Coronavirus dashboard for July 19: The UK as Delta wave trailblazer for the US An initial note: I am on vacation this week, so posting is likely to be sporadic. I’ll still hit the important data.Now that the Delta wave is well and truly here in the US, let’s compare it with the UK experience, […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for July 12 – 16 at Seeking Alpha My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. All timeframes continue positive, but the renewed outbreak of COVID – indeed, its uncontrolled exponential spread – is the proverbial elephant in the room, and is quite likely to Bigfoot the entire forecast […]
Real wages decrease sharply – at least, if you include used vehicle prices As I pointed out yesterday, the big increase in inflation over the past few months has made the YoY change in real wages for nonsupervisory workers negative. Let’s take a little closer look. Here is a graph of wages for nonsupervisory workers […]
Consumer inflation rises the most in over a decade; will it draw the Fed’s attention? Let me start my take on this month’s inflation report with my concluding remarks last month: “this is not a big deal if it only lasts another month or two. But if the trend continues longer than that, it will […]
Coronavirus dashboard for July 12: the completely preventable “delta wave” is here The completely unnecessary and preventable “delta wave” of COVID infections, hospitalizations, and deaths is now in force – all three metrics are now rising nationwide. Here are the 7 day average of confirmed cases (thin line) and deaths (thick): Cases have gone up […]
Scenes from last week’s June employment report With no significant economic data today, let’s take a look at some of the more salient numbers from the June employment report released one week ago. Starting with the headline employment numbers, both the Establishment Survey and the Household Survey, while diverging in any given month, are in […]
Trend in new jobless claims flattens: the virus remains in control in the unvaccinated States New jobless claims are the most important weekly economic datapoint with regard to the effects of vaccination progress. Four weeks ago I wrote, “I think we are going to see two tracks going forward from here, as near-normalcy does return to […]
May JOLTS report continues to show a jobs market out of equilibrium This morning’s JOLTS report for May continued all of the trends we saw in April – a huge amount of unfilled job openings, a comparatively weak level of actual hiring, an enhanced number of people quitting their jobs, and record low layoffs and […]
Coronavirus dashboard for July 6: bad news and *relatively* “good” news about the Delta Wave In the near future, there appears to be bad news and *relatively* “good” news for the US. The bad news is that the “delta wave” is spreading, and we should expect a real outbreak on the order of last summer’s […]
No, liberals are not to blame for political polarization Over the long weekend, Kevin Drum picked a fight by saying that you should “blame liberals” for culture wars, arguing that liberals have shifted their positions much more over the past two decades than conservatives. This has provoked some strong counter-arguments, but what has struck me – as usual […]