Improvement in initial and continuing claims stalls out This morning’s jobless claims report shows that the trend of “less worse” news has at least temporarily ended, at a level of about 150,000 higher than the worst weekly levels of the Great Recession. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, new jobless claims rose for the second week […]
Sorry, partisans in denial: swing State polls have tightened It’s a slow economic news week, so let me follow up with some further information about movement in the polls. My usual caution: polls are *NOT* forecasts, just nowcasts estimating what would happen if the election were today. In the past few days, there is further […]
The 2020 Presidential and Senate nowcast: Trump finds his issue Here is my weekly update on the 2020 elections, based on State rather than national polling in the past 30 days, since that directly reflects what is likely to happen in the Electoral College. Remember that polls are really only nowcasts, not forecasts. They are […]
Coronavirus dashboard for September 2: Trumpism still kills Total US cases: 6,073,840 Cases, 7 day average: 42,304 Total US deaths: 184,604 Deaths, 7 day average: 888 Source: COVID Tracking Project US cases by region: US deaths by region:
August jobs report: continued slow incremental progress HEADLINES: 1,371,000 million jobs gained. The gains since May total about 48% of the 22.1 million job losses in March and April. The alternate and more volatile measure in the household report was 3,756,000 jobs gained, which factors into the unemployment and underemployment rates below. U3 unemployment rate […]
Initial and continuing claims: very slow “less worse” progress continues The continued good news in this Thursday morning’s jobless claims report is that the trend of “less worse” news is intact. But the improvement has slowed dramatically and is still at a level of about 150,000 higher than the worst weekly levels of the […]
The 2020 Presidential and Senate polling nowcast: Biden’s popular majority is congealing Here is my weekly update on the 2020 elections, based on State rather than national polling in the past 30 days, since that directly reflects what is likely to happen in the Electoral College. Remember that polls are really only nowcasts, not forecasts. […]
Real personal income, spending, and consumer sentiment for July July personal income and spending were reported this morning. Since real personal income drives one important election model, I have been waiting to see if July would reflect the end of the emergency Congressional assistance. It didn’t. Real personal income rose less than 0.1% in July. […]
Coronavirus dashboard for August 26: detailed State breakdowns Total US infections: 5,777,710 Average last 7 days: 41,185/day Total US deaths: 178,488 Average last 7 days: 952/day Source: COVID Tracking Project Today let’s look at both death infections and deaths. I’ve started to rate each State according to a system, so we’ll look at that after […]
More evidence that housing has roared back This morning we got the final important July housing reports: new home sales and house prices. New single home sales are very volatile and heavily revised, so it is always wise to take the initial report with a grain of salt. On the other hand, it is the […]