Weekly Indicators for April 3 - 7 at Seeking Alpha

 

 - by New Deal democrat

My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. 

Probably unsurprisingly, the big news this week was the effect of the revisions to the initial jobless claims data, and also the turning down of several sectors in the monthly jobs report.

Anyway, as usual clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment as to the data, and reward me a little bit for my efforts in putting it all together.

March jobs report: leading sectors turn down in a pre-recessionary, but still quite positive, report

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Unsurprisingly, my focus on this report, like the last few reports, was on whether residential construction jobs turned negative or not, whether manufacturing and temporary jobs continued on their downward trajectory, and whether the deceleration in job growth would be apparent.

Some of the deceleration or decline occurred, particularly in the sectors which lead the market overall, while other metrics held steady or even improved, consistent with a still very tight market.

Here’s my in depth synopsis.

HEADLINES:

• 236,000 jobs added, the lowest number since December 2020. Private sector jobs increased 189,000, also the lowest since December 2020. Government jobs increased by 47,000. The three month moving average of growth declined 1,000 to 345,000. 
• The alternate, and more volatile measure in the household report rose by 577,000 jobs. The above household number factors into the unemployment and underemployment rates below.
• U3 unemployment rate declined -0.1% to 3.5%.
• U6 underemployment rate also declined -0.1% to 6.7%.
• January was revised downward by -32,000, and February was revised upward by 15,000, for a net decrease of -17,000 jobs compared with previous reports. 

Leading employment indicators of a slowdown or recession

These are leading sectors for the economy overall, and help us gauge how much the post-pandemic employment boom is shading towards a downturn.  These were mixed, but the overall tenor was neutral to negative:

• the average manufacturing workweek, one of the 10 components of the Index of Leading Indicators, declined was unchanged at 40.7, down -0.9 hours from February peak last year of 41.6 hours.

• Manufacturing jobs declined by -1,000.
• Construction jobs declined for the first time since January 2022, by -9,000.
• Residential construction jobs, which are even more leading, increased by only 800, but last month’s gain of 1,200 was revised to a loss of -2,400, suggesting January may have been the peak for this sector.

• Temporary jobs, which have generally been declining late last year, resumed that decline, by -10,700.
• the number of people unemployed for 5 weeks or less declined -17,000 to 2,272,000.

Wages of non-managerial workers

• Average Hourly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel increased $.09, or +0.3%, to $28.50, a YoY gain of 5.1%, the lowest YoY gain since July of 2021.

Aggregate hours and wages: 

• the index of aggregate hours worked for non-managerial workers rose 0.2%.

•  the index of aggregate payrolls for non-managerial workers rose 0.4%, but continued its deceleration to 7.2% YoY, the lowest since March 2021, although still more than 1% higher YoY than inflation as of the last reading.

Other significant data:

• Leisure and hospitality jobs, which were the most hard-hit during the pandemic, rose 72,000, only -368,000, or -2.2% below their pre-pandemic peak.
• Within the leisure and hospitality sector, food and drink establishments added 50,300 jobs, and are now only -75,000, or -0.6% below their pre-pandemic peak. 
• Professional and business employment rose 39,000. This series has also been decelerating consistently, and is now up 2.3% YoY, the lowest increase since March 2021.
• The Labor Force Participation Rate increased 0.1% to 62.6%, vs. 63.4% in February 2020.
• The number of job holders who were part time for economic reasons rose 35,000.
• Those not in the labor force at all, but who want a job now, declined -178,000 to 4.925 million, its lowest level since December 2019.

SUMMARY

As it is so often, this report had a somewhat bifurcated nature. It remained solid in terms of absolute job growth. Further, in general the numbers derived from the Household Survey were very good. But most of the leading internals in the Establishment report were negative.

Let me highlight the leading negatives. All 3 leading sectors of the jobs market have turned down: manufacturing, construction, and temporary jobs. Also, while the manufacturing workweek was unchanged this month, it is at a level which in the past has been consistent with a recession. The drumbeat of negative revisions to prior reports has also resumed. This is solidly pre-recessionary.

