Robert Waldmann Don’t say you weren’t warned. I am trying to understand the effects of the switch from mechanically controlled machine tools to electronically controlled machine tools and then to digitally controlled machine tools. I don’t really know much about machine tools, but, then again, I don’t know much about firms or the business cycle […]

rdan The New York Times notes that a report titled Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America’s Cities on wage theft will be released Wednesday in the afternoon. UPDATE: PDF available here.

by Rebecca Wilder Thrill. The Conference Board reported that the August consumer confidence index (CCI) jumped 14% in August to 54.06. In contrast, the August University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment index (CSI) fell; but the two generally trend together, and the CSI is subject to revisions reported tomorrow. Confidence can be swayed by current political […]

By Spencer, Yesterday in describing the employment report I said: Moreover, the manufacturing work week rose from 39.5 to 39.8 hours and overtime hours were 2.9 hours versus 2.8 in the second quarter. Much of this was auto and confirms the other reports that at least auto output is rebounding. I was criticized and accused […]

By Spencer, The employment report was very encouraging. Most importantly, aggregate hours worked were unchanged at 91.1 as compared to 104.1, 101.7 and 99.7 over the last three quarters. An unchanged reading is a massive improvement from the 8% to 9% rate of decline over the past three quarters. With positive productivity this impies that […]

should read Sensible Centrist J. Bradford DeLong on the difference in forecasting between the current Administration and the CEA under N. Gregory Mankiw. Romer/Bernstein/Kreuger et al., 2008-9 edition: As I understand matters, last December the median private-sector forecast had the unemployment rate topping out at 9% in the second half of 2009. The incoming Obama […]

Via Dr. Black, those RBC models may be missing a variable or two: In April, the rate in the United States rose to 8.9 percent. When the European figures are compiled, it seems likely that the American rate will be higher for the first time since Eurostat began compiling the numbers in 1993…. First, it […]

Unemployed persons (seasonally adjusted) appears to be approaching 10,000,000. The other interesting thing about the table is that December 2007 now looks as if it was much worse than was reported at the time: another piece of data that might indicate that we have been in a recession since Q4 2007.