– by New Deal democrat The JOLTS report is low on my list of useful tools, but it does break down the labor market further than the jobs report, and it does have several slightly leading components, so let’s take a look at the latest report, which is for April. Below are job openings (blue), […]

AB: For the last few months, New Deal democrat has been watching an economy on the brink of a recession. Still not quite there yet. The one factor keeping us above board is AI. A quick explanation why. The pending on AI infrastructure accounts for a large portion of U.S. GDP growth today. Such offsets […]

 President Donald Trump returned from the spectacle of a Chinese state visit to a less than welcoming U.S. economy . . . with the military band and garden tour in Beijing giving way to pressure over how to fix America’s escalating inflation rate. I would be curious as to what the Chinese thought of the […]

– by New Deal democrat April data started out as usual with the ISM manufacturing index. There was some good news, but mainly bad news. The good news was that the headline ISM number (blue in the graph below) remained positive, and was unchanged at 52.7 (recall that any number above 50.0 indicates expansion). The more […]

– by New Deal democrat As I reiterated the other day, housing is the one long leading signal of the economy that has been soundly negative – indeed frankly recessionary – for the past year. That trend continued in March, although there are signs of it bottoming out. Without having caused a recession.  Let me start […]

 – by New Deal democrat Three housing metrics have been reported between yesterday and today. Yesterday Apartment List updated their National Rent Report, and today the two national repeat home sales indexes, from the FHFA and Case-Shiller, were updated through February. To cut to the chase, all three confirm that housing prices have ceased being an […]

– by New Deal democrat In the past week, I have been updating my suite of long leading indicators. First I looked at “real” consumer-focused indicators. Then I looked at housing, an important interface between consumers and producers, as well as corporate profits. Next I updated interest rate indicators. I this final installment I will […]

 – by New Deal democrat As I noted earlier this week, I haven’t updated my suite of long leading indicators in a while, mainly because they have been overwhelmed by the economic chaos emanating from Washington, and partly also because several important ones are in terra incognito. On Monday and Wednesday I updated the non-financial […]

– by New Deal democrat So much of the changes to the economy has been dictated by the whims of the White House that it has not made much sense to throughly update the suite of long leading indicators in many months. After all, why chart their incipient effects when they are consistently being overtaken by […]

“March industrial production mainly continues stagnant trend”  – by New Deal democrat Since I didn’t get to it yesterday, let me say a few words about yesterday’s industrial production report for March this morning. I used to call this “the King of Coincident Indicators,” but with the shrinking of manufacturing as a share of the US […]