A detailed look at Industrial Production during this expansion In the past week there’s been a little highbrow relitigation of the drivers of the “Great Recession” between Paul Krugman and Ben Bernanke. Bernanke plumps for it having been a “credit event” — and as to the crisis of 2008, he is clearly correct — while Krugman says it was […]
The Taboo against raising wages is still thriving among small businesses The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) put out its monthly confidence and hiring reports over the past few days. The confidence report soared to new high, so the economy is Teh Awesome and happy days are here again! Right? And look! It’s confirmed by […]
Subdued inflation helps gains in real average and aggregate wages With the consumer price report Tuesday morning, let’s conclude this weeklong focus on jobs and wages by updating real average and aggregate wages. Through July 2018, consumer prices are up 2.7% YoY, while wages for non-managerial workers are up 2.8%. Thus real wages have finally […]
August JOLTS report: thriving jobs market, and still-thriving Taboo against raising wages Tuesday’s JOLTS report once again confirmed the very good employment report from one month ago: Quits made a new all-time high Hires are just below their expansion high of two months ago Total separations made a new expansion high Layoffs and discharges improved, […]
by New Deal democrat Decelerating trends in 5 long leading indicators I have a new post up at Seeking Alpha, “Five Long Leading Indicators ‘On the Cusp’.” The post follows up on my “Weekly Indicators” paradigm with graphs showing what the trends look like for aforesaid five series which have been hovering at the borderlines of […]
Real median household income rose 1.8% in 2017; poeverty rate declined The Census Bureau reported Sept. 12 that *real* median household earnings rose 1.8% in 2017. Here’s their presentation graph: This is another score by Sentier Research, whose monthly estimates have accurately forecast the Census Bureau’s (very tardy) annual reports and showed, on an annualized basis, […]
Scenes from the August jobs report 1. The strong trend of people entering the jobs market and getting jobs remains intact Here’s a nice graph put together by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones showing both a linear and curvilinear trend line (which are nearly identical) (red) with the prime age employment to population ratio (blue): […]
Next Friday could be a very bad day somewhere along the East Coast I think I may have mentioned once or twice that I am a nerd, right? So, last year during hurricane season I got hooked on a site called Tropical Tidbits. The neat thing about this site — well, from a nerdy point of […]
Brad DeLong hops aboard the “Employers have a Taboo against raising Wages” bandwagon For Labor Day Prof. Brad DeLong posted a talk on the implications (or not) of the US being near “full employment.” The arguments on a few of the pages will be familiar to readers of this blog:
(Dan here…better late than not) by New Deal democrat A thought for Labor Day, 2018 US voters will continue to vote for alternating partisan “waves” in Congress, and for “outsiders” however chancey for President, until the problem depicted in the below graph is solved: