Initial claims: yellow caution flag turns more orange  – by New Deal democrat Initial claims, which were one of the most positive indicators of all last year, have turned darker in the last several months, and are edging closer to triggering their recession warning levels. Claims were unchanged at a revised 264,000 last week, the […]

Housing under construction increases back close to record; good economic news, but ammunition for a hawkish Fed  – by New Deal democrat Last month I wrote that “the Fed’s sledgehammer attempt via one of the most aggressive rate hike campaigns in its history appears to be on the verge of failure. That’s because housing construction, […]

A comment on Juneteenth; and what I’ll be looking for in tomorrow’s housing report  – by New Deal democrat That Juneteenth is a national holiday ought to be a full rebuttal to those who think that teaching the entirety of American history, including its worst moments, is somehow an insult to the majority. That enslavement […]

Weekly Indicators for June 12 – 16 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Stocks are really buying the “soft landing” scenario, rising to repeated 12 month+ highs, apparently anticipating that corporate profits will be off to the races again. Meanwhile, when we look at consumer […]

Real retail sales continue to suggest recession, decelerating employment gains  – by New Deal democrat The second of the three important datapoints this morning was retail sales for May. This is one of my favorite indicators, because it has several leading relationships, and is also an important component of one of the main data series […]

Industrial production continues to falter in May  – by New Deal democrat My final update this morning is for industrial production, the King of Coincident Indicators, which has most frequently corresponded with peaks and troughs in economic activity as determined by the NBER. The news for total production was not good, as it declined -0.2% […]

Initial and continuing claims edge closer to signaling recession  – by New Deal democrat There’s a blizzard of data this morning. I’ll report on retail sales and Industrial production later. But let’s start with initial jobless claims, which were unchanged this week at 262,000, the highest level in over 18 months. The 4 week average increased […]

Producer prices continue sharp deceleration; real average and aggregate nonsupervisory pay continues to increase  – by New Deal democrat Historically producer prices were more upstream of consumer prices, but since the 1990s and the employment of “just-in-time” inventories, that has been less the case. So I normally don’t pay too much attention to the monthly […]

Are personal consumption expenditures a helpful forecasting (or even nowcasting) metric? An overview  – by New Deal democrat As I’ve noted a number of times recently, in addition to payrolls the other positive datapoint keeping the economy growing is real personal spending. Here is what it looks like in total, plus broken down by goods […]

Scenes from the May employment report: leading indicators and the big picture  – by New Deal democrat As I wrote Friday, the May employment report was deeply bifurcated, with a strong Establishment survey, but a weak Household survey.   Let’s take a look at some of that bifurcation, focusing on the leading indicators. There are […]