A comment about the markets for the average reader This is a post aimed at the generally Progressive audience of this blog who followed us over from way back in our days at Daily Kos, rather than the financially sophisticated audience who have picked us up since (but of course everybody is welcome to read […]
Why I’m not impressed by January’s 2.9% YoY wage growth I wanted to follow up on why I dissented Friday from the near-consensus take that workers finally got a nice raise, with many citing hikes in the minimum wage. As you may recall, the YoY% change in the average hourly earnings of all employees rose 2.9% […]
End Of The Obama-Yellen Economy For the past year the US has been essentially operating on an Obama-Yellen economy, at least as far as the big macroeconomic policies have been concerned in terms of fiscal and monetary policies. We saw basically a continuation of what had been seeing in previous years, steady growth with inflation […]
January jobs report: good headline growth, mostly negative internals. UPDATE: THE BOSSES GAVE THEMSELVES A RAISE HEADLINES: +200,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 4.1% U6 underemployment rate rose 0.1% from 8.1% to 8.2% Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but […]
Distractions, Distractions Wow! We have a great controversy! A squib of a memo by the House Intel Comm has completely devoured the media. A constitutional crisis! Egad! In two weeks, or maybe two months, it will be nothing. But for now, well, very very very serious. At a minimum it has distracted everybody from Trump’s gloriously […]
About that Trump wage boom Over last weekend, I read a bunch of notes which indicated that Trump was claiming credit for a boom in wage growth. Let’s take a look: THIS is a wage boom: In the 1960s, real wages grew by almost 9% over 7 years, an average of 1.3% per year. THIS […]
What’s behind the big Q4 decline in real median weekly wages? [Note: This is a post I was working on last week. I hypothesized that the employment cost index would validate the analysis. Well, I didn’t get around to posting it, and the ECI came out this morning. So, how did I do? ] Last […]
Lawrence Summers on Those Employee Bonuses – a Redux of the 1990’s? Lawrence Summers made an interesting comments during a CNBC interview: Former Treasury Secretary and Obama administration economic advisor Larry Summers said Friday that recent employee bonuses are stunts and not reflective of long-term hopes for prosperity that tax cuts are supposed to bring. “I […]
Angry Bear maintains its status as one of FocusEconomics Top Economics and Finance Blogs of 2018. Econospeak is on the list as well, whose authors contribute to Angry Bear. Angry Bear The Angry Bear blog is a multi-author blog that covers news, politics and economics. The contributors to the blog are some of the best […]
Is the economy partying like it’s 1999 ? Suddenly I have a lot to say about the economy. My sense is that we are on to a new phase after the 2015 shallow oil-patch centered recession and 2016-17 rebound. The data has a feel to it of a late cycle blowoff. Let’s start with this morning’s […]