The Angry Bear

November inflation tame again, with the economy weak, but real wage gains strong Consumer prices rose 0.2% in November on a seasonally adjusted basis, but declined -0.1% unadjusted: As shown in the above graph, a November decline in prices is typical. This year’s decline was less than either of the past two years.On a YoY basis, consumer prices were only up 1.2%: For the past 40 years, recessions had typically happened when CPI less...

Prof. Peter Dorman of Evergreen College writes at EconoSpeak and portrays Matt Yglesias’s retrospective on how the healthcare establishment failed the public when passing information on facemasks, hand-washing, distancing, etc., and how Covid is transmitted. The direct result of not following these practices or casting doubt upon them is an elevation of Covid cases which strains the capacity and logistics of healthcare facilities, the equipment...

Given the makeup of the Supreme Court after 3 conservative appointments to the court, I was concerned as to what the outcome of the Court’s decision might be. Whether they would agree with Texas and trump was the concern. The italicized sentence is basically the Court’s decision. The note from Alito and Thomas being an acceptance of the motion for review and not grant the petitioner relief. “The justices’ dissents, though, are considerably less...

The new AB commenting and posting has been up for at least a week now. I would like to hear what “you” the commenters are seeing or experiencing when you comment. Please let us know so we can correct or improve what has been changed. Letting us know what you like is helpful also. Some things I have noticed: The system is slow to get into for posting and commenting.Commenters are ending up in the trash bin where I have to go and restore their...

Ophelia at “Butterflies and Wheels” has a commentary about the protests in front of the home of Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson which makes for a good read along with the comments. Follow the link. It is one thing to write a letter of protest to a politician and quite another to invade the proximity of a person’s home, within shouting distance, and upset the occupants which included a child. Meanwhile the Republican leaders...

Tags: open thread

JOLTS report for October: similar to previous 2 recoveries, but a decline in actual hiring may be a warning This morning’s JOLTS report for October showed a jobs market recovery that, for one month at least, paused. Openings and quits were up (good), but layoffs and discharges were also up (bad) while hires were down (bad). While the JOLTS data is a deep dive into the dynamics of the labor market, since it only dates from 2001, there are only...

Noah Smith wrote a very interesting post on how macroeconomists are behaving very differently in 2020 than in 2008-9 : The new macro: “Give people money” . He notes two differences : first there is little discussing of theory or of the models used in most peer reviewed articles, second there is (as far as he can tell and he would know more than me) a virtual consensus that we need stimulus and that austerity would be a mistake. Or as a tweet...

Four measures of labor market losses in the pandemic Below is a graph of 4 ways of measuring the downturn in the labor market due to the pandemic:1. Payrolls (blue) – this is the headline jobs number from the establishment survey2. Civilian employment (green) – this is the equivalent number from the household survey.3. Aggregate hours worked (red) – tracks hours rather than jobs.4. Aggregate payrolls (gold) – tracks total payrolls rather than...