Scenes from the April jobs report The headline news in Friday’s employment report was excellent. But underneath those headlines, all is not well. Let’s celebrate the excellent headlines first. Adding 263,000 jobs in April was one of the dozen best reports of this entire expansion: Next, here is the YoY% change in nonfarm payrolls, showing an […]
(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) by Robert Waldmann G and GDP update I think it might be time for an update on the crudest of tiny sample reduced form analysis of fiscal policy and the current recovery. One reason for my continued interest is that there was a rather large tax cut enacted in 2017. […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for April 29 – May 3 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The trend in the past couple of months across all timeframes has been very much to the positive. It is either a signal of a renewed boom, or else a countertrend bounce […]
One important factor to keep in mind when thinking about the economy is that energy’s share of personal consumption expenditure is now 4%, or about half of what it was in the late 1970s-early 1980s.
I think it might be time for an update on the crudest of tiny sample reduced form analysis of fiscal policy and the current recovery. One reason for my continued interest is that there was a rather large tax cut enacted in 2017. Trump critics tend to argue that it failed to encourage investment, but […]
April jobs report: great headlines, signs of fraying around the edges HEADLINES: +263,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate declined -0.2% to 3.6% (new expansion low) U6 underemployment rate unchanged at 7.3% Leading employment indicators of a slowdown or recession I am highlighting these because many leading indicators overall strongly suggest that an employment slowdown […]
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 […]