– by New Deal democrat Probably my biggest theme right now is that most of the economy is either recessionary or at least on the cusp of recessionary. But this has been counterbalanced by AI data center- related spending, and the stock market boom and wealth effect it gave rise to.  Last month I highlighted how […]

 – by New Deal democrat Before I get to the main event, a couple of quick comments on the other data released so far this morning:  1. Real GDP as revised only grew at 0.7% annualized in the 4th Quarter of last year. This is often, but by no means always, recessionary. And since there was […]

“Housing permits, starts, and construction: signs of both imminent recession and ‘green shoots’”  – by New Deal democrat This morning’s important data on housing construction contained two apparently contradictory trends: on the one hand, it continues to be – even more intensely – consistent with an imminent or ongoing recesssion. On the other hand, it suggests […]

“Jobless claims continue at very low levels (plus an update on tech enshittification)”  – by New Deal democrat I’ll post on the updated housing situation later this morning. Meanwhile, before I get to jobless claims, a brief update on the tech situation. It turns out that I am not the only person having this problem. Basically […]

February CPI: a likely last hurrah for relatively tame consumer price increases  – by New Deal democrat Much like last month, February benefited from shelter and gas prices – for a change – pulling in the same, disinflating, direction. Needless to say, I do not expect that to be the case for March! But in the […]

– by New Deal democrat The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) is “the gold standard of US employment measures. It is an actual census of 95%+ of all employers, who must report new employees for purposes like unemployment and disability benefits. Because of this, it is used for the final revisions, a/k/a bench-marks, for monthly […]

– by New Deal democrat So, first some bad news: my tech issue has resurfaced, so only links to graphs rather than graphs themselves, hopefully just for a day or two. Basically, unless I keep a bar up open to the blog page, Google and Apple sever their “handshake,” and I have to start from […]

February jobs report: Main Street lays an egg  – by New Deal democrat I described last month as “the month the birds came home to roost. . . . In particular, the *entire* gains over the past year were reduced from 584,000 to 181,000 – an average of only 15,000 jobs gained per month.” Well, this […]

– by New Deal democrat Let’s take our weekly look at jobless claims. As a reminder, I pay attention to these because they are a good short leading barometer of the economy in general, and the jobs market in particular. And the news this week continued to reflect the “new regime” of lower YoY claims […]

 – by New Deal democrat If Monday’s ISM manufacturing report was good (but with a dose of inflation), today’s ISM services report for February was even better (but also with a dose of inflation). Together they negative the likelihood of an economic downturn in the next several months (geopolitical idiocy aside).  Let’s take a look. […]