June data starts out mixed: manufacturing strong, housing stalls, New Deal democrat June data started out this morning with the ISM manufacturing report. There was no big change from last month’s torrid pace. The overall index declined a very slight -0.6% to 60.6, while the leading new orders component declined by 1 to 66:Any number […]
June jobs report: a tale of two very different surveys – but both far from full recovery HEADLINES: 850,000 jobs added. Of these, 662,000 were private sector jobs, and 188,000 were government jobs, chiefly in education. The alternate, and more volatile measure in the household report indicated a gain of only 128,000 jobs, which factors […]
New jobless claims: a surprise to the positive side I have been paying particular attention to new jobless claims this year, as being the most important weekly economic datapoint to correlate with vaccination progress. My ultimate target for claims is an average of 325,000 or below, which would signify a return to normal expansion levels in […]
Coronavirus dashboard for June 30: 2 to 4 weeks until a likely major “Delta” outbreak in unvaccinated regions Missouri has been the US bellwether for the onset of the “Delta” variant of COVID. This makes the below graph by Charles Gaba of infection rates by county for June in Missouri particularly insightful: As has been […]
House prices continue to surge, with affordability near its worst since the Great Recession The FHFA and Case Shiller house price indexes for May and April, respectively, were released this morning. Because housing affordability is very much an issue, let’s take a look. YoY the FHFA index is up 15.7%, and the Case Shiller […]
Coronavirus dashboard for June 28: comparisons with one year ago as “delta” spreads Let’s begin this installment with a look at vaccinations by county from a different source that a reader pointed me to last week, COVIDactnow: The urban/rural and Red State/Blue State divides are pretty obvious. Conor Kelly (whose work I was highlighting one year ago) also […]
New jobless claims stall, adding to the evidence that stalling vaccinations and case counts are having an economic effect New jobless claims have been the most important weekly economic datapoint this year, as they have correlated strongly with vaccination progress. Unfortunately, that progress has largely stalled in the past month, and now new jobless claims […]
Real personal income and spending both decline in May – but that’s OK, as it was mainly expiration of stimulus; NBER likely to declare end of recession soon The last of the 4 monthly coincident markers for whether the economy is in recession vs. expansion was reported this morning for May. Let’s take a look. […]
Coronavirus dashboard for June 23: And so, it (the delta wave) begins [Note: New home sales will be reported later this morning, and I will post on that report afterward.]There is now more evidence that the “delta” variant of COVID is taking hold in the unvaccinated regions of the country, and case counts are increasing […]
Coronavirus dashboard for June 21: watching the States with flat or increasing rates of new cases For the past week I have been sounding the alarm about the economic impact of the “delta” variant of COVID. We are probably already beginning to see its impact on the case count in several States, with many more […]