Weekly Indicators for April 2 - 6 at XE.com

 - by New Deal democrat

My Weekly Indicators post is up at XE.com.

Last week interest rates declined but spreads tightened. This week interest rates rose and spreads widened.

March jobs report: surprisingly weak

- by New Deal democrat

HEADLINES:

• +103,000 jobs added
• U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 4.1%
• U6 underemployment rate fell -0.2% from 8.2% to 8.0%

Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment:

Wages and participation rates

• Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now: fell -35,000 from 5.131 million to 5.096 million   
• Part time for economic reasons: fell -141,000 from 5.160 million to 5.019 million
• Employment/population ratio ages 25-54: fell -0.1% from 79.3% to 79.2%
• Average Weekly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel: rose $.04 from  $22.38 to $22.42, up +2.4% YoY.  (Note: you may be reading different information about wages elsewhere. They are citing average wages for all private workers. I use wages for nonsupervisory personnel, to come closer to the situation for ordinary workers.)      

Holding Trump accountable on manufacturing and mining jobs

 Trump specifically campaigned on bringing back manufacturing and mining jobs.  Is he keeping this promise?  

• Manufacturing jobs rose 22,000 for an average of +19,000/month in the past year vs. the last seven years of Obama's presidency in which an average of 10,300 manufacturing jobs were added each month.   
• Coal mining jobs were unchanged for an average of +75/month vs. the last seven years of Obama's presidency in which an average of -300 jobs were lost each month

January was revised downward by -63,000. February was revised upward by +13,000, for a net change of -50,000.   

The more leading numbers in the report tell us about where the economy is likely to be a few months from now. These were mainly negative.

• the average manufacturing workweek fell -0.1 hours from 41.0 hours to 40.9 hours.  This is one of the 10 components of the LEI.
 
• construction jobs decreased by -15,000. YoY construction jobs are up +228,000.  

• temporary jobs decreased by -600. 
 
• the number of people unemployed for 5 weeks or less decreased by -221,000 from 2,508,000 to 2,287,000.  The post-recession low was set over two years ago at 2,095,000.

Other important coincident indicators help  us paint a more complete picture of the present:

• Overtime fell -0.1 hours to 3.6 hours.
• Professional and business employment (generally higher-paying jobs) rose by  +33,000 and  is up +502,000 YoY.


• the index of aggregate hours worked in the economy fell by -0.2%.

•  the index of aggregate payrolls was unchanged.     

Other news included:            

• the  alternate jobs number contained  in the more volatile household survey increased by  +163,000  jobs.  This represents an increase of 2,683,000 jobs YoY vs. 2,261,000 in the establishment survey.      
     
• Government jobs rose by 1,000.       

• the overall employment to population ratio for all ages 16 and up was unchanged at 60.4  m/m  and is up +0.2% YoY.          
• The  labor force participation rate fell -0.1% to 62.9  m/m and is down -0.1% YoY  

 SUMMARY   

This was a surprisingly weak report. While manufacturing employment continued to gain, and measures of underemployment fell (but not to new lows), most of the indicators fell. Some of these, like aggregate hours, the employment population ratio, and the labor force participation ratio, simply gave back last month's improvement.

But that three of the four leading indicators, plus revisions, in the report declined is not welcome news (although obviously only one month), and wage growth for ordinary workers remains tepid at 2.4%.

If the jobs boost from last autumn's spending by consumers is over, then the slow late-cycle deceleration in jobs growth can be expected to resume.

UPDATE:

Here is the quarter on quarter growth rate of jobs since the beginning of this expansion:

The last three months together were still the best in the past year. But my suspicion is that we will see a resumption of the downtrend that began in early 2015 going forward.

April reports of short leading indicators start out good

 - by New Deal democrat

April reports started out this week with three positive readings of short leading indicators.

First, the ISM manufacturing index, and in particular its new orders subindex, pulled back slightly but remained at very strong levels:

Second, motor vehicle sales came in at a solid --- units annualized:

This series tends to broadly plateau during expansions. If it were to drop below 16.5 million units annualized, especially for longer than one month, that would be cause for concern.

With GM dropping out, the future of this data is uncertain. Vehicle sales ex-GM would still be a worthwhile metric, but unless that is calculated, it will only be useful on a m/m basis until at least there is one year's worth of data -- and that assumes other manufacturers don't follow GM's lead.

