– by New Deal democrat Once again there is a hiatus in the data for a couple of days. So let’s take a look at two of my favorite labor indicators: real average hourly wages and real aggregate payrolls for nonsupervisory workers. First, here are real average hourly earnings for nonsupervisory workers: These were unchanged in […]
Been following this issue for a while. Pulled this from an Atlantic article from December 2024. In the 1980s, consumers did more than half of their grocery shopping at independent stores. This included both single-location businesses and small, locally owned chains. This changed in the 1980s. Convinced tough antitrust enforcement was holding back American business, […]
I have not seen something like this for a decade or so. But then too, I was not in academia, I was off flitting around Asia and Europe working in the plants of various companies. This in an attempt to bring some type of order to supply chain with regard to manufacturing and ordering. If […]
– by New Deal democrat As we get towards the end of the month, the data from the important leading housing sector begins to be reported. This morning’s report on housing permits, starts, and construction continues the trend that has been in place for several years. For the month, permits (gold in the graph below) […]
Brief Piece by EPI with an introduction . . . In “How will Trumponomics work out?” the author contends Trump will be disappointed in the results of his planned tariffs. Just watching this from the sidelines. The tariffs appear to change weekly and take on the form of various percentage rates, weeks, and months at […]
I pulled this segment from a much longer commentary on PIIE. It was too long to post on Angry Bear. As it is, this segment is longer than what I wanted to post. A key to the commentary at PIIE by Oliver Blanchard is it was written in November 2024.The nation and Tr__p administration supported […]
Trump was recently in the news promoting a switch from high fructose corn syrup to cane sugar in Coca-Cola, which he’s claiming credit for. Look, I’m not the world’s best biochemist, but this looked like marketing hype to me. Why is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) problematic but cane sugar—which is a disaccharide of glucose […]
– by New Deal democrat Consumption leads employment, and retail sales are the most timely monthly indicator of consumption. Indeed, population-adjusted real retail sales in the past have tended to turn negative one year or more before a recession has begun. In June, nominally retail sales rose a strong 0.6%. But because consumer prices rose 0.3%, […]
Just some local events and news in southern Arizona . . . As I read in the local newspapers . . . construction of TSMC semiconductor facilities is continuing in Arizona near Tucson. I went by this facility a while back. I also went by the latest facility not that long ago. I have included […]
– by New Deal democrat Industrial production is much less central to the US economic picture than it was before the “China shock,” since so much production moved overseas, meaning US consumers buy much more imported goods than they used to. Still it is an important if diminished coincident indicator. This morning’s report for June was […]