But let’s not overlook the positives in the Household Survey. Both the unemployment and underemployment rates declined, and participation increased. Jobs are obviously still easy to get, as those out of the labor force who nevertheless want a job declined to a 3+ year low, and indeed except for 2019, the lowest number since 2008. And while aggregate payroll growth is decelerating, it is still growing at a rate higher than inflation.

To sum up: pre-recessionary, but we aren’t at the recession yet.

Revisions cause initial claims, the last positive leading indicator, to capitulate

 - by New Deal democrat

Initial and continuing claims underwent some serious revisions with this week’s release. Rather than attempt an explanation myself, here is the nub of the BLS’s own explanation:

Beginning … [this week], the methodology used to seasonally adjust the national initial claims and continued claims reflects a change in the estimation of the models.

Seasonal adjustment factors can be either multiplicative or additive. A multiplicative seasonal effect is assumed to be proportional to the level of the series. A large increase in the level of the series will be accompanied by a proportionally large seasonal effect. In contrast, an additive seasonal effect is assumed to be unaffected by the level of the series….

Prior to the pandemic, the unemployment insurance claims series used multiplicative models to seasonally adjust the claims. Starting with March 2020, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) staff, who provide the seasonal adjustment factors, specified both of the UI claims series as additive. After the large effects of the pandemic on the UI series lessened, the seasonal adjustment models were once again specified as multiplicative models. Statistical tests show that the UI series should, in normal times, be estimated using multiplicative adjustments.

The revisions go all the way back to June 2021. As a result, the all-time lows in both the weekly and 4 week average of initial claims that were reported last spring got vaporized: the all-time lows revert back to the 1960s. Continuing claims were also revised substantially higher for last spring. All three series were also revised substantially higher beginning with the weeks of late January. All of the sub-200,000 readings since then have been erased. Instead, claims have steadily risen to close to 250,000, and continuing claims have gradually risen to over 1.8 million. 

Including those revisions, this week initial claims rose 18,000 to 246,000. The 4 week average declined 4,250 to 242,000. Continuing claims with a one week delay rose 6,000 to 1,823,000.

Here is what those revisions to weekly initial claims look like:

Here are the revisions to the 4 week average:

And here are the revisions to continuing claims:

Finally, here are the YoY% changes to all three:

Because the revisions go back more than a year, the YoY% change in the numbers did not change very much compared with last week. Including the revisions, initial claims are now up 6.5% YoY (vs. 15.8% as reported last week), and continuing claims are up 11.6% (vs. 12.2%). The more important 4 week average is up 10.8% (vs. 11.0%).

Last week I wrote that the 4 week average of initial claims had crossed the 10% threshold for a yellow flag caution. I require two months in a row, and would need to see an increase to 12.5% YoY or above to warrant the actual red flag recession warning.

But even if initial claims improve somewhat from here, with these revisions the last positive leading indicator has capitulated.

One of the last of the positive short leading indicators rolls over

 - by New Deal democrat

The only economic release today of any significance was the ISM non-manufacturing index, which tracks services. It is only about 25 years old, and is not a leading indicator the way its sibling manufacturing index is, but for the record in March it showed slight expansion at 51.2. Here is its entire history:

Its new orders subindex came in at 52.2. Lest you think that it sounds an “all-clear,” in December 2007, the first month of the Great Recession, the index came in at 54.4, and new orders at 53.9. The history is, services decline only after goods. Goods lead into the recession, then services join.

In that vein, yesterday we got confirmation that one of the last short leading indicators which had not turned down, has finally unequivocally done so. Durable goods orders (blue) and consumer durable goods orders (red) both declined for the second month in a row. Meanwhile capital goods orders less defense and aircraft (gold) also declined slightly, and remain below their high from last August, having trended essentially sideways since then:

At this point there is not a single short leading indicator - including even initial jobless claims - that has not retreated from their best level. Aside from jobless claims, the only other short leading indicator showing signs of life is stock prices as measured by the S&P 500. These made a new 3 month high in early February, and haven’t made a new 3 month low since last October, so for the short term count as a positive:

But if they fail to make a new 3 month high by early May, they too will retreat to a neutral. And of course, they remain below their all-time high from January 2022.

