Consumer spending leads employment — but what leads consumer spending? One relationship I have consistently flogged for the past decade is that consumer spending leads employment. That’s still true. Here is one of the graphs on that score going back over 50 years, the YoY% change, averaged quarterly, in real aggregate payrolls (blue) vs. real […]
Short leading indicators show slowdown, not recession (for now anyway) Amount 10 days ago, I wrote that backward revisions to adjusted NIPA corporate profits meant the long leading indicators were more negative than originally believed one year ago. Which means that watching the short leading indicators for signs of rolling over became more important. I […]
On Appeasement Sometimes on Sundays I leave the dreary world of economics behind and write of broader things. Since most tomes covering American history have an underlying sunny optimism that is nowhere appropriate for our times, recently I’ve been reading more world history having to do with the rise of fascism or fall of democracy. […]
Not doomed yet v.2.0: beware recession porn Way back when I first started writing online almost 15 years ago, my very first post on Daily Kos was a little note called “Not Doomed Yet.” It was pretty pathetic compared with the standards of my writing since the Great Recession, but the point of it was, back in […]
Positive July housing permits and starts The housing starts and permits report this morning for July adds to the positive data looking forward to H2 2020 (or, possibly, less bad – but that’s another discussion). First, here are overall permits (red) and starts (blue): While the very volatile starts declined, the slightly more forward looking […]
Industrial production, jobless claims, and retail sales As I noted this morning, a slew of important data was released. Let me deal with the “normal” weekly and monthly data in this post. First, industrial production continues to languish, down significantly from the end of last year, whether measured in total or just as to manufacturing: […]
Quick hits on a major Thursday economic news blitz There has been a ton of significant economic news this morning. I’m not going to be able to get to all or even most of it in depth. So I am going to leave a quick rundown here. Starting with the positive: -nominal retail sales up […]
Real average and aggregate wage growth for July 2019: yellow flag for aggregate wages Now that we have the July inflation reading, let’s take a look at real wages. First of all, nominal average hourly wages in June increased +0.2%, while consumer prices increased +0.3%, meaning real average hourly wages for non-managerial personnel decreased -0.1%. […]
Notes on the June JOLTS report: weakness but no imminent downturn I’m still on vacation, so continue to expect light posting. But I thought I’d take a look at the one piece of data that came out this week, the June JOLTS report. First of all, the “hiring leads firing” mantra continues to be true: […]
Scenes from the July employment report First things first: I’m on a vacation for part of this week, so don’t be surprised if there are no postings for a few days. The July employment report continued a string of good headline numbers with weak leading internals. Let’s take a look. In the good news department, […]