Scenes from the blockbuster January jobs report 2: revisions do not resolve discrepancies in the reports – by New Deal democrat Yesterday I wrote that the blockbuster January jobs report was essentially the result of two factors: (1) a very low number of potential applicants in the jobs pool with an unemployment rate well under 4% […]
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 […]
Weekly Indicators for January 30 – February 3 at Seeking Alpha – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. While yesterday’s blockbuster jobs report dominated the monthly reports, several important weekly reports, notably the 4 week average of retail sales as measured by Redbook, and the temporary Staffing Index, weakened further […]
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: […]
JOLTS and jobless claims: the labor market remains a strong positive – by New Deal democrat The message from the JOLTS report for December yesterday and jobless claims for last week today is that the labor market remains the strongest sector of the economy, with plenty of unfilled job openings, and almost no layoffs. Initial […]
House price indexes for November: up like a rocket, down like a feather – by New Deal democrat As I’ve repeated many times in the past 10 years, in housing prices follow sales with a lag. Housing permits peaked at the beginning of 2022, and starts followed several months later. This morning the FHFA and […]
Durable goods orders come in mixed; leaving only employment indicators as short term positives for the economy – by New Deal democrat Manufacturers’ durable goods orders, and in particular “core” orders, which exclude defense and transportation (a/k/a Boeing), are (albeit noisy) a short leading indicator. I normally don’t pay too much attention to them because […]
How “FHFA-CPI” using house prices rather than OER shows a sharp deceleration in inflation – by New Deal democrat Paul Krugman made another foray into the “inflation is mostly gone” genre over the weekend with a thread on Mastodon that largely relied on the following graph: concluding that “[A]t this point the burden of proof lies on […]
Jobless claims continue their string of good news – by New Deal democrat If yesterday’s economic data was bad, this morning’s was considerably better (I’ll post on housing construction later). Initial jobless claims declined 15,000 to 195,000, tied for their best number in almost 8 months. The 4 week moving average declined 6,500 to 206,000, […]
The important trend in retail sales that Redbook’s weekly report is telling us about – by New Deal democrat This is the first of hopefully two posts I will put up today. Tomorrow retail sales for December will be reported. In advance of that, I wanted to discuss their comparison with the weekly high-frequency data […]