Initial claims increasingly foreclose 2019-early 2020 downturn I’ve been monitoring initial jobless claims closely for the past several months, to see if there are any signs of stress. This is because the long leading indicators were negative one year ago, and many – but not a majority – of the short leading indicators have recently […]
Housing: BOOM! Well, this is an easy post. This morning’s report (Wed.) on housing permits and starts showed new expansion highs in both overall permits and starts. The less volatile single family segment also recovered, with both single family permits and starts at one year highs, although slightly below their expansion peaks. Here are total […]
Industrial production rebounds; another message of slowdown, no recession Industrial Production is the King of Coincident Indicators. When industrial production peaks and troughs coincides more often than any other indicator to NBER’s recession dating. Let’s take a look at the report for August, which was pretty darn good, which was released this morning. Production as a […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for September 9 – 13 at Seeking Alpha I realized that I neglected to post a link to this Saturday’s Weekly Indicators post, which was up at Seeking Alpha. So here it is. The theme over the past few months has been that, despite worsening conditions in manufacturing, and almost […]
Dean Baker considers whether Trump’s group of supporters would be able to manipulate the bureacracies of the federal government to alter the economic outlook of the nation in a more expansive way than Larry Kudlow and others, but the data itself ( if that is even needed?) He says not likely, but how creative would […]
The other night, ten Democratic presidential, hopeful, nominees took stage and debated their plans for America’s future. There never was a mention beyond a few garbled words hastily thrown together about an issue which is plaguing many young voters ing to raise families and one which has surfaced in my community, the shortage of affordable […]
The use of drones against Saudi Arabian oil facilities changes the economic-market risk significantly. Until now the oil producers have done an excellent job of preventing terrorist attacks from disrupting oil supplies. But the use of drones significantly changes the risk of future oil disruptions. How do we prevent future drone attacks on the […]
August retail sales confirm healthy consumer sector Retail sales are one of my favorite indicators, because in real terms they can tell us so much about the present, near term forecast, and longer term forecast for the economy. This morning retail sales for August were reported up +0.4%, and July, which was already very good […]
If there is one thing that Presidential candidates, pundits, and bloggers agree on, it’s that Americans suffer under a heavy burden of debt. We have passed from alarm over predatory credit card lending, to underwater and deliquent mortgages to student debt, but in any case, we agree that debt is a huge problem. There are […]
Real average and aggregate wage growth for August Now that we have the August inflation reading, let’s take a look at real wage growth. First of all, nominal average hourly wages in June increased a strong +0.5%, while consumer prices increased +0.1%, meaning real average hourly wages for non-managerial personnel increased +0.4%. This translates into […]