Producer prices join the parade of yellow flags  – by New Deal democrat I generally don’t pay too much attention to producer prices, but there are a couple of exceptions. One exception is that sometimes producer prices lead consumer prices by a number of months. That hasn’t been the case recently. But the other exception […]

Scenes from the last employment report of Joe Biden’s Presidency  – by New Deal democrat Friday’s jobs report was an excellent one for Joe Biden’s Presidential term to end on. In the past 4 years, 17 million jobs have been created. Even if we take out 2021 as being a COVID rebound year, in the […]

– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. The big changes this week were the sharp increases in long term interest rates, along with similarly sharp increases in commodity prices and the US$. Some of this is due to a feeling that the economy is running “hotter” than recently thought, […]

– 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 “warm,” we get to lukewarm, and then cool, and then chilly. In other words, if it continues […]

Jobless claims still rocked by seasonality; native born unemployment rate of under 4% forecast  – by New Deal democrat Due to today’ official Day of Mourning for the late President Jimmy Carter, initial and continuing claims were released yesterday, but since I didn’t cover it then, let’s catch up now on the normal day. It […]

Truck sales sound a warning  – by New Deal democrat Twenty years ago Prof. Edward Leamer made a big splash with a speech to the Fed in which he proclaimed that “Housing IS the Business Cycle,” highlighting how downturns in the housing sector tended to lead recessions by an average of 7 quarters. For today’s […]

November JOLTS report adds to the data showing continued labor market deterioration  – by New Deal democrat The second of this morning’s reports was the JOLTS survey for November.  Like many other statistics concerning jobs, the JOLTS series have been deceleration for several years. The question now is whether they level off or continue to […]

 – by New Deal democrat A year ago I said that I would only update information about the state of COVID-19 if there was something significant to report. And as of the end of the year 2024 there is: deaths from COVID in 2024 have fallen to the point where they are equivalent to the upper […]

 – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. Both the long leading and short leading indicators have weakened in the past two weeks. The former is due to the short end of the Treasury yield curve re-inverted. The latter is due in part to continued weakness in new jobless claims, […]

 – by New Deal democrat Unusually this month, the ISM manufacturing index was delayed one day after the first business day of the month. In other words, it was released this morning instead of yesterday. In any event, a refresher that because manufacturing is of diminishing importance to the economy, and was in deep contraction both […]