Tag Archives: US EConomics

Producer prices flat, commodities decline, confirming shelter as sole inflationary pressure  – by New Deal democrat Once again producer prices confirmed that the only significant problem in inflation is shelter. In December commodity prices declined -1.3%. For finished goods they declined -1.2%. Even producer prices for services were unchanged: On a YoY basis, commodity prices are down -3.2%, finished goods prices down -0.2%, and...

Consumer inflation remains all about the lagged effect of house prices  – by New Deal democrat Consumer inflation in December continued to be a tale of the relative importance of gas prices vs. the lagged effect of home prices. Headline inflation increased 0.3%, and was up 3.4% YoY. YoY headline inflation has bounced between 3.1%-3.7% for the past 6 months, i.e., ever since the gas price peak of June 2022 passed out of the YoY comparisons....

The good news on jobless claims continues  – by New Deal democrat The recent streak of very positive news on jobless claims continued this week. Initial claims declined -1,000 to 201,000. The four week moving average declined -250 to 207,750. With the usual one week delay, continuing claims declined -34,000 to 1.834 million. The first two are close to their post-pandemic lows of one year ago, and continuing claims are the lowest since the...

Asymptosis » Economic Origin Stories and the State of the World, Steve Roth. Origin stories and creation myths pack a pretty hefty weight of import in human understandings of the world. Examples are too numerous to mention. What I’ve noticed in the field of economics is such origin stories are often taken (mistakenly) to fully explain the current state of affairs. I’m going to discuss two examples here. 1. Why Money Has Value. The “double...

We have been needing more people, people of some importance, to say something about the economy besides how bad it is. Mind you, no matter how good the recovery is; the negatives will still flow from the other side of the room. If you have been reading New Deal democrat’s commentary at Angry Bear each day, you already have a pretty good idea of where we will land. NDd: “Real retails sales stopped deteriorating YoY last spring, and have been more...

Sales lead employment: real aggregate payrolls update  – by New Deal democrat The drought in new data ends tomorrow with consumer inflation. In preparation, let’s take a look at real aggregate payrolls. These increased 0.2% in December, one of the lower readings in the past 2 years: On a YoY basis, aggregate nonsupervisory payrolls increased 5.8%, compared with consumer inflation in November, which increased 3.1%: Recall that...

Some light reading. I subscribe to it (The Atlantic) and have done so since the Civil War for a decade. Thought I would post one from The Atlantic’s News Letter (I think). Just an interesting read about something they discovered happening or maybe not-happening. People locked into something they do not like, have to stay, and when the opportunity arises, they leave. Especially if there is money to be made or less time at work or less work. What if...

I was looking for a report through 2022 on housing. This was the best I could do. Maybe later? The report is about households with or without SS beneficiaries who are renting, homeowners with mortgages, and homeowners without mortgages. The study is looking at the cost impact in each category for those households with SS beneficiaries as compared to those households with no beneficiaries. Kind of dry; but, it gets the point across. Research...

Scenes from the jobs report 2: the unemployment rate and consumption: weak, but not recessionary  – by New Deal democrat Yesterday I looked at some employment metrics from Friday’s jobs report. Today let’s look at un- (and under-) employment. Every Thursday I repeat the mantra that jobless claims lead the unemployment rate. Here are both the U3 (blue) and U6 (red) rates from Friday’s report, compared YoY: The unemployment rate is...

Scenes from the leading sectors of the December jobs report: sectors of weakness and strength  – by New Deal democrat For nearly two decades, my focus on economic reporting online has been finding and examining leading indicators; those datapoints that tell us where the economy in general, and in particular jobs and income for ordinary Americans, are heading in the near future. Usually that has meant batting away DOOOOMers; those people who...