Tag Archives: Hot Topics

 – by New Deal democrat As per usual, the Monday after jobs report Friday does not update any significant data. So let me return to the deep divergence between the Household and Establishment Surveys in the jobs report. With Friday’s data for May, the two have now diverged 1.9% over the past year, adjusted for the size of the prime working age population: This big a divergence has only happened previously twice in the 1960s, and one month...

Russ Vought is a Trump loyalist who believes we live in a “post-Constitutional” nation:““We are living in a post-Constitutional time,” Vought wrote in a seminal 2022 essay, which argued that the left has corrupted the nation’s laws and institutions. Last week, after a jury convicted Trump of falsifying business records, Vought tweeted: “Do not tell me that we are living under the Constitution.”‘Post-Constitutional’ sounds suspiciously similar to...

I am not going to put Preston Mui’s entire Labor Market Recap May 2024: Still Cool report from Employ America up on Angry Bear. Most of all, I wanted his summation of what he was seeing. He gives up his reasoning as to why the two surveys differ. It is an easy read if you wish to indulge. He would probably appreciate the reading of his commentary like we at Angry Bear enjoy your reading it and comments. No place for comments. In entirety, it is a...

I will probably have New Deal democrats’ commentary up on Angry Bear shortly. This arrived in my mailbox this morning. It would have been up much sooner for readers; except I am about three hours behind many of you. So, this is timely for me. I agree with Robert Reich and have said what he is claiming as far as corporate control of price increases blaming supply chain is also economic manipulation. It is no surprise to me. Corporations did similar...

Flying became more expensive. The last time we flew and whether I was American Advantage or not, there still was a fee to check bags. So we checked our bags outside of the terminal as it was easier and less expensive. There was never a fee outside of the terminal. Now there was. Once American put it into play, they started to charge. It was not a big deal to us. Overall, the airlines have a monopoly. And can get away with egregious actions. If one...

 – by New Deal democrat I’ll write about today’s ISM non-manufacturing report later, but first I wanted to follow up with several more graphs based on yesterday’s JOLTS labor report for April. Basically, I didn’t want to leave the impression that the labor market was in any way sub-par based on those numbers. With that in mind, below are two graphs. Both show the entire history of hires (red) and quits (gold) normed to 100 as of the yesterday’s...

 – by New Deal democrat The JOLTS report for April showed most metrics rebounding slightly from March lows, with the exception of the “soft data” job openings. The overall picture is that hiring is weak relative to the past five years, but so are layoffs, and voluntary quits are equally relatively strong, balancing them out. To wit: job openings (blue in the graph below), a soft statistic that is polluted by imaginary, permanent, and trolling...

In a rebuke to the standard economic model that demand drives supply, housing prices in the US these days continue to rise. How much of this is due to local regulation vs cost of new home construction is above my pay grade. But the claim is that 3D printed homes can mitigate shortages in affordable new home construction:“Dozens of 3D-printed homes have been built across the world – to house a family in the US state of Virginia or members of an...

 – by New Deal democrat As usual, the month starts out with important data on manufacturing and construction. The news was mixed this month and weighted more to the downside in my opinion. First, the ISM report on manufacturing declined again slightly to 48.7. This is the second month in a row that this index has been under the equipoise point of 50. More importantly, the more leading new orders subindex declined sharply to 45.4, the lowest...

Steve Hutkins of Save the Post Office giving an update on Louis Dejoy’s Delivering for America Plan. The expectation has been to cut costs through minimizing operations by moving mail between regional centers and delivering to fewer Post Offices. So far in Georgia and in particular Atlanta, the plan has not been working as well as Louis expected. Instead of increasing efficiency, 1st Class Mail is late by days. Instead of decreasing costs, First...