Finally, factory orders also increased. Below I am showing the core reading ex-aircraft and defense:

The last three months have seen the highest readings in nearly 4 years. Note that this data series is noisy, and wasn't leading at all in 2008, so it is of very low utility.

In terms of the economy over the next 3 to 6 months, so far, so good in April. Tomorrow we will get two more short leading indicators, manufacturing workweek and short term unemployment, as part of the jobs report.

Why I'm expecting a good employment report on Friday

 - by New Deal democrat

ADP reported private payroll growth of 241,000 this morning, which prompted me to recall that two other short leading indicators of employment also suggest that we'll get another good employment report on Friday.

First, consumer spending leads employment. I began tracking this nearly 10 years ago during the Great Recession. In autumn 2008 real retail sales fell off a cliff, but when they landed with a ker-SPLATT!!! a few months later and stopped falling, it was a signal that economic growth would probably follow in a few more months - and it did. I have continued to note this occasionally during the last nearly 9 years of expansion.

Well, a few months ago -- probably due to repairs necessitated by the hurricanes, and the fires in California -- there was a surge in consumer spending. The below graph compares YoY real consumer expenditure growth (blue) vs. jobs growth (red):

You can see that consumer spending leads employment by generally 3-6 months.  Here's a closeup of the last several years:

You can see the bump last autumn in spending. That ought to still be feeding through to some extra growth now.

Second, the unemployment rate is likely to decrease as well. This is because initial jobless claims lead the unemployment rate by about 1-3 months, as shown in the graph below (and although I won't bother showing this time, the relationship goes back 50 years!):

In the last two months, initial claims have dropped to yet more 45 year lows. The unemployment rate should be following.

While this doesn't change the longer term trend that we are in the decelerating part of the expansion, and the signs are that consumer spending growth has paused again in Q1 2018, in the short term of the next couple of months the jobs reports should be bearing good news.

Residential construction spending portends slowdown for remainder of2018

 - by New Deal democrat

Yesterday's February report on private residential construction spending is of particular importance to the overall direction of the economy this year.

In terms of their order in leading the economy, the housing data I track runs in this order:

• new home sales (but these are very volatile and heavily revised, so the signal to noise ratio is low)
• permits (much less volatile)
• single family permits (even less volatile - signal to noise ratio is high)
• housing starts (more volatile than permits, but have the advantage of being "hard" economic activity)
• residential construction spending (the least volatile of all of the data, even though less leading)
• residential fixed investment (part of quarterly GDP, so the last reported)

There is also the weekly mortgage applications report, which recently has tracked new home sales better than the other series, but has had compositional issues in the past.

Here are the two least volatile series, single family permits (blue) vs. inflation-adjusted private residential construction spending (red) for the last 15 years:

You can see the relative advantages of each. Single family permits are more leading, but somewhat more noisy, while residential construction spending is not noisy at all, but follows a few months after permits.

Notice the flattening of the blue line for the last year or so. That becomes more apparent when we look at the q/q percent change in construction spending (nominal in the two graphs below):

Since we only have the first two months' data for 2018, let's look at the same data m/m for the last year:

Even nominally, so far the first quarter of 2018 is showing growth at a rate of +0.2% q/q.

While we had slowdowns even more than this in 1994, 1996, and 2010 without recessions following, actual downturns in 1999 and 2006-07 did presage the recessions.

A look on a YoY% basis through February shows that single family permits have increased at about a 10% YoY pace, while real residential construction spending is only up about 4% YoY:

Finally, residential construction spending tends to correlate closely with private residential fixed investment in the GDP report:

The good news is that real private residential construction spending is still positive, so that adds to the evidence that no actual downturn in the economy will happen in the next 9 to 12 months, but on the other hand the bad news is that this is "hard" evidence of an impending *slowdown* in growth for the remainder of this year. 

An update on the yield curve

 - by New Deal democrat

When the Fed embarked on its tightening several years ago, I likened it to trying to steer between the Scylla of higher long rates that would kill the housing market, and the Charybdis of an inverted yield curve.

So, how are they doing?  This update is up over at XE.com.

A thought for Sunday: 2018 arctic ice cover

 - by New Deal democrat

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that the peak in arctic ice cover this winter was the second lowest on record, just slightly above that of one year ago. The three next lowest peaks were in the three years just prior:

All of these are something like three standard deviations below the norm from 1980-2010.

