Friday, April 5, 2024

March jobs report: almost uniformly positive, making a “soft landing” the default 2024 scenario

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   - by New Deal democrat In the past few months, my focus has been  on whether jobs gains are most consistent with a “soft landing,” i.e., ...
Thursday, April 4, 2024

Decline in continuing claims, stability in initial claims suggest downward pressure on the unemployment rate

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   - by New Deal democrat Initial claims in the last week rose 9,000 to 221,000, while the four week moving average increased 2,750 to 214,...
Wednesday, April 3, 2024

Does consumer sentiment correlate with the real economy?

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 - by New Deal democrat No big economic news today, so let me update a correlation with information from last Friday’s personal income data....
Tuesday, April 2, 2024

February JOLTS report: soft landing-ish? - except for a noisy jump in layoffs

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   - by New Deal democrat The JOLTS report for February showed stabilization or slight improvement to all but one of its components, general...
Monday, April 1, 2024

Monthly data starts out with slightly positive news in manufacturing, slightly negative in construction

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   - by New Deal democrat As usual, the new month’s data starts out with information on manufacturing and construction. To repeat what I hav...
Saturday, March 30, 2024

Weekly Indicators for March 25 - 29 at Seeking Alpha

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   - by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. After several weeks of flirting with full recovery, the remain...
Friday, March 29, 2024

Real personal income and spending: if last month was “Goldilocks”, this month was close to “anti-Goldilocks”

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   - by New Deal democrat Personal income and spending has become one of the two most important monthly reports I follow, because it nets ou...
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Initial claims remain somnolent, while continuing claims pop slightly

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   - by New Deal democrat The divergence in the trends between initial and continuing claims continued this week, as the former continued th...
Wednesday, March 27, 2024

A detailed look at manufacturing, and an update on frieght

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    - by New Deal democrat As I wrote on Monday,  the big question for this year is whether the recessionary effects of the Fed rate hikes h...
Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Repeat home sales price declined slightly in January; expect deceleration in the CPI measures of shelter to continue

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   - by New Deal democrat As I noted again yesterday, house prices lag home sales, which in turn lag mortgage rates. Yesterday we got the fi...
Monday, March 25, 2024

As mortgage rates remain rangebound, so do new home sales

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    - by New Deal democrat Let’s begin this post by putting why I am watching new home sales in context. The economy was kept out of recessi...
Saturday, March 23, 2024

Weekly Indicators for March 18 - 22 at Seeking Alpha

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   - by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. With interest rates having come down from their highs of five ...
Friday, March 22, 2024

Signs of a thaw in the frozen existing homes market, but a very long way to go

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    - by New Deal democrat There’s no big economic news today, but yesterday existing home sales were released. While they have historically...