Finally, here is what the other 3 big coincident monthly indicators aside from payrolls look like, normed to 100 as of last October:

Real personal income less government transfers looks like it may have made a peak as well. Real manufacturing and trade sales jumped in January, but with a -0.8% decline in its real retail sales component in February, manufacturing and wholesale sales will have to jump in February in order to avoid a decline in that as well.

Not only do I continue to believe that a recession is near at hand, but there is a non-trivial possibility that, after revisions are all in, the NBER will determine that a cycle peak occurred in January, nonfarm payrolls notwithstanding.

February JOLTS report shows further *relative* weakening in the jobs market

 

 - by New Deal democrat

The February JOLTS report showed a weakening in almost all important trends.

The strongest component of the entire series has been job openings. I tend to place lower significance on this, because there is ample evidence that companies have “gamed” this metric either to build up a bank of resumes, or else to suggest that their growth is strong (whether or not that is truly the case). Well, even so job openings (blue in the graph below, normed to 100 as of February 2020) declined -632,000 to 9.931 million, the lowest number since spring of 2021. Actual hires (red) declined -164,000 to 6.163 million (also the lowest since spring 2021), while quits (gold) increased 146,000 to 4.024 million:

Note that an increase in voluntary quits is a good thing, because it indicates confidence by the person quitting that they can find a new job relatively easily. But even with February’s increase, quits remain below their 2021-early 2022 monthly levels.

For comparison’s sake, here is the rest of the history of all three series up until the pandemic:

Finally, layoffs and discharges declined -215,000 to 1.504 million, also good. But this number only reverses January and takes us back to recent levels. The overall increasing trend (a negative) is clear:

Again, for comparison purposes, here is the rest of this series:

For about the last year, I have been paying particular attention to job openings, because it is only when they revert close enough to pre-pandemic levels that we are likely past the period of “reverse musical chairs” whereby employees find it easier to find higher paying jobs (for the record, I look favorably upon this period of labor strength, after decades of employers having the upper hand). That final capitulation of the job market, while not an absolutely necessary predicate to a recession, would likely be the icing on the cake.

On Friday March nonfarm payrolls will be reported. Because initial jobless claims have remains so positive, I do not expect an appreciable weakening of that number, but a continuation of the decelerating trend remains likely. I will be especially looking at the leading sectors, like manufacturing and residential construction, to see if those have turned negative.

Both manufacturing and construction continue to contract

 

 - by New Deal democrat

As usual, we start the month with data on last month’s manufacturing activity, and the previous month’s construction activity. This month, both were negative.

The ISM manufacturing index, which has had an excellent record as a leading indicator for the past 75 years, declined to 46.3, its lowest level since the pandemic recovery began. The new orders index, which is the best leading component, also declined to 44.3, above only December’s 42.5 low:

According to the ISM, levels below 48 have historically been consistent with recessions. Needless to say, that’s what the index says about manufacturing now (and consistent with what the new orders indexes of the regional Feds have been saying for months).

February total and residential construction spending also both declined, the former by -0.1%, the latter by -0.6%. Total construction spending, the laggard of the two, appears to be peaking, as it has only increased 0.2% since last November. Residential construction spending, the most leading component, may be bottoming out, as it has only declined -0.8% since November:

Since these are nominal readings, I have been deflating them by the special PPI for construction materials, which declined sharply between last May and December, but has risen in the two months since. Here’s what the deflated numbers look like:

In real terms, both have turned down, and the leading residential number has been declining almost consistently for a year.

In short, both leading sectors of manufacturing and construction are likely in contraction.

Weekly Indicators for March 27 - 31 at Seeking Alpha

 

 - by New Deal democrat

I keep forgetting to put up this link on Saturdays, but you know where to find it: my Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.

The good thing about high frequency indicators is you can see what is happening with trends much more quickly than with monthly releases. The bad thing is that the drip-drip-drip can take forever!