The biggest abnormality this winter was that the Bering Sea between Alaska and Siberia did not freeze until very late. This encouraged the formation of persistent low pressure over the area, sending the jet stream high into the arctic from the Pacific for most of the season. And since what goes up must come down, that it did east of the Rockies

Since this is a US government web site, I am surprised that it is still available.

Weekly Indicators for March 26 - 30 at XE.com

 - by New Deal democrat

My Weekly Indicators post is up at XE.com.

Long bond rates delined this week (YAAAY!!) but since short rates remained flattish, the yield curve flattened (BOOOO!!).

A note on personal income and spending

 - by New Deal democrat

Personal income and spending data from February intimates a weak Q1 GDP report, but doesn't suggest any imminent downturn.

The first graph below compares real personal spending with real retail sales:

Real retail sales have pulled back from their autumn surge, and real personal spending has also declined slightly from its last peak in December. But we've had similar small drawbacks before, as in early 2012 and early 2014 without it portending anything horrible.

Meanwhile the personal savings rate rose significantly:

This metric tends to have a steep decline, as it did in 2016, sometime around the middle to late middle of an expansion. While a subsequent upturn in savings does occur in the advent of recessions, the data is too noisy to say anything concrete.

I find it particularly useful to compare the YoY% change in real retail sales and real pesonal spending. Retail sales growth tends to outpace the more broad measure of personal spending earlier in expansions, and underperform later in expansions after the midpoint.  That's what we have now:

Almost certainly it was the autumn spurt in spending (possibly related to hurricanes and the fires in California) that was the outlier, rather than the subsequent several months.

BUT, note that the YoY% change in both has declined sharply in advance of the last several recessions. We don't see that at all now. Real personal spending growth continues at roughly a 2.5% annual pace, and real retail sales growth at a 1.5% pace. While this is the umpteenth confirmation that we are later in the cycle, only if we see a deceleration to nearly or less than 0% change in YoY retail sales would I become concerned about any imminent downturn.

Updates: 2018 forecast, stock vs. bond trends

 - by New Deal democrat

I have updates on several recent posts, on my long term 2018 forecast, and whether the "economic season" is changing, over at XE.com.

DOOOMers gotta DOOOM: no, a recession isn't close

- by New Deal democrat

An initial note: this is a pretty slow news week. I do plan on a housing roundup over at XE, and if something looks especially interesting in the personal income and spending report, I'll comment. Aside from that, expect sparse posting from me.

But because I am a curmudgeon, and the scourge of DOOOMERs, herewith a dissection of a post I read this morning that had me shaking my head.

Mish, who's called for recession about 3 or 4 times in the last 8 years, is at it again, this time claiming that "Recession is Close," making use of the Philadelphia Coincident Indicator Index. I've reproduced his annotated graph below:

So the first thing that caught my eye is that the index hasn't changed much in the last year. Here's a closeup of the same YoY information:

In December, as Mish highlights, the value of the index was +2.7. But beginning a year ago in January, it has *also* been 2.7 or even less in 8 of 12 months. So, by his own standard, shouldn't a "recession have been close" a full year ago?  Did I miss the "Recession of 2017" or something?

Next, in 3 of the last 4 recessions the YoY value of the index was declining sharply in the six months or so before their onset.  Not so in 2017. So rather than YoY, here is the m/m change in values of the Coincident Index (from which I've subtracted -.2 to show the deceleration prior to the onset of recession):

Typically the m/m change in the Index was declining from +.3 or above to below +.2 in the six months before the recessions started. Now here's a closeup of the more recent data:

No such sharp deceleration here. Pretty much muddling along at +.2 or +.3. Not spectacular, but not suggesting any big dip in the next few months.

Finally, he takes a potshot at the Leading Index for the United States. Here's a graph comparing the two series:

The most positive value of the Leading Index in the month before any of the last 3 recessions was +0.57, so I've subtracted that in the graph above.  Note that the leading index is well above that level now.

He doesn't like housing permits as a leading indicator, but does like starts. So let's look at both of those:

Housing starts, after a decline in mid 2017, in the last five months have risen to their previous highs from late 2016-early 2017, so they give him no help either.

You're not going to get any help from people who flit from data series to data series in support of the same old thesis, only to forget about them when the data goes the other way. While every economic cycle is a little different, and political decisions can throw a monkey wrench into the works at any time, left to its own devices there's simply no evidence that the economy is close to a recession now or will be in one before the end of this year. 

