- by New Deal democrat
The Census Bureau reported Housing Starts and Permits this morning. Permits, which are one of the 10 Leading Economic Indicators, were up to 685,000 on an annualized basis, 187,000 above last April's bottom of 498,000. Here is a chart for the last 24 months:
2008-03-01 968
2008-04-01 991
2008-05-01 978
2008-06-01 1174
2008-07-01 924
2008-08-01 857
2008-09-01 806
2008-10-01 729
2008-11-01 630
2008-12-01 564
2009-01-01 531
2009-02-01 550
2009-03-01 511
2009-04-01 498 Bottom
2009-05-01 518
2009-06-01 570
2009-07-01 564
2009-08-01 580
2009-09-01 575
2009-10-01 551
2009-11-01 589
2009-12-01 653
2010-01-01 622
2010-02-01 637
2010-03-01 685
I strongly suspect that we are seeing continuing distortions from the extended $8000 Home Buyer's Credit. Nevertheless, the trend remains upward, although not nearly as strong as in past Recoveries.
Although I'm not reproducing any graphs of past Recoveries here, my research into the data suggests that for purposes of residential construction employment, it is not the percentage growth from the bottom, but the raw increase in units which is important. In past recoveries, at the very least there was an increase of 200,000 or more units annualized before the Construction Employment component in the nonfarm payrolls began to increase. We're not there yet, and as stated above, the tax credit is probably distorting the data (pulling sales forward), but at +187,000, this is the closest we have come.