Anyway, the fallout from SVB continues in the credit sector; and corporate profits look like they might take a major hit in the Q1 reporting season, which starts in a couple of weeks.

If you haven’t already done so, clicking over and reading will bring you up to date, and reward me a little bit for organizing the data for you.

Real income in February rises slightly; real spending declines slightly; real total sales in January rose sharply, as expected

 

 - by New Deal democrat

As I wrote earlier this week, personal income and outlays is one of the two most important data releases at the current time, along with the monthly jobs report. That’s because these are the two sectors of the economy that have most prominently not rolled over, and are keeping us out of recession.

This morning’s February release was the proverbial mixed bag.

Nominally, personal income rose 0.3% and spending rose 0.2%. But because the deflator also rose 0.3%, in real terms income was unchanged, and spending actually declined -0.1%. Here’s what they both look like since before the pandemic (normed to 100 as of 12 months ago):

YoY real spending rose 2.5%, and real income rose 1.1%. For comparison, here is the YoY% change over the past 20 years up until the pandemic:

A 2.5% increase in real spending is about par for the course for the past 20 years, while the 1.1% increase in real income is lower than almost all times outside of recessions (and for 2013, after Social Security withholding was increased by 1%):

Meanwhile, the personal savings rate rose 0.1% to 4.6%, which is a nice rebound from last June’s all-time low:

But on the other hand, a rise in the savings rate is typically seen just in advance of recessions, as consumers grow more cautious.

The personal income and spending release is also important because it feeds directly into 2 of the 4 coincident indicators most relied upon by the NBER to determine if the economy is in expansion or recession.

The first of the 2 is real personal income less government transfer receipts. This rose less than 0.1%, rounding to 0. While this has risen 0.9% in the past 6 months, it has only risen 0.25% for the last three:

In other words, this important coincident indicator could very well be peaking - and indeed, have peaked - in February.

The second of the 2 is real manufacturing and trade sales, which relies in part on the PCE deflator. This increased a sharp 0.5% for January, which sounds good:

But the big January increase was telegraphed by the huge 2.7% January gain in real retail sales (which make up about 1/3rd of the number) that we’ve already known about for the past month and a half. 

Because this economic series lags so much, you may recall that several weeks ago I premiered two systems to estimate it on a more timely basis. At that time I wrote:

“For January 2023 [using CPI rather than the PCE deflator] , the estimate is an increase of 0.8%. … Because “real” manufacturing and trade sales for December were only 0.4% lower than their all-time record in January 2022, the estimate forecasts that when the official result is reported on March 31, more likely than not it will set a new record.”

The second, more timely system is to average industrial production and real retail sales. Using that estimate, I wrote:

“This method is not so accurate as the 2nd estimate I discussed several days ago, but does give us the main thrust. Like the 2nd estimate, for January it forecasts a sharp increase (+1.5% vs. the +0.8% of the 2nd estimate), followed by a -0.4% decrease in February. Like the 2nd estimate, it indicates a new record high for January.”

As shown above, setting a new record for January is exactly what happened, with the early estimate’s +1.5% being not nearly so good as the later estimate’s +0.8%. I’ll be able to update the February estimate in a couple of weeks.

So to summarize: real personal income and spending were slightly positive to slightly negative, with real income and the savings rate both being consistent with a near recession. Similarly, real personal income less transfer receipts has been decelerating significantly, and may even have peaked in February. Finally, real manufacturing and trade sales rose sharply in January on the back of retail sales, but are likely to decline in February; indeed January may also have marked their peak.

Revisions to Q4 GDP made real final sales worse, a potential portent of near in time recession

 

 - by New Deal democrat

A month ago, following another blogger, I took a look at real final sales, and real final sales to domestic purchasers, in the GDP - which increased less than 0.5% and just above 0% in Q4, and showed that in the past 60 years, only in the deep slowdowns of 1966 and 1987 were the numbers that low without having been followed within 1-3 quarters by a recession. Here’s a link to the full post from last month.

Well, in this morning’s final revision to Q4 GDP, both got revised even lower.

