000 above their best pandemic levels of 368,000 set on June 26 and July 10. The 4 week average of claims declined by 250 to 394,000, also 9,500 above its pandemic low set […]
June personal income and spending show pandemic cushion approaching depletion How well personal income and spending held up throughout the pandemic is one of the best things about the government response. For June, nominal personal income increased 0.1%. After inflation, however, it decreased -0.4%. Nominal personal spending increased 1.0%. After inflation, it still increased 0.5%. […]
Manufacturing sector continues to be on fire; but real construction spending plunges August data started out mixed. The ISM manufacturing index continued to show strong expansion. Both the overall and new orders components declined slightly m/m, but at 59.5 and 64.9 remained far about the breakeven point between expansion and contractions of 50.0: The simplest […]
Q2 2021 GDP: goodbye recession, hasta la vista recovery, hello expansion Nominal GDP before inflation increased 3.1%, while real GDP for the 2nd Quarter increased 1.6%. The real annual rate of growth was thus 6.5%. Real GDP is now 0.8% higher than its last quarter before the onset of the pandemic: The recession is over, as […]
Coronavirus dashboard for July 28: you’re reading the right blog, ghoulish edition In writing about the economy, I make use of long and short leading indicators to forecast coincident indicators. In writing about COVID, the template isn’t much different: cases lead hospitalizations by about 2 weeks, which in turn lead deaths by about 2 weeks. […]
Housing sales decline, while price surges continue So I take a little one-day road trip on my vacation and come back to find much weeping and gnashing of teeth and generalized whining about a big decline in new home sales. Well, what exactly were they expecting? The new home sales data is particularly volatile and […]
Comments on existing home sale prices Existing home sales were reported yesterday. Since, although they are about 90% of the market, they have much less effect on the economy than new home sales, I normally don’t pay that much attention.But I did want to emerge from my vacation hideaway to make a few comments. 1. […]
New jobless claims rise sharply; is the Delta wave beginning to take its economic toll? New jobless claims are the most important weekly economic datapoint with regard to the effects of vaccination progress. At this point, it is also a test of how much the “delta wave” of new cases is setting economic progress back. […]
Coronavirus dashboard for July 21: brace yourself for the surge in deaths I have been warning since late June that the situation would likely look very different by the end of July. By 2 weeks ago, I wrote: “In the near future, there appears to be bad news and *relatively* “good” news for the US. The […]
Housing permits continue decline in June; more challenging YoY comparison First, a brief comment about the NBER’s declaration yesterday that the COVID recession ended in April 2020. I am not surprised at all that they chose that date. It has been clear for a year that the trough in economic activity across the board was […]