An excellent headline jobs number may mask unresolved seasonality, while unemployment weakness “stuck” at a higher level – by New Deal democrat As per my reporting earlier this week, my focus this month was on whether wage and jobs growth continue to decelerate, and whether the unemployment rate would remain “sticky” at its higher, 3.8%, […]
Jobless claims: close but no cigar for the red flag – by New Deal democrat Initial claims declined -9,000 to 228,000 last week, and the four week average declined -9,250 to 237,500. Continuing claims, with a one week delay, rose 33,000 to 1.754 million: More importantly for forecasting purposes, initial claims are up 7.0% YoY, the […]
New Deal democrat has been doing JOLTS reports for a long time. Some of you may understand what NDd is discussing and some may not. Just a quick one liner to help you understand why this is important. JOLTS is a monthly survey of U.S. job vacancies, hiring, and job separations released by the Bureau […]
March jobs report: leading sectors turn down in a pre-recessionary, but still quite positive, report – by New Deal democrat Unsurprisingly, my focus on this report, like the last few reports, was on whether residential construction jobs turned negative or not, whether manufacturing and temporary jobs continued on their downward trajectory, and whether the deceleration […]
Scenes from the blockbuster jobs report 1: in January, nobody* got laid off! (*hyperbole) – by New Deal democrat There’s no important new economic data until Thursday this week. Meanwhile, there was lots to digest about Friday’s blockbuster jobs report, which I have now done, so I’m going to spend a couple (maybe 3!) days […]
January jobs report: like a sports car at maximum acceleration – by New Deal democrat My focus on this report was on whether manufacturing and construction jobs turned negative or not, and whether the deceleration apparent in job growth would continue. Both of those were answered emphatically in the negative. Here’s my in depth synopsis. HEADLINES: […]
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 […]
July jobs report: in which an absolute positive blowout make me happily wrong; all pandemic job losses now recovered – by New Deal democrat As I wrote earlier this week, the short leading indicators for both jobs (real retail sales) and the unemployment rate (initial jobless claims) have each signaled that we should expect weaker […]
Real retail sales declined in November, but continue to auger well for strong jobs growth, New Deal Democrat Retail sales, one of my favorite “real” economic indicators, were reported this morning for November. They increased 0.3% for the month, and October’s blockbuster report was revised 0.1% higher, to +1.8%. After inflation, though, “real” retail sales declined […]
I stumbled upon this article riding home yesterday. It is a pod cast called: On the Media. I catch it at times on my local NPR. Some very intriguing discussions are presented. This one is very timely considering the great dropout in the work force. Or, “resignation” as it is being called. It caught my […]