[unable to retrieve full-text content]Angry Bears’ New Deal democrat discusses JOLTS frequently. I am not sure if everyone knows what it means. I believe it calls for a short explanation. The acronym JOLTS is an abbreviation for “Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces JOLTS reports monthly and also annual estimates of job […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] – by New Deal democrat To review briefly, the monthly JOLTS reports give us a more granular look at the employment sector, but are delayed by one month vs. the jobs report. Like the jobs reports, most JOLTS series have shown deceleration for several years. The question over the last year has been whether they […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Scenes from Friday’s jobs report: the (totally contradictory) Big Picture  – by New Deal democrat There is no important economic data today, so let’s take a closer look at some of the noteworthy items from Friday’s jobs report. I’ll start out with the Establishment Survey side and then turn to the Household Survey side. Goods […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Sunday March 9th The “Constitutional Interregnum”  – by New Deal democrat Is there anything that can be done with a President who has the support of 1/3+ one member of the Senate?  Since he can’t be impeached and convicted, which requires 2/3’s of the Senate, and as of last July per the Supreme Court he is […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. The malign and moronic “policies” of the 2nd T—-p Administration so far have driven Economic Policy Uncertain to all time record highs: But despite that, the rumblings under the surface of the data have been quite minor so far. There are changes in […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]but some 3+ year highs in unemployment metrics  – by New Deal democrat My question over the past year has been whether “decleration” would turn into “deterioration.” For a “soft landing,” deceleration would need to end, and the numbers stabilize, vs. continuing to deteriorate towards an actual downturn.  The verdict this month was mixed. On the […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Jobless claims decline back into neutral territory  – by New Deal democrat After last week’s big jump, this week initial jobless claims declined -21,000 to 221,000. The four-week moving average increased 250 to 224,250. With the typical one-week delay, continuing claims rose 42,000 to 1.897 million: On the more important YoY basis for forecasting purposes, […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Economically weighted ISM indexes for February indicate continued slow growth  – by New Deal democrat Because manufacturing is now of much less importance to the economy than in the decades before the Millennium, I now use a weighted average of the ISM services index (75%) as well as manufacturing (25%) as the primary forecasting tool. […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]– by New Deal democrat There’s no important economic data today, so this is a good time to write about several important developments in the stock and bond markets. First of all, as many of you may already know, a portion of the US Treasury yield curve, between the 10 year and 3 month Treasuries, re-inverted […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]– by New Deal democrat Although manufacturing is of diminishing importance to the economy, (it was in deep contraction both in 2015-16 and again in 2022 without any recession), the ISM manufacturing index remains an important indicator with a 75+ year history of accurately describing that sector and forecasting it over the short term.  Any […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. Last week I wrote that exogenous factors – like political decisions – could have nearly simultaneous effects across all timeframes of indicators. In other words, the long and short leading indicators as well as the coincident indicators, could all react at the […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] – by New Deal democrat There were two important points in this morning’s personal income and spending report for January. The first is that there appears to be some unresolved seasonality at work. The second is that nevertheless both were weaker than one year ago. Nominally personal income rose 0.9%, while spending declined -0.2%. Since […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]– by New Deal democrat This week’s report on initial jobless claims was of particular interest, because of the issue of whether Federal employees laid off by the new Administration would cause an increase. It appears they did. Initial jobless claims rose 22,000 for the week to 242,000, and the four week moving average rose 8,500 […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]More unwelcome news in (new) house prices, while sales continue sideways trend  – by New Deal democrat I almost always start out my post on new home sales by indicating that, while they are the most leading of all housing metrics, they are very noisy and heavily revised. That was true in spades for this […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]– by New Deal democrat There was unwelcome news in this morning’s repeat home sales reports from the FHFA and Case-Shiller. On a seasonally adjusted basis, in the three-month average through December, according to the Case-Shiller national index (light blue in the graphs below) prices rose 0.5%, and the somewhat more leading FHFA purchase only index (dark […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Q3 2024 QCEW suggests employment