Lowest new jobless claims in over half a century The first two of four data releases this morning were corporate profits for Q3 and jobless claims for last week.Corporate profits, a long leading indicator, increased slightly in Q3 over Q2, by 1.9% or 4.2% depending on whether you include various inventory adjustments. Deflated by unit […]
Existing home sales and prices, increase slightly; inventory declines slightly [Programming note: There will be at least 4 significant reports tomorrow (Nov: 23): jobless claims, personal income and spending, new home sales, and corporate profits for Q3. Then nothing for the rest of the week. I may or may not report on everything tomorrow. I […]
Nobody is getting laid off: the continuing saga Initial claims declined another 1,000 this week to 268,000, and the 4 week average declined 5,250 to 272,750, both – yet again – new pandemic lows: For the past 50 years, initial claims have only been at these levels for 2 months at the peak of the […]
Coronavirus dashboard: As the winter wave takes hold, how much will resistance from prior infections hold numbers down? Europe and North America, the winter wave is underway. While vaccinations clearly work, in most countries of the West there is a reservoir of defiant anti-vaxxers, who are not going to get vaccinated unless they are absolutely […]
. . And Industrial Production isn’t too shabby, either Industrial production, the King of Coincident Indicators, was reported for October this morning in addition to real retail sales, discussed already in my last post. – and it was also quite positive. Total production increased 1.6% during the month, and manufacturing production increased 1.3%. This was […]
Housing construction continues to stabilize, but with record bottleneck in starts Last month I highlighted that housing constructions were stabilizing, following the stabilization in interest rates. This month continued that trend. In October, housing starts (green in the graphs below) decreased -0.7% m/m, while the more leading total permits (blue) increased 4.0%. The less volatile […]
Now *that’s* good news: another blockbuster real retail sales report Yesterday I wrote that the financial and production sides of the economy still looked very positive and that today’s retail sales number would be especially important. Well, they were very positive, clocking in at up 1.7% month over month in October. Even after inflation, “real” […]
Coronavirus dashboard for November 12: regional variations and the winter wave There’s a glitch in 91-Divoc collecting Johns Hopkins data, so the State by State totals have not been updated for several days, but here is Our World in Data’s update for the US as a whole: As of yesterday, cases are up only 3.5% […]
Dear Democrats: Yes, inflation is a problem [Update: I see where Larry Summers has obviously read my piece below, and says, “I agree with NDD!” (Just teasing)] In the past few days, I have seen a spate of articles and tweets from prominent partisans and economists telling Democrats not to worry about inflation, either because […]
September JOLTS report: slow progress towards a new equilibrium This morning’s JOLTS report covers September, at the beginning of which the Delta wave peaked and then gradually receded for the remainder of the month. It is also the month that the last of pandemic emergency benefits ended. We did see the second consecutive decline in […]