If I was going to guess, and I do not have to do so, it appears the US is retooling to update capabilities. Maybe they will put forth a plan to minimize inventory too. The source of all this retooling? Probably using up the money made during the pandemic and also government funds invested in […]
Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens at Economic Policy Institute take a look at why wages have been relatively flat compared to productivity gains in the US economy, inequality of compensation, and declining share of income between labor and capital. Broad strokes but helps with context and suggesting ideas for current government actions. Inequalities abound in the U.S. […]
On Labor Day 2022, how well is labor doing? This is Labor Day, so let’s take a look at a few metrics of how labor is doing. As an initial aside, occasionally I get asked why I write about expansions and recessions. An important reason is, pretty much by definition during recessions jobs and income […]
A bit of history leading up to the creation of Labor Day as a holiday, the first day of celebration, the politics, how it came to be, and the politics as told by Prof. Heather. That first celebration being held September 5, 1882; at noon that day, when the marchers arrived at Reservoir Park, the […]
Weekly Indicators for August 29 – September 2 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The consumer portion of the economy continues to benefit from lower gas prices, while the producer side continues to suffer from higher interest rates. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the […]
August jobs report: despite a good headline number, the decelerating trend resumes I have written a number of times since February that the short leading indicators have signaled that we should expect weaker monthly employment reports, with both fewer new jobs and a higher unemployment rate. That was completely *not* the case in July, In […]
A respite in manufacturing in August, continued decline in construction in July As usual, the new month’s first data is for manufacturing and construction. Here’s a look at each. The ISM manufacturing index, and especially its new orders subindex, is an important short leading indicator for the production sector. In August, after two months of […]
June house price indexes show no peak yet; no respite likely in the “official” consumer housing measure Yesterday the Case Shiller and FHFA house price indexes were updated through June (technically, the average of April through June. Because the Case Shiller index is not seasonally adjusted, the best way to show them is YoY. Here […]
Some pretty interesting articles this week. I like the one about Alito. With trump, I can not figure out what was in his mind when he walked off with boxes of classifies documents. You are I would be in jail right now. Usual stuff about student loans. The $10,000 on many of these loans will […]
July JOLTS report: the broad deceleration in the game of reverse musical chairs (generally) continues I have been writing since early this year that, because of the pandemic, there have been several million fewer persons looking for work, leaving a huge number of unfilled job vacancies, particularly in the face of a roughly 10% higher […]