Tag Archives: US EConomics

September JOLTS report: slow progress towards a new equilibrium This morning’s JOLTS report covers September, at the beginning of which the Delta wave peaked and then gradually receded for the remainder of the month. It is also the month that the last of pandemic emergency benefits ended.  We did see the second consecutive decline in job openings, as they decreased 191,000 to 10.438 million (blue in the graph below), while actual hiring...

Seldom do we get the chance to build something the way it should be. For the internet, the first chance was back in the 1990s. Not enough was known then. We’ve learned a lot the hard way since. Let us begin our design by asking, “How best to utilize the internet?” It is apparent that everyone needs, should have basic access. Access on the order of that afforded by the U. S. Postal Service all the years. Like the Postal Service over all the years,...

 by New Deal democrat Why Yesterday’s CPI report was so important As promised, here is a link to my article, Why Yesterday’s CPI Report was such a Big Deal, over at Seeking Alpha. I go into a great deal of detail parsing the report, particularly with regard to how the huge increase in house prices as has been recorded by both the Case Shiller and FHFA house price indexes, is now bleeding over into “owner’s equivalent rent,” the CPI’s...

Producer price inflation: it’s a gas! I normally do not pay much attention to producer prices, but with the huge increase in spending earlier this year and the ensuing supply bottlenecks taking center stage, the course of inflation has emerged as the most pressing economic issue. To recap briefly, with the second round of pandemic stimulus checks early this year, retail spending increased over 10% between last October and this past March; and...

MarketWatch 666: Commenter and Blogger RJS; October’s jobs report; September’s trade deficit, construction spending, and factory inventories, et al Major economic reports that were released the past week included the Employment Situation Summary for October from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and three September reports that included metrics which were either estimated or included in last week’s release of 3rd quarter GDP: the Commerce Dept...

MarketWatch 666: Commenter and Blogger RJS; October’s jobs report; September’s trade deficit, construction spending, and factory inventories, et al Major economic reports that were released the past week included the Employment Situation Summary for October from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and three September reports that included metrics which were either estimated or included in last week’s release of 3rd quarter GDP: the Commerce Dept...

Money Illusion in the Twenty-First Century The starting point for any consideration of inflation is that wages (and interest, profits, and rents) are prices.  Every transaction has two sides, and one person’s price is another’s income.  In the aggregate, leaving aside international complications, inflation can’t have either a negative or positive effect on aggregate real income.  After this, you can explore issues of distribution, inflation’s...

Money Illusion in the Twenty-First Century The starting point for any consideration of inflation is that wages (and interest, profits, and rents) are prices.  Every transaction has two sides, and one person’s price is another’s income.  In the aggregate, leaving aside international complications, inflation can’t have either a negative or positive effect on aggregate real income.  After this, you can explore issues of distribution, inflation’s...

October jobs report: a very strong report putting to rest questions about the strength of the expansion  In the light of the last two month’s relatively “poor” jobs readings, an important question was what was going to happen with revisions. As we will see below, they really delivered! – big positive revisions to both of the last two months’ numbers. Additionally, I have been watching manufacturing hours and payrolls, to see if that white-hot...

October jobs report: a very strong report putting to rest questions about the strength of the expansion  In the light of the last two month’s relatively “poor” jobs readings, an important question was what was going to happen with revisions. As we will see below, they really delivered! – big positive revisions to both of the last two months’ numbers. Additionally, I have been watching manufacturing hours and payrolls, to see if that white-hot...