AB: This is an excellent NDd recital on a not so good jobless claim report. Employment is not improving and as NDd states it appears to be remaining the same. The tariff game Tr__p is playing is not helping the economy and is just another burden in cost which we will all pay. This is […]

 – by New Deal democrat Let’s take a look at the “real” purchasing power of average working and middle class Americans. The July jobs report showed that average hourly earnings for nonsupervisory workers rose a little under 0.3% (blue in the graph below). Consumer inflation (red) rose 0.2%, so “real” average hourly earnings rose 0.1%. […]

 – by New Deal democrat The post pandemic period has been an exception to many past relationships. This morning’s data on housing construction raises the issue as to whether housing is going to be included in those exceptions as well. That’s because the data has been classically recessionary for a number of months, and yet the […]

 – by New Deal democrat Forecasting has always been hard, and moreso since the supply chain issues of 2021-22 made reading the interest rate signals from the long leading indicators muddled. But at least the short leading indicators were intact. But now we have the additional wrench in the works in the form of a mafia-style […]

Weekly Indicators for August 11 – 15 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. This week I quantified the difference between commodity prices in the US$ vs. a basket of all other currencies. Perhaps unsurprisingly,  the upward pressure on commodity prices appears to be all, or almost […]

 – by New Deal democrat As per usual, retail sales are one of my favorite economic indicators, because in the past they have told us a lot about both where the economy is at present, and because consumption leads employment, so much about where the economy is likely to be in the near term future. […]

 – by New Deal democrat Industrial production is much less central to the US economic picture than it was before the “China shock,” since so much production moved overseas, meaning US consumers buy much more imported goods than they used to. Still it is an important if diminished coincident indicator. This morning’s report for July can […]

– by New Deal democrat Normally I don’t pay too much attention to producer prices, but occasionally they are very important – and today is one of those days.  Here’s why. In the past, as shown in this graph going back over 50 years: when producer prices outstrip consumer prices, that means producers aren’t able to […]

 – by New Deal democrat Obviously this morning’s PPI number was the most important report of the day. I want to get to that later, but first let’s update the jobless claims situation. The good numbers in initial claims continued, as they declined -3,000 to 224,000. The four week moving average increased 750 to 221,750. But […]

 – by New Deal democrat In my note yesterday about the July CPI, I noted the transition from the trend where overall inflation ex-shelter was low, and shelter was high but disinflating, to a trend where inflation ex-shelter while still low was increasing, as shelter contributed the most to disinflation. The question was, and will be […]