With a Booming economy comes at least transitory inflation: March producer prices One of the economic subjects you are going to hear a lot about this year is inflation. We are recovering from a sharp if brief recession, and with the dual firehoses of fiscal and monetary stimulus, entering a Boom such as we have […]
February JOLTS report showed a pandemic still in control Yesterday morning’s JOLTS report for February showed that the pandemic was still in control of the numbers.This report has only a 20 year history, and so includes only two prior recoveries. In those recoveries: first, layoffs declined second, hiring rose third, job openings rose and voluntary quits increased, […]
The Hippie Dog Whistle Work Ethic Silent-Majority Counter-Offensive Following up on my last post, I was searching for coverage of Ronald Reagan’s infamous “strapping young buck” comment from 1976 and found this wonderful commentary by Ian Haney López on Bill Moyers’s show. In his book, Dog Whistle Politics, López mentions the “work ethic” angle several times. The […]
How To Estimate “Rational” Market Expectations Of Future Inflation I am not a fan of rational expectations, hence the quotation marks around “rational” in the subject head here. Nevertheless I have become aware thanks to some posts at Econbrowser by the intrepid Menzie Chinn that the usual way this has been measured and reported by […]
Coronavirus dashboard for April 5: the problematic cases of Chile . . . and Michigan As you probably already know, the news on the vaccination front continues to be good, as the US is now administering on average over 3 million doses a day – and still climbing. At this rate of improvement, every adult […]
I bookmarked a prediction about the coronavirus by supply-sider Scott Grannis one year ago … As I mention from time to time, I read a number of economic observers with whose opinions I usually strongly disagree, partly because it is good to consider other points of view, and partly because some compile excellent and interesting […]
American plutocracy in two simple graphs; plus, when will wage growth bottom? The JOLTS report for February comes out later this morning; I may post on it later or tomorrow. In the meantime, here are updates on several graphs I used to run during the last expansion in order to examine how shared out (or […]
Blockbuster March jobs report, but still a long way to go –HEADLINES: +916,000 million jobs added. The alternate, and more volatile measure in the household report indicated a gain of 609,000 jobs, which factors into the unemployment and underemployment rates below. U3 unemployment rate declined 0.2% to 6.0%, compared with the January 2020 low of […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for March 29 – April 2 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. One fairly unique service I think I provide is not just forecasting the next few months, but into the next year as well. So in the second half of last year I […]
Commenter RJS at MarketWatch 666 Construction Spending Fell 0.8% in February after January & December Figures Were Revised Higher The Census Bureau’s report on February construction spending (pdf) reported that “Construction spending during February 2021 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,516.9 billion, 0.8 percent (±0.7 percent) below the revised January estimate of $1,529.0 billion. The February […]