Construction spending, manufacturing, and temp jobs all decelerate further or decline On Sunday I said, “Construction spending … should follow housing permits and starts with a delay of several months. But, oddly, even though starts in particular have continued to languish, spending has come back strongly since last November. I’ll be looking to see if […]
Median wage and salary growth stalls in Q1, while overall positive trend remains intact UPDATE: real household income declined The Employment Cost Index is a median measure of wages, and also total compensation, for the 50th percentile worker. Thus it escapes the “Bill Gates walks into a bar” issue with average measures. Sunday I wrote […]
My discovery that half the annual increase in the not seasonally adjusted core CPI occcurs in the first quarter and that simply doubling the first quarter increase gives you an amazingly accurate estimate of the December to December reading work again in 2018. In 2019 it is saying the annual increase in the core CPI […]
What I’m watching for this week This week is going to be a really busy one for economic data. I’m not going to be able to do detailed posts on everything. But because in the past couple of months most of the data has gone against my “2019 slowdown” scenario, I thought both in the […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for April 22 – 26 at Seeking Alpha My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. The data has been improving since the beginning of March, and continued to improve this week. Although at the moment the prevailing sentiment, based on new stock market highs, and yesterday’s surprise 3.2% […]
New home sales suggest housing bottom is in New home sales are extremely volatile, and extremely revised, but they do have the advantage of probably being the single most leading housing statistic, ahead of permits and starts. So it is noteworthy that new home sales for March rose to 692,000, below only one month in […]
Commercial and industrial loans: another sign of a slowdown? There are lots of cross-currents in the economy right now. At the absolute tip of the spear is the decline in interest rates since November, which has led to an improvement in some of the housing market metrics. In the shorter-term outlook, a simple quick-and-dirty metric […]
How increasing local oligopolization has distorted the housing market Earlier this week new home sales for March were reported, soaring to a new expansion high bar one month (November 2017). Something else that a few other writers picked up on: the median *prices* for new homes fell to a level not seen in the past […]
Prisoners of Overwork: A Dilemma The New York Times has an illuminating article today summarizing recent research on the gender effects of mandatory overwork in professional jobs. Lawyers, people in finance and other client-centered occupations are increasingly required to be available round-the-clock, with 50-60 or more hours of work per week the norm. Among other costs, the […]
Statistical Significance and the Sweet Siren of Self-Confirmation: A Reply to Taylor Just as Ulysses had himself chained to the mast of his ship so he wouldn’t succumb to the lure of the Sirens, John Ionnidis and others have argued we must bind ourselves to the discipline of statistical significance lest we fall victim to confirmation bias. […]