April deflation follows a typical recessionary pattern This morning’s consumer price index for April gives us our first indication of what the coronavirus recession has done to inflation. Overall consumer prices declined by -0.8% (blue), while consumer prices excluding energy (gas) declined -0.2% (red). Note that in 2015 when gas prices collapsed, prices otherwise continued […]
If you open it, they still won’t come: restaurant edition In case you haven’t already seen it, here is the OpenTable restaurant reservation data from 3 Confederate States that “reopened” their economy at the end of April: Even though restaurants were open again, reservations were still down over 80% from a year ago.
Testing and the 52 Petri dishes of democracy Since the federal government has abandoned the field, fighting the coronavirus pandemic has been left to the States, territories, and the District of Columbia. This means that there is no unified response and instead there are 52+ individual responses. That is the biggest challenge in tracking the […]
The humans always observe back: why I am rooting for NY to “crush the curve” So, in addition to a bunch of States in the Confederacy and a few in the high plains deciding that May 1 was the Day of Virus Jubilee, yesterday saw further discouraging news that not one but two epidemiological models […]
April jobs report: disastrous, but not as cataclysmic as feared; lower paid part time workers take the biggest hit HEADLINES: -20.5 million jobs lost. Between March and April this is a loss of 14.0% of all jobs since February. U3 unemployment rate up 10.3% from 4.4% to 14.7% U6 underemployment rate rose 14.1% from […]
Infections in US States by population density Since COVID-19 is a communicable disease, it should hardly be a surprise that the most densely populated States have the most cases per capita, and conversely the least densely States have the least cases. But since that basic point is lost in a lot of the analysis, let’s […]
Comparing the US’s coronavirus response with its Western European peer group Western Europe is a reasonable peer group of countries against which to compare the US response to coronavirus. The 5 largest countries in Western Europe in particular – in order, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain – together have a population of about […]
A note about the weekly and monthly economic data For the past month or so, with the exception of the weekly catastrophe of new jobless claims it hasn’t been very important to keep track of the economic data. Now that it is May, that will start to change with the weekly data as of next […]
Coronavirus dashboard for May 4: new infections, deaths continue slow decline Here is the update through yesterday (May 3). As usual, significant developments are in italics. The bottom line is the same as several days ago: trends in new infections, deaths, and in testing have all turned positive – if not positive enough. But the good […]
Coronavirus dashboard for May 2: good news, but still primarily due to NY Here is the update through yesterday (May 1). As usual, significant developments are in italics. The trends in new infections, deaths, and in testing have all turned positive – if not positive enough. But the good news remains primarily a NY story. I […]