Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Real retail sales and industrial production update


 - by New Deal democrat

I'm having a hardware issue, so this will be a quick hit. Hopefully sometime tomorrow everything will be back to normal.

Yesterday we had another excellent retail sales number, up +0.4. YoY real retail sales are up +3.7%. Since these sales are a good short leading indicator for employment, that suggests the good monthly jobs readings are likely to continue, at least for a few more months:



This morning industrial production was positive, but with a significant caveat. Production increased +0.6% in June, extending the recent good trend (total is black, manufacturing is red in the graph below):



The caveat is that May was revised down by -0.4%, so on net June was up +0.2% over the level as of last month's initial report.

Bottom line: the run of good, positive news continues.