December JOLTS report: mixed but with strong positive revisions The JOLTS report on labor is noteworthy and helpful because it breaks down the jobs market into a more granular look at hiring, firing, and voluntary quits. Its drawback is that the data only goes back less than 20 years, so from the point of view […]
This is an exiting day. I disagree with something Paul Krugman wrote. In 2017, private insurance paid about a third of America’s medical bills — $1.2 trillion, or 6 percent of GDP. Having the government pay those bills directly, without a revenue offset, would therefore be a spending increase — a fiscal stimulus — of […]
My new Congressional Representative likes to use Facebook to inform her constituents of what she is doing in the House. I do engage in Facebook and probably shouldn’t do so. Facebook is too much of a waste of time and it is filled with advertising and silliness. Then too, I like knowing what our Rep […]
It Is Monday And Usual Suspect Bashes Social Security That would be Robert J. Samuelson at the Washington Post, and, yes, he has done it yet again, actually for the first time in a while. Dean Baker has already done a good job of cutting him up over on CEPR, but I can’t help piling […]
by Robert Waldmann (lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) The Empty Quarter, Greenwich and the Mason Dixon Line I recall being surprised to learn that I was born, bred and then living South of the Mason Dixon line. I considered the border between North and South to be the Patomac river (honestly felt I was entering enemy […]
A decelerating Staffing Index suggests that weakening temporary jobs in the monthly employment report is not just noise Every week I report the YoY 4 week rolling average of American Staffing Association’s Index. It’s been decelerating recently, and last week was up only +0.5% YoY. On a single week basis, though, it went negative. Because […]
(There’s a movie at the end!) For decades we have been hearing about the loss of industrial production through out what is called the “Rust Belt”. It’s presented, even as recent as the prior presidential election as a relative regional problem that only began post Reagan. What gets me though is that the reporting and […]
Ruminations On Virginia’s Difficult Situation A week ago, I posted here supporting VA Gov Ralph Northam, comparing him favorably to the late Robert C. Byrd of WV. A day later I joined the call for him to resign after his bizarre press conference that has still left unpleasant unresolved issues such as who put that […]
“I’m not sure I follow the arithmetic here.” “Unless productivity goes up by at least 25% to compensate, everyone will be worse off.” “Dropping hours from 5 days a week to 4 means that the work that would have been done in 5 days now needs to be done in 4, which means each day […]