Both manufacturing and construction continue to contract  – by New Deal democrat As usual, we start the month with data on last month’s manufacturing activity, and the previous month’s construction activity. This month, both were negative. The ISM manufacturing index, which has had an excellent record as a leading indicator for the past 75 years, […]

YoY house price gains continue to decline  – by New Deal democrat Today is a travel day so I have to keep this brief.  On a monthly basis for January, prices rose 0.2% as measured by the FHFA house price index. But because that was far less of an increase in January last year, YoY […]

Jobless claims: the situation remains, ‘all system go’  – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims declined -2,000 last week to 190,000, while the 4 week moving average increased 1,750 to 193,000. Continuing claims, with a one week delay, increased 5,000 to 1,655,000. All of these remain excellent numbers: To repeat my meme over the […]

Housing prices continue to come 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 and starts both peaked early in 2022, and house prices followed during the summer. This morning the FHFA and Case Shiller […]

Durable goods orders: more deceleration, still no recession  – by New Deal democrat I normally don’t pay too much attention to durable goods orders. That’s because they are very noisy. They don’t always turn down in advance of a recession (see 2007-08), although they may at least stall, and there are a number of false […]

New home sales: a bright spot in the housing indicators  – by New Deal democrat New home sales are very noisy, and are heavily revised, which is why I pay more attention to single family housing permits. But they do have one important value: they are frequently the first housing indicator to turn at both […]

Strong upward revisions push real personal income to new highs, put 2 important coincident indicators firmly in expansion territory  – by New Deal democrat Almost all of the news in this morning’s release for personal income and spending for January was positive. Nominally, personal income rose +0.6% and personal spending rose 1.8%. The deflator also […]

Existing home sales and prices decline further, BUT . . .  – by New Deal democrat Even though existing home sales make up about 90% of the total market, they have much less economic impact than new home construction. They are best used to confirm trends. In January they continued to confirm that sales have […]

This is a long one and a C&P. Other than putting it up at Angry Bear, I can not take credit for this one. What I can say is . . . they are not the first ones to accuse Supply Chain for much of the inflationary issues we have had as a nation. In […]

Real average wages and real aggregate payrolls for nonsupervisory workers through January  – by New Deal democrat With no new data today, to close out the week let’s update real average wages and aggregate payrolls for nonsupervisory workers. This is the best way, based on monthly data, to see how average Americans are doing financially. While […]