Fraying at the edges? *relative* underemployment increases This is a post I’ve been meaning to put up all week (after all, this week was going to be very slow on data and news, right?). As the expansion gets more and more mature, the *relative* performance of certain measures of improvement become more interesting. One of […]
Jobless claims make another record low One reason not to get excited about the last week’s stock market swoon is that it isn’t being confirmed by any other short term leading indicators. Most significantly, jobless claims. The 4 week moving average of new jobless claims has fallen below 225,000. This is yet another 40 year […]
A comment about the markets for the average reader This is a post aimed at the generally Progressive audience of this blog who followed us over from way back in our days at Daily Kos, rather than the financially sophisticated audience who have picked us up since (but of course everybody is welcome to read […]
Why I’m not impressed by January’s 2.9% YoY wage growth I wanted to follow up on why I dissented Friday from the near-consensus take that workers finally got a nice raise, with many citing hikes in the minimum wage. As you may recall, the YoY% change in the average hourly earnings of all employees rose 2.9% […]
January jobs report: good headline growth, mostly negative internals. UPDATE: THE BOSSES GAVE THEMSELVES A RAISE HEADLINES: +200,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 4.1% U6 underemployment rate rose 0.1% from 8.1% to 8.2% Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but […]
About that Trump wage boom Over last weekend, I read a bunch of notes which indicated that Trump was claiming credit for a boom in wage growth. Let’s take a look: THIS is a wage boom: In the 1960s, real wages grew by almost 9% over 7 years, an average of 1.3% per year. THIS […]
What’s behind the big Q4 decline in real median weekly wages? [Note: This is a post I was working on last week. I hypothesized that the employment cost index would validate the analysis. Well, I didn’t get around to posting it, and the ECI came out this morning. So, how did I do? ] Last […]
Is the economy partying like it’s 1999 ? Suddenly I have a lot to say about the economy. My sense is that we are on to a new phase after the 2015 shallow oil-patch centered recession and 2016-17 rebound. The data has a feel to it of a late cycle blowoff. Let’s start with this morning’s […]
A note on December existing home sales First of all, sorry for the light posting this week. There’s not much news until tomorrow and Friday, and yesterday was a travel day. So….. While existing home sales are about 90% of the entire housing market, they are the least important economically, because of their much more […]
Recent increased interest rates probably won’t derail housing In the last couple of weeks, long term interest rates have moved significantly higher. As of yesterday, the 10 year bond closed at roughly 2.66%, its highest yield in 3 1/2 years. If this move is sustained for a few months, I expect it to have an […]