– by New Deal democrat I’ve written repeatedly in the past few months that I am paying especial attention to the manufacturing and construction sectors for signs of weakness now that the supply chain tailwind for the economy has ended. At the beginning of this month, one show appeared to have dropped, as the ISM report on manufacturing showed contraction for the second month in a row, declining slightly to 48.7, with the more leading new orders...
Read More »Jobless claims still positive for forecasting purposes; the unresolved seasonality issue should be resolved shortly
– by New Deal democrat This morning’s jobless claims report continued the uptrend we’ve seen for the past month. But it still looks more likely than not that it is mainly unresolved post-pandemic seasonality. We’ll probably get a more definitive answer to that issue in th next several weeks. Initial Jobless claims declined 5,000 for the week to 238,000. The 4 week moving average rose 5,500 to a new 9 month high of 232,750. With the typical one...
Read More »CEOs Salary Up nearly 200 times what workers were paid last year – 2023
It appears upper management is running away with most of the compensation. Adding to this is the lowered taxes resulting from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which was passed using Reconciliation. The TCJA is due to reverse in 2025. I am sure President Biden will reverse it for the upper 20% at least. ~~~~~~~ NEW YORK (AP) — Compensation packages for S&P CEOs running companies jumped nearly 13% last year. This easily surpasses the gains for...
Read More »The economy during Biden’s tenure has not been kind to young person’s looking to buy or rent property
– by New Deal democrat I saw a graph within the past few days (which unfortunately I did not make a copy of) indicating Biden’s polling problems are not against Trump per se so much as they are the failure of Biden to consolidate support among young voters, especially voters of color, vs. Trump’s having already consolidated his base support. One reason, is the huge generational divide in how the Israel/Palestine issue is viewed. But the other...
Read More »Oversized Vehicles of Transportation
Parking where you should not park with your oversized toy. This picture was also on Reddit. I believe the original pic(s) are from here: “Driver shares photo high-lighting a parking problem with oversized vehicles: ‘These cars are pointless,'” The Cooldown. According to one Planning Commission member in Arizona, sixty percent of the vehicles being purchased are pickup trucks. Most of these vehicles are used for non-work travel. Maybe some...
Read More »Increasing manufacturing in May. Expectation is less in June due to FED Rate
May 2024 manufacturing report. Manufacturing was up in May after following two months of it being down in April and March. There is belief, manufacturing will be down in June as the FED did not reduce the FED Rate. I also suspect manufacturing will not take off in June. However, I believe it will be no worst then May. The demand is there. In order to meet demand, companies will stay within their budgets to manufacture. Unless there is a price...
Read More »Wage Growth Is Declining Across Sectors, but Not at the Same Rate
This particular graph was pulled from an April 2024 Morning Star article. The source of it being the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It depicts wage growth before during and after the Pandemic. In particular I believe the government did quite well in providing for and protecting its citizens during the pandemic when many people could not work. The stimulus packages may have caused some of the wage growth and inflation. There are other things which are...
Read More »Good news on production is overshadowed by the yellow caution flag of flagging real retail sales
– by New Deal democrat There was good news and not so good news in this morning’s two important data releases. I’ll start with the good news. Both total industrial production and its manufacturing component increased a sharp 0.9% in May. Even after downward revisions of -0.4% in March and -0.3% in April, both were still up 0.5% compared with where we thought we were one month ago: The only fly in the ointment is that both are still...
Read More »Overreacting to Inflation While the Labor Market Cools
Post-June FOMC: By Overreacting Hawkishly, the Fed Risks Being Behind the Ball by Preston Mui employ america org The simple fact as seen in a longer-run view, inflation has fallen greatly. Whether you start from its peak at 5.6% in February 2022 or 4.2% when the Fed raised rates to the current level, core PCE inflation—which is on track to deliver a 2.6% year-on-year read for May 2024—is most of the way back to 2%. The inflation...
Read More »Immigration and the housing market freeze are making the “last mile” of disinflation harder, not the Phillips Curve
If you look at Part 1 and Part 2 of The Demographic Outlook: 2024 to 2054 CBO projections. The estimation of Net Immigration varies anywhere from 2.7 to 3.3 million to the US in 2024. In Part 1, of CBO’s current estimates, net immigration is larger than the agency estimated last year, by 0.7 million people in 2021, 1.4 million people in 2022, 1.9 million people in 2023, 2.1 million people in 2024, 1.5 million people in 2025, and 0.7 million people in...
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