Here is the revision to real final sales:

And here is the revision to real final sales to domestic purchasers:

In the grand scheme of things, these are quite small revisions. But the fundamental point is that Q4 GDP was held up by inventories, which will have to be liquidated at some point. As I pointed out last month, that process of liquidation has typically meant production cutbacks as well as layoffs of some of the workers on those production lines.

With the advent of “just in time” inventories in the 1990s, manufacturers had been doing that quite quickly, which meant without enough disruption to give rise to a recession. But I noted that the pandemic had replaced that with a “just in case” mentality; and wrote that what happened to manufacturers inventories during the months of Q1 would be important.

Well, we did get January inventories several weeks ago, and the news was not good. Inventories increased to just below their high levels of 2022:

Tomorrow we will see if real manufacturing and trade sales - one of the 4 monthly recession indicators most tracked by the NBER - continued their rebound from last June’s lows in January.

Almost nobody is still getting laid off, but this week, it’s not good enough

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Today and tomorrow update the two remaining positive sectors of the economy: jobs and real personal income. And the first one continued to give excellent historical readings, but relatively speaking suffered in comparison to their all-time best readings from exactly one year ago.

Initial jobless claims rose 7,000 to 198,000, while the more important 4 week average rose 2,000 to 198,250. By any historical measure, these are excellent readings. Continuing claims, with a one week delay, rose 4,000 to 1,689,000 also historically very good:

Note that the “high” readings at the left end of the graph, from November 2021, would have been considered extremely low during any previous economic expansion.

The fly in the ointment, as I wrote above, is that on March 19 of last year initial claims made a 50+ year low of 166,000, and the 4 week average made its all-time low of 170,500 on April 2 of last year. Thus the YoY% change is over 15% for the former, and over 11% for the more important 4 week average:

Per the historical record, if the 4 week average is more than 10% higher for a month or more, that is a yellow flag for a potential recession. If it gets close to 15%, it is a red flag. As I indicated above, next week will be the “worst” comparison week. By mid-May of last year, the average was back over 200,000. So I suspect we won’t get there, unless there is significant deterioration in the next few weeks.

More on the sharp deceleration in YoY house price gains, and the Fed’s chasing the phantom menace

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Since there is no big economic news again today, let me fill in a little more detail on house prices through January, reported yesterday, vs. CPI for shelter.

Here is the monthly % change for the past 18 months for Owners Equivalent Rent in the CPI (blue), vs. the Case Shiller national index (gold) and the FHFA purchase only index (red) (note: both house price indexes /2.5 for scale):

Month over month the Case Shiller index declined -0.2% on a seasonally adjusted basis, while as I noted yesterday the FHFA index increased 0.2%.

But the most important detail is comparing the early 2022 changes with the last 6 months. Owners Equivalent Rent has increased between 0.6% and 0.8% monthly ever since last May. By contrast, both house price indexes started declining sharply m/m beginning last June. In other words, there are still two more months (March and April) where Owners Equivalent Rent will be compared with values below 0.5% in the same months from 2022, meaning that YoY OER is likely to continue to increase at least slightly for several more months.

Meanwhile, as the YoY% graph including the Case Shiller and FHFA indexes indicate, YoY price increases have continued to decelerate sharply, down to +3.8% and +5.3% respectively as of January:

which (after /2.5 for scale) suggest that OER will be well contained by next winter.

As I wrote several weeks ago, CPI less shelter is only up +0.7% in the 8 months since last June, i.e., at only a 1.0% YoY rate:

In making its case for continued rate hikes, the Fed has ignored this and been hanging its hat on services inflation in the broader measure of. personal consumption expenditures, which will be released on Friday.

YoY house price gains continue to decline

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Today is a travel day so I have to keep this brief. 

On a monthly basis for January, prices rose 0.2% as measured by the FHFA house price index. But because that was far less of an increase in January last year, YoY house prices as measured by the FHFA index declined to +5.3%. This implies that by January next year OER as measured in the CPI will inly be up about 2.1% - well within the Fed’s comfort zone:

Unfortunately we still have at least several months to go before OER starts any kind of meaