Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

August real average wages and nonsupervisory payrolls: some signs of flagging but no recession signal yet

– by New Deal democrat Now that we have the consumer inflation number for August, let’s take a look at real wages and income for ordinary workers. In the jobs report last Friday, we learned that both average hourly earnings and aggregate payrolls for nonsupervisory workers increased 0.4% in August. Yesterday we learned that consumer inflation […]

“Abundance Denied”

Building and investment is stifled by the current regulatory regimes. Hence abundance denied. Of course, to gain some of the abundance Sam Walker discusses need investments newer infrastructure to support faster trains. he system is lacking the funding. Sam Walker . . . My following the railroad industry comes from growing up at Hollidaysburg, PA. […]

As consumer inflation shows more signs of re-acceleration, the Fed is being forced to pick its poison

– by New Deal democrat The Fed is really facing a no-win situation. Between the recent employment reports, the QCEW, and even this morning’s jobless claims report, the jobs market has clearly been weakening, and may be on the very cusp of contraction, implicating the Fed’s dual mandate to strive for full employment. But this morning’s […]

Initial claims have a Texas-sized increase

– by New Deal democrat I’ll post about the CPI later this morning. But unusually, the biggest news of the morning was initial jobless claims, which spiked to 263,000, an increase of 27,000 from the previous week. The four week moving average increased 9,750 to 240,500. Meanwhile, with the typical one week delay, continuing claims were […]

Revoking visas of Palestinian President, etc.

As a world leader, Rubio and Trump’s actions make no sense. The US is supposed to make it easier for officials from all nations who want to attend the UN headquarters. This decision (which Israel has welcomed) is detrimental to a peace initiative. According to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas the visa decision “is a clear […]

August producer prices largely a reflection of volatile food and energy prices

– by New Deal democrat Consumer price inflation will be reported tomorrow. In the meantime, this morning producer prices for August were reported. Normally I don’t pay too much attention to producer prices – and I won’t this month, either. But let me put that in some context. In the past, when producer prices have outstripped […]

BLS Revision is Worse than Expected

Understanding the latest BLS Jobs report. What they are stating is, the labor force is large at 140 million and companies tend to overstate employment. Probably for good reason. If they all stated what was really happening in their company and industry, we probably would have been in trouble far earlier. In which case, profits […]

The “gold standard” QCEW suggests there may have been no growth at all in jobs so far this year

 – by New Deal democrat The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) for Q1 of this year was released this morning. Perhaps more importantly, the numbers for last year were finalized. This forms the “preliminary benchmark” for the actual reported changes to payrolls over that period which will show up in next February’s report for […]

Trump’s Tariffs exceeded his power under IEEPA

Briefly: Two similar versions of the same tariffs case. What we are waiting on is whether SCOTUS will hear this case as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the Court of Interntional Appeals ruling by a vote of 7-4. “Group of small businesses calls on Supreme Court to decide tariffs case,” SCOTUSblog. With […]