Tag Archives: US EConomics

April jobs report: deceleration continues, with sharp downward revisions to previous months’ gains  – by New Deal democrat My focus for this report continued to be whether the leading sectors and other indicators continued to decline, and whether the pace of growth continued to decelerate. While the deceleration in growth did occur – and substantially so – the leading sectors were decidedly mixed, with some – notably the unemployment and...

Bankrupt Bed Bath & Beyond goes after container shipping lines, freightwaves.com, Greg Miller Kind of an interesting story if true. Bed, Bath, and Beyond contracted for a specific number of containers to haul their ordered product from one destination to the US. From the way the allegations go, the Container Company/Shipper failed to provide the containers and sold the space on the ships to others for a higher amount. Bed, Bath, and Beyond has...

Jobless claims hoist yellow flag again; employment and unemployment likely to show further deceleration tomorrow  – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims rose 13,000 to 242,000 last week, while the 4 week average rose 3,500 to 239,250. Continuing claims, with a one week lag, declined -38,000 to 1.805 million: This is right in the range of the past 2 months. YoY initial claims are up 11.0%, the 4 week average is up 10.8%, and...

The Biden administration and congressional Democrats have so far refused to negotiate with House Republicans over spending cuts to resolve the looming debt ceiling crisis.  This tactic has successfully pressured Republicans into passing a bill with unpopular spending cuts that Democrats will quite rightly use to their advantage in the upcoming election.  But now that the House Republicans have put a plan on the table it will be difficult for...

The un(der)employment rate leads wage growth: 2023 update  – by New Deal democrat I had already planned on taking an updated look at wage growth today, but there was a little flutter on twitter about job openings and last week’s Q1 wage and benefits data, so that sealed the deal. To wit: as I used to write many times during the last expansion, wage growth is a long lagging indicator. It tends to increase only after unemployment (or even...

14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868) | National Archives, Section 4. “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against...

March JOLTS report shows labor market about halfway to pre-pandemic normalization  – by New Deal democrat The title of this piece is an important to clue the relative nature of this morning’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover report for March. For the last several years, the jobs market has been a game of “reverse musical chairs,” where there are always more chairs than participants. Those employers whose chairs weren’t filled had to increase...

Another collection of articles on various topics from my In-Box. Puling quite a bit from Healthcare. Some interesting articles in this batch. I hope you take a few moments and read some of them. Most are not terribly long winded. I wander in the comments section to see what is being said on various topics. I am not impressed with many of the responses. The ones on carrying bullet-spewing-weapons are just plain ignorant. Healthcare Doctor on...

Manufacturing and construction start out the month’s data to the negative side  – by New Deal democrat As usual, we start the month with reports on last month’s manufacturing, and construction from two months ago. The ISM manufacturing index has a 75 year record of being a very reliable leading indicator. According to the ISM, readings below 48 are consistent with an oncoming recession. And there, the news is not good. Not only has the index...

Commenter Fred Dobbs reports (NYT) on the seizure of First Republic Bank by banking regulators in the comments section of Angry Bear. I am beginning to wonder how many more seizures will occur. How many failures are resulting from the loosening of Dodd-Frank? It appears the Fed has a greater impact on banks than Labor. JP Morgan Chase to the rescue . . . Earlier Angry Bear commentary on Dodd – Frank here and here. Fred Dobbs comment; First...