Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Consumer prices rise a “normal” 0.2% in September In September Consumer prices rose a “normal” 0.2%, the first such typical increase since the pandemic began (blue in the graph below): For the past 40 years, recessions had typically happened when CPI less energy costs (red) had risen to close to or over 3%/year. We are nowhere near that now (last 15 years shown in graph): Because wages are “stickier” than prices, typically as recessions beat...

This chart can be found here at EPI: Figure 1

College educational attainment by age demographic There is no economic data today due to the Columbus Day observance. So let me drop this graph of a metric I have been trying to find, of college educational attainment by age demographic, that I finally came across a couple of days ago: It is commonplace that among Whites at least, support for Democrats is highly correlated by a college education. What is unclear is whether that is actually a function...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 5 – 9 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Because the pandemic so quickly and completely put the economy in a coma back in April, and the economy remains at severely depressed levels by most metrics compared with a year ago, in June I started to compared current levels with the worst pandemic readings.  This week I went further, and calculated the best readings since the...

August JOLTS report conforms to prior early recession recovery pattern Yesterday’s JOLTS report for August showed a jobs market that is still just beginning to mend. Hires were up, and layoffs and discharges were down, which is good, but job openings and voluntary quits both declined. We are far enough along past the worst of the pandemic jobs losses that it is worthwhile to compare the state of the various JOLTS components with the 2 previous...

Jobless claims: yet another week of glacial progress Today marked yet another week of glacial progress in initial jobless claims, at levels worse than the worst weekly levels of the Great Recession. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, new jobless claims rose by 5,312 to 804,307. After seasonal adjustment (which is far less important than usual at this time), claims fell by 9,000 to 840,000, another new pandemic low. The 4-week moving average also...

Le dénialité est trop cher. Denial isn’t specific to Americans, though we do seem to be better at it than most. We are now at least 30 years into severe climate change, yet 30-40% of Americans are in denial; assumedly, still looking for, waiting for, a return to normal. Not only are we not going back to the way it was 30 years ago; under the best of scenarios, no one of the next 5 generations will see the weather and climate of 1990 again. Under less than...

September jobs report: a drastic slowdown in improvement, but further demonstrating an economy that *wants* to get better HEADLINES: 661,000 million jobs gained. The gains since May total a little over half of the 22.1 million job losses in March and April. The alternate, and more volatile measure in the household report was 275,000 jobs gained, which factors into the unemployment and underemployment rates below. U3 unemployment rate fell -0.5% from 8.4%...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for September 28 – October 2 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Almost all of the indicators across all time frames are well off their worst levels. The question now is becoming whether or not they will stall out or reverse. As usual, clicking over and reading should be educational for you, and rewards me just a little bit for my efforts. ...

Happy Every Economic Statistic in the World Day! 3. Private residential construction spending improves smartly This morning’s third economic release is August construction spending. I track this because it is part of the important long leading housing sector. While it isn’t nearly as leading as housing permits or starts, it is the least volatile of all of the data. And the news was good, in particular for private residential construction spending,...