I told you so: the March employment report showed a slowdown in the leading sectors For the past few months, I have been forecasting a jobs slowdown. That has been based in part on the natural progression of a downturn in long leading indicators, then short leading indicators, and finally to coincident indicators of which […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for April 1 – 5 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Interest rates ticked up this week, which brought the readings on some interest rate indicators back down. As usual, clicking over and reading helps reward me with a little $$$ for my efforts.
March jobs report: good nowcast, concerning forecast HEADLINES: +196,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 3.8% U6 underemployment rate unchanged at 7.3% Leading employment indicators of a slowdown or recession I am highlighting these because many leading indicators overall strongly suggest that an employment slowdown is coming. The following more leading numbers in […]
March news good so far; the Fed has plenty of scope to cut rates While we are waiting for tomorrow’s jobs report, let’s step back for a moment and look at where we are in the big picture of the economic cycle. So far, March data is running pretty positive. In addition to the decent […]
Watch for temp jobs weakness in Friday’s employment report Yesterday I looked at manufacturing jobs, and goods-producing jobs generally, as two what to look for in Friday’s jobs report. Today let’s follow up with temporary jobs, an acknowledged leading indicator for jobs as a whole. As I wrote about a couple of months ago, the […]
Along with fourth quarter GDP, corporate profits for the the fourth quarter was also reported. Profits growth was either quite strong or very weak depending on how you looked at them. On a year over year basis, after tax profits growth was 11% and appeared to be accelerating. However, on a quarter to quarter basis […]
Real personal income and spending sag Along with jobs and wages, household and personal income and spending are my main focus on how average Americans are doing in the economy. We’ll get the next jobs report a week from now, but today we got – almost updated to the present – January personal income and […]
The last long leading indicator, corporate profits, declined in Q4 2018 Three months after the quarter ended, corporate profits for Q4 of 2018 were reported this morning, and they were down slightly (-0.1%). Here’s the quote from the BEA: Corporate profits deflated by unit labor costs are a long leading indicator. Since these costs were […]
by New Deal democrat February housing data indicates slump not over UPDATED Housing data, in the form of February permits and starts, finally caught up after the government shutdown. Two sources of house price data were also released this morning. The bottom line is that, depending on how you measure, housing construction is likely either […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for March 18 – 22 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. As you can imagine, the big news was about the fact that almost every single yield curve there is – except the one I report on every week in that post – inverted […]