A thought for Sunday: a note of caution about opinion surveys with voluntary associations

 - by New Deal democrat

I read a Pew Research study a few days ago with a startling statistic: aside from self-identified Republicans, the single group most strongly approving of Trump was white evangelical Protestants (dark is approval, light is disapproval):

This is mind-numbing, especially when you consider the ad hoc contortions of morality that are involved in excusing all of Trump's personal behavior to have such uniform approval.

But are white evangelical Protestants irredeemable? Because religious affiliation is voluntary (unlike, say, race or age), I think the numbers tell a different story.

Why?  Because a couple of months ago, Pew also put out a study on the demographics  of Americans' religious affiliations. Included in that study was the below graph of religious affiliation by age group:

Look at the collapse in the percentage of whites who identify as evangelical Protestants by age group!  Over a quarter (26%) of people over age 65 so identified, but that drops by more than 2/3's (to 8%) among adults under age 30. While some of that is the differing racial makeup of the two age groups, it is nevertheless breathtaking.

So the numbers are less of a story about white evangelicals moving in political lockstep as they are about younger evangelicals leaving the flock as the doctrine preached from the pulpit increasingly alienates them. (Note also, by the way, the similar if less drastic falloff in the percentage of white Catholics as the American bishops embraced the political right wing.)

A similar, if less drastic, dynamic is probably playing out with political affiliation. While Trump retains sky-high approval ratings by self- described GOPers:

the percentage of people so describing themselves has decreased since Trump became President:

While undoubtedly the passing of the tax cut for billionaires has brought some of the country club set back into line, the GOP's reactionary radicalism is driving some away, leaving the true believers behind.

Keep that in mind when you read some of these studies: when voluntary associations move towards becoming purer, they usually also become smaller.

BTW: one demographic statistic I have not seen in any of the many studies over the last year is approval ratings by age *controlled for education.*  Over the last 70 years, higher percentages of Americans have had at least some college education. Having their beliefs challenged in college appears to be one important factor in younger people abandoning biblical fundamentalism. It may be, for example, that members of the Silent Generation with college degrees hold opinions pretty close to those of Millennials with college degrees. I have written the Pew Foundation to ask if that data is available, but haven't heard back.

Weekly Indicators for March 19 - 23 at XE.com

 - by New Deal democrat

My Weekly Indicators post is up at XE.com.

The long leading forecast continues to hover just above neutral, but the overall theme is one of slow deterioration.

February new and existing home sales: signs of stress?

 - by New Deal democrat

There's a real disconnect between the market for new and existing homes.  To cut to the chase, while sales of new homes have continued to increase, even in the face of higher mortgage rates, those of existing homes have stalled.

In the below graph, I have normed both series to 100 as of July 2015.  While sales of new homes (red) are roughly 25% higher than over 2 years ago on a three month rolling average, existing home sales are only about 2% above that level!

Meanwhile, the median price of both new and existing houses continue to increase at a rate in excess of 5% YoY:

We know that inventory of existing homes is down, resulting in a seller's market with bidding wars for the first time in over a decade (h/t Calculated Risk):

One way to look at this is to in terms of the monthly carrying cost of housing. There is probably at least another 10% to go before these rise near their 2005 bubble levels.

But there may be some signs of some stress already. The number of houses sold leads the number of houses under construction. Before a downturn, as sales decline but houses are still being built, the relative YoY change in houses sold vs. under construction typically turns negative:

The above graph is quarterly to cut down on noise and ends as of Q4 2017. Here is the monthly look at the past year:

With a few months' exception, sales have not been keeping pace with construction.

Since the recent increase in mortgage rates hasn't really filtered through yet, this situation is likely to deteriorate further rather than to improve.

A rare event has happened in the bond markets

 - by New Deal democrat

There has been an inversion in the *direction* in which yields in long vs. short term bonds are moving.

I examine this over at XE.com.

Prime age labor force participation: disability and homemaking decline

 - by New Deal democrat

About a year ago I wrote a series of posts on various reasons for the relatively low labor force participation by prime age individuals, and its effect on wages; In my post summing up that study I wrote:

A major element of the participation rate is comparison with other alternatives to being in the labor force. 

Two alternatives to labor participation appear to have had a significant effect on the rate.

First, the cost of child care, which has soared over the last 15 years, compared with subdued (or paltry) wage growth has caused many women and some men as well in the prime age demographic to leave the labor force completely and instead raise their children as homemakers. 

