Real average and aggregate wage growth for July 2019: yellow flag for aggregate wages Now that we have the July inflation reading, let’s take a look at real wages. First of all, nominal average hourly wages in June increased +0.2%, while consumer prices increased +0.3%, meaning real average hourly wages for non-managerial personnel decreased -0.1%. […]
by New Deal democrat My preliminary long leading forecast through midyear 2020 This post is up at Seeking Alpha. This is my first look at economic conditions into next summer. I suspect that it is contrary to most punditry that you will read. In any event, as usual clicking over and reading helps reward me for […]
When remembered at all, Edward Abbey is mostly thought of as an environmentalist and anarchist but there is no gainsaying the racism and xenophobia on display in his 1983 essay, “Immigration and Liberal Taboos.” The opinion piece was originally solicited by the New York Times, which ultimately declined to publish it — or to pay […]
Lloyd Alter at treehuggers: The only thing that really works for recycling is full producer responsibility. If a producer sells a product, the container is theirs and the contents belong to the customer. This is how it used to work with beer, pop, milk, water for the water cooler. It is what consumers and producers […]
by New Deal democrat Q2 Credit conditions were decidedly mixed Credit conditions are one of my categories of long leading indicators. I track the Chicago indexes weekly, but the more comprehensive Senior Loan Officer Survey only comes out once per quarter. The 2nd Quarter Survey was published earlier this week. I have a post describing […]
Since the early 1990s, I published this chart every month on the back cover of my publication until I retired a couple of years ago. I thought it was a great piece of marketing to remind readers that I was a long run bull on interest rates. Readers might not pay much attention or remember […]
Notes on the June JOLTS report: weakness but no imminent downturn I’m still on vacation, so continue to expect light posting. But I thought I’d take a look at the one piece of data that came out this week, the June JOLTS report. First of all, the “hiring leads firing” mantra continues to be true: […]
Krugman on Trump and Trade: Not Tariffic I’m no fan of the Trump tariff tantrum, but weak criticism of it does no one a service. And while I agree with Paul Krugman on a lot of things, he has a long history of being misguided on trade policy. Alas, his op-ed in today’s New York Times continues the […]
Note how the survey data is weakening more than the payroll data The survey data tends to lead the payroll: In 2019 payroll employment — what Wall Street pays attention to –is the weakest since 2012. Moreover, hours worked has flattened out:
Scenes from the July employment report First things first: I’m on a vacation for part of this week, so don’t be surprised if there are no postings for a few days. The July employment report continued a string of good headline numbers with weak leading internals. Let’s take a look. In the good news department, […]