– by New Deal democrat There’s no new significant news until Wednesday, so let’s catch up graphically with a few important items from Friday’s employment report for January. As I wrote then, probably the most important developments weren’t in the monthly numbers, but rather the annual revisions to both the Establishment and Household Surveys.  For […]

 – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. Mainly more of the same ; the majority of short leading and coincident indicators are positive, while the long leading background is ever so slowly improving. As usual, clicking over and reading will reward you with knowing the state of the economy […]

January jobs report: annual revisions clear up some big discrepancies, but monthly numbers are close to pre-recessionary  – by New Deal democrat My theme for the past several years as to employment has been “deceleration,” as in a gradual cooldown from white hot to red hot to hot to warm. But at some point past […]

– by New Deal democrat Let’s take our typically weekly look at jobless claims. I do this because there are a very good and timely short leading indicator for the labor market.  Initial claims rose 11,000 to 219,000. The four week moving average rose 4,000 to 216,750. With the typical one week delay, continued claims […]

 – by New Deal democrat As per usual, my focus in reporting on GDP is not the headline number, but the aspects which serve as leading indicators for the economy in the next few quarters. But to get it out of the way, real GDP increased at a 2.3% rate in the last quarter of […]

– by New Deal democrat Because that services are about 75% of the economy, even if goods production is contracting, since the turn of the MIllennium that has not necessarily meant a recession is in the offing. The economically weighted average to the ISM services and manufacturing indexes has been much more accurate since then. […]

In December, the theme for new homes was “steady as she goes” in sales, price, and inventory trends  – by New Deal democrat To reiterate my theme from the past few months, I’ve been looking at new and existing home sales more in tandem, with a rebalancing of the market in mind. For that to […]

JOLTS report for December shows mild improvement in most metrics, anticipates stabilization in wage increases  – by New Deal democrat The monthly JOLTS reports give us a more granular look at the employment sector, but are delayed by one month vs. the jobs report. Like the jobs reports, most JOLTS series have shown deceleration for […]

ISM manufacturing index in January the strongest since 2022  – by New Deal democrat Although manufacturing is of diminishing importance to the economy, (it was in deep contraction both in 2015-16 and again in 2022 without any recession), the ISM manufacturing index remains an important indicator with a 75+ year history of accurately describing that […]

Personal income and spending for December: more “steady as she goes” but with late cycle characteristics -by New Deal Democrat The December personal income and spending report showed that for the huge consumption sector of the economy, “steady as she goes” continued, as both nominal and real personal income and spending rose again in December. […]