was considerably weaker than we thought last year – by New Deal democrat This will be income, spending, and housing week, but that won’t start until tomorrow. While there’s no news today, there was an important update to employment data last week; namely, the QCEW for Q3 of last year. […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] – by New Deal democrat Existing home sales have been flat in the general range of 3.85 -4.10 million annualized for two years, and that continued in January, as on a monthly basis sales decreased -4.9% to 40.8 million from an upwardly revised December number of 4.29 million annualized: The slightly better numbers in the […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]– by New Deal democrat Let’s take our weekly look at jobless claims. These are a short leading labor market indicator. Also, it is likely that the firings in the federal labor force will shortly be reflected in this data. This week initial claims rose 5,000 to 219,000, while the four week average declined -1,000 […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Housing construction declines further into recessionary territory  – by New Deal democrat As promised, economic data resumed this morning, and with it my extended posts. First, the usual point that housing is a very important and leading sector of the economy, typically turning down more than a year before a recession begins. And with higher […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Data drought continues  – by New Deal democrat There is no new significant economic data today, and I am on the road. Meaningful reporting should resume tomorrow with housing permits, starts, and construction. In the meantime, here is a look at a high frequency series I keep track of: Redbook retail sales, for the past […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]– by New Deal democrat There’s no significant economic news today. Since I didn’t publish a link to my “Weekly Indicators” post up at Seeking Alpha over the weekend, here it is now. Left to its own devices, as I’ve written a number of times recently, the economy is in “steady as she goes” mode, with few […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] – by New Deal democrat It’s that time of month again for my favorite indicator for the consumption side of the economy: retail sales have been tracked for over 75 years. When they are lower YoY, that has historically been a good (not perfect) indicator that a recession is near. That’s because that same 75-year […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]– by New Deal democrat Now that we are well past the Holidays, seasonality has settled down and so have the comparisons for jobless claims. Initial claims declined -7,000 to 213,000 last week, and the four-week average declined -1,000 to 216,000. With the usual one week delay, continued claims declined -36,000 to 1.850 million: On […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]January CPI: a new paradigm, with the reappearance of some old suspects  – by New Deal democrat Needless to say, January’s increase of 0.5% in consumer prices was not welcome. And there was a changing of the guard somewhat, as several of the old suspects (food and energy) made new appearances. Some of the spike […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] – by New Deal democrat While we are waiting for new economic data tomorrow, let me pick up on an issue I closed with yesterday: while manufacturing has turned down, goods production in the US economy is being held up by construction, and in particular residential construction. Given the severe hike in mortgage rates as well […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]– by New Deal democrat There’s no new significant news until Wednesday, so let’s catch up graphically with a few important items from Friday’s employment report for January. As I wrote then, probably the most important developments weren’t in the monthly numbers, but rather the annual revisions to both the Establishment and Household Surveys.  For […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Real retail sales on the cusp of breaking out of their multi-year doldrums  – by New Deal democrat Consumption leads employment, and as I reiterated yesterday real per capita retail sales has a history as a long leading indicator. Which means that retail sales for November, which rose 0.7% nominally, continues its recent strong string […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] – by New Deal democrat I haven’t “officially” updated my take on the long leading indicators – those that forecast a recession at least one year beforehand – in almost two years. That’s because the hurricane force tailwind of the supply-side deflationary unlinking of the global supply chain completely swamped everything else. So if I […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Weekly Indicators for December 9 – 13  – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. While the short-term forecast and nowcast have remained relatively constant, the “action” has been in the long leading indicators – some things good, some bad. The biggest thing that happened this week is that the […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] – by New Deal democrat With the update on inflation earlier this week, let’s take a look a real average wages and real aggregate payrolls. Plus there is a significant update to my yellow flag caution on the employment situation. First, nominally nonsupervisory wages rose slightly under 0.3% in November, while consumer prices rose slightly […]
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