A second alternative, which appears to be a major determinant of the decline in male participation at least over the last 60 years is the expansion of disability insurance. This increase in disability has been mainly due to neck and back conditions, and together with improved longevity, has increased the incidence of long-term disability dramatically.  

It has also been suggested that the huge increase in the incarceration rate from roughly 1980 through 2000 has also played an important role in depressing participation.

I bring this up again because a few days ago the NY Times published a very interesting graph depicting the trends in the percentage of prime age individuals who report that they are not in the labor force due to homemaking, disability, discouragement, being in school, and "other," which presumably includes incarceration:

Further, one important reason for the decline in disability is simply that the large Boomer generation is aging out: in 21 months the last Boomer will have turned 55. This will mean that the younger half of the prime age demographic, roughly, will be the even larger Millennial contingent, while the presumably less healthy older half will roughly consist of the "baby bust," a/k/a Gen Xers, a point referenced by the Times:

The data shows that the decline has come almost entirely from the older half of the prime age population.

As Spock might say, "fascinating."

JOLTS revisions paint brighter labor market picture

 - by New Deal democrat

Last Friday's JOLTS report for January included some important revisions, particularly with regard to hiring.  So let's take a closer look.

As a refresher, unlike the jobs report, which tabulates the net gain or loss of hiring over firing, the JOLTS report breaks the labor market down into openings, hirings, firings, quits, and total separations.

I pay little attention to "job openings," which can simply reflect that companies trolling for resumes, or looking for the perfect, cheap candidate, and concentrate on the hard data of hiring, firing, quits and layoffs.

The first important relationship in the data is that historically, hiring leads firing.  While the one big shortcoming of this report is that it has only covered one full business cycle, during that time hires have peaked and troughed before separations.

And here, there has been an important revision.  Here is the historical relationship on a quarterly basis between hiring (red) and total separations (blue) as it existed through the end of the third quarter of 2017:

Note that hiring had just gotten around to equalling its peak from late 2015.

Now here is the same data, with revisions, through the fourth quarter of 2017:

Our update graph shows hiring exceeding its prior peak in the third quarter and clearly establishing a new high in Q4 2017.  That is unequivocal good news, since in the last expansion, hiring was the first metric to peak.

Here is the monthly breakdown over the last 2 years:

The positive trend in both hiring and total separations is clear.

Further, in the previous cycle, after hires stagnated, shortly thereafter involuntary separations began to rise, even as quits continued to rise for a short period of time as well:

 

[Note: above graph show quarterly data to smooth out noise]

Here are voluntary quits vs. layoffs and discharges on a monthly basis for the last 2 years:

With hiring increasing in the past few months, I expected the number of voluntary quits to improve as well, and they have:again, if the pattern from the last decade holds, I would expect quits to  improve somewhat as well.  As in the last business cycle, quits are still rising. The only divergence is that  involuntary separations remain off their bottom.

So while I continue to watch to see if hiring stagnates,the new highs in hiring are a very positive sign, consistent (though not necessarily) even with being before mid-cycle.

A thought for Sunday: in which I pour some cold water on 2018 midterm overoptimism

 - by New Deal democrat

In the wake of Conor Lamb's election victory in Pennsylvania last Tuesday night, some Democratic partisans are suggesting that every GOP-held seat from a district that is less than trump +20% is in play.

Hold your horses. The results of last June's special election in Georgia, in which GOPer Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff show that there is a roadmap to the GOP minimizing their losses in this November's midterms.

Because while all of the legislative elections in 2017 and so far in 2018 have featured huge gains in Democratic turnout, the difference in Georgia was that there was a *similar* spike in GOP turnout.  And this playbook is going to be easier for the GOP to run in nationwide contests than in local special elections. 

Let's start with turnout in Pennsylvania last week. Here's the graph on point:

Democratic turnout in the PA special election approached that of Presidential election levels, while GOP turnout was much smaller. Simple point: when D's turn out, and R's don't, D's win.

Let's take a similar look at turnout in the Virginia legislative elections  last November:

What is noteworthy in this graph, and a point that was made at the time, is that it wasn't only Democratic turnout that exceeded the levels of the last state election. GOP turnout was *also* higher, although not by nearly so much. Even so, that slight increase in GOP turnout was enough for them to hold on to the Virginia House of Delegates (literally, by one vote!) even though more votes were cast statewide for Democratic candidates, by a margin of 54%-46%.

Finally, let's turn to the Georgia election from last June.  Here is the similar graph:

While there was sky-high Democratic turnout, turnout by GOPers was almost as high -- enough so that their candidate prevailed.  In other words, when both D's and R's turn out at near-Presidential levels, the outcome resembles that of the district's vote in the last Presidential election.  That's the point made in this analysis by Politico:

Pollsters say sky-high turnout drove Handel, the GOP nominee, to a nearly 4-point victory on Tuesday, despite most pre-election surveys showing Ossoff with a small-but-shrinking lead. 

... [I[t wasn’t because Democratic voters didn’t show up. More than 259,000 votes have been tallied as of Wednesday afternoon, considerably more than the 193,000 votes in the first round of voting in  April. 

In fact, turnout was much higher than for other off-year special elections in recent history.... 

John Anzalone, Ossoff’s pollster, said the Democrat’s campaign succeeded in turning out its voters — but they were swamped by Republicans who came out in numbers that ended up dwarfing previous high-profile special elections ....
....
“When turnout starts going up that high, and people start coming out of the woodwork to vote,” Cahaly said, “it moves back to the [natural] alignment of the district.”
Cahaly added that, in his view, Handel and Republican outside groups also drove turnout by nationalizing the race.

In November, it is going to be much easier for the GOP and their propaganda organs like Fox to "nationalize" local elections, arguing that a Democratic House is likely to impeach Trump (true) and veto new regulations on, e.g., Muslim and Latino immigratiion proposed by Trump's bureaucracy (true), while a Democratic Senate will refuse to confirm Trump's anti-gay and anti-abortion Judicial nominations, including any vacancies that may open up on the Supreme Court (also true).

At the same time, they probably will use social media accounts to try to drive down Latino turnout by arguing that the Congressional Democrats sold out Dreamers (as to which there is at least some merit).

If so, the vote in Congressional districts and Senate races is likely to come closer to mirroring that from 2016.  That strategy probably concedes that GOPers will lose any Congressional districts that voted more for Hillary Clinton than Trump. But under that result -- even one in which  Democrats "win" the number of ballots nationwide by something like 53%-47% -- the GOP nevertheless retains control of the House and Senate.

While as I pointed out several weeks ago, demographics alone should make the electorate less reddish, people shouldn't get carried away with over-optimism.

Weekly Indicators for March 12 - 16 at XE.com

 - by New Deal democrat

My Weekly Indicators post is up at XE.com.

This week most of the data that has been decelerating turned in a more positive performance.

Liveblogging housing, industrial production, and JOLTS

 - by New Deal democrat

This is one of those days when it seems every piece of economic data in the whole world is getting reported simultaneously.

So as the data gets reported, I'll give you three quick takes.

Housing permits and starts for February

While this was a decline from January, so far housing is holding up very well in the face of higher interest rates.

Single family housing permits -- the least volatile of all the numbers -- declined m/m but December remains the expansion high. The series remains very positive.

Overall housing permits -- less volatile than starts -- declined to their lowest level since September, but January remains the expansion high, so this trend remains positive as well.

Housing starts declined m/m from January's expansion high. To take out most of the volatility, I look at the three month moving average. This is the second highest during the entire expansion after last month. So these remain very positive as well.

Finally, there is a category of housing which has been authorizaed but not yet started. January remains the expansion high, and February is second, equal to December.  This tells us there is a lot of construction in the pipeline.

Bottom line: m/m negative, but longer term trend still (somewhat surprisingly) still very positive.

Industrial production

This was also a very positive report.

The overall number was up 1.1%.
Manufacturing was us 1.3%
Mining -- the big reason for last month's decline -- was up nearly 5%.

The DOOOMERS' meme that hard numbers haven't replicated the Fed and ISM surveys refuses to die.  And yet YoY overall production is up nearly 5%, and manufacturing up nearly 3%. That seems pretty good to me.

JOLTS

This data is from January. Like housing, it was generally down m/m, but very positive.  I don't bother anymore with openings, which I consider not just soft, but easily gamed data. As to the hard data:

Hires -- the second highest, but for last October, in the expansion.

Quits -- the second highest of the expansion, except for December's.

Total separations -- the highest of the expansion (which is a positive, since these also start to decline prior to a recession).

Layoffs and discharges -- increased sharply to levels seen in last summer. This is the one negative, since these bottomed in midcycle during the last expansion.

All in all, the three economic reports today painted a picture of continuing positive trends.