By Spencer, The unemployment rate jumped to 10.2%. Except for the peak rate of 10.8% after the 1982 recession this is the highest in the post WW II era. The overall tenor of the report was very similar to the past three months reports and sent the message that the economy is no longer collapsing […]

By Spencer, Third quarter nonfarm productivity rose at a 9.5% annual rate as output rose 4.0% and hours worked fell at a 5.0% rate. Historically, productivity has been a very good leading indicator of real GDP growth lagged two quarters. Productivity is also highly cyclical and the first year of a recovery typically experiences the […]

By Spencer (2009)   The issue of a jobless recovery is getting a lot of attention recently. I’ve found the best way to look at the issue is to compare the change in real growth and productivity over the long run. There have been three periods of different productivity trends in modern US economic history. […]

By Spencer In 1971 when Nixon imposed price controls he did not do it because the on-going domestic inflation rate was about to accelerate. Rather, he imposed price controls because he expected the planned dollar devaluation to be very inflationary. But his actions just reflected the economic consensus that the dollar devaluation would be highly […]

By Spencer, Reading the financial press, various economic blogs and watching CNBC clearly leaves the impression that the current weakness in the dollar is having such a massive adverse impact on the holding of the Peoples Bank of China ( the Chinese central bank) that they are very seriously considering selling their dollar holdings and […]

By Spencer Not only was the employment report disappointing, but previously reported encouraging leading indicators of employment were revised away. Most importantly, hours worked fell 0.5% from 99.0 to 98.5. We are now looking at a 3.0% drop in hours worked in the third quarter as compared to 7.8%,8.9% and 7.4% in the prior three […]

By Spencer, Unless the economy-market is on the verge of a major unforeseen calamity S&P 500 earnings per share growth will turn positive in the fourth quarter. Generally analysts are positive on the market because they expect very strong earnings growth in 2010. This will be the twelfth time since 1950 that earnings growth has […]

By Spencer Industrial output rose 0.8 percent in August, following an upwardly revised increase of 1.0 percent in July. Production in manufacturing expanded 0.6 percent in August, and the index excluding motor vehicles and parts increased 0.4 percent. The gain in July for manufacturing was revised up 0.4 percentage point, to1.4 percent; in addition, factory […]

By Spencer Michael Mandel at Businessweek had a post on the subject of where are health care costs rising the fastest. http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/09/where_are_healt.htm In the post he posted this table and used it as the basis for making comparisons of the growth of health care spending in various countries. But the analysis is flawed. Note it […]

By Spencer The employment report was discouraging. In contrast to last month when the leading indicators of employment appeared to be stabilizing,they resumed their downtrend this month. Most importantly, hours worked fell o.3% from an upward revised 99.2 to 98.9. the best that can be said about this now is that the rate of decline […]