The US-China Nothing Burger Trade Deal There has been much hype about the signing of Phase One (and probably only) US-China trade deal. However based on a front page story in today’s Washington Post, there is not much there. The US did not raise tariffs as planned, but tarifsf still remain on two thirds of […]
Real wages declined slightly in Q4 2019; nearly flat since last January In December consumer inflation was +0.2%. Since in last Friday’s jobs report average hourly earnings also increased +0.1%, real average hourly earnings declined slightly: In a longer term perspective, this means that real wages also declined from 97.8% to 97.5% of their all […]
Scenes from the December jobs report: leading jobs sectors and wages Let’s take a more detailed look at last Friday’s December jobs report. First, as usual for the past few months, let’s look at the more leading jobs sectors. This month, let’s also take a more detailed look at wage growth and why it may […]
Scenes from the December jobs report: leading jobs sectors and wages Let’s take a more detailed look at last Friday’s December jobs report. First, as usual for the past few months, let’s look at the more leading jobs sectors. This month, let’s also take a more detailed look at wage growth and why it may […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for January 6 – 10 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. How week – or not – the next six months are going to be remains the primary issue. As usual, clicking over and reading should bring you right up to date, as well […]
Small Town Support for Trump and “The Working Class” Much has been written about voters, sometimes labeled the “white working class”, who live in small towns, have low incomes and supported Trump in 2016. There are various hypotheses—not, despite the rhetoric, mutually exclusive—that have been proposed to explain this: never-ending latent racism galvanized by the […]
Are We Living In The “Capitalocene”? I also attended the last session listed in the program at the ASSA at 2:30 on Sunday, an URPE session on “Ecology, the Environment, and Energy,” chaired by Paul Cooney. He presented on “Marxism and Ecological Economics: An Assessment of the Past, Present, and Future.” Lynne Chester presented on […]
January’s reports start out with a decidedly mixed picture for 2020 We have our first bits of forward-looking data for the year: November residential construction, December ISM manufacturing, and December light vehicle sales. They paint a decidedly mixed picture. Let’s take a look in order. Residential construction spending improved by a strong 1.9% in November. […]
Might We Be On The Verge Of An “Upswing”? One of the more dramatic sessions at the just-completed ASSA meetings in San Diego was an AEA panel on “Deaths from Despair and the Future of Capitalism” on Saturday at 2:30. Chaired by Angus Deaton, it focused on the book by him and his wife/coauthor Anne […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for December 30 – January 3 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. There were marginal moves to the downside on both the producer and consumer sides of the ledger this past week. As usual, clicking over and reading rewards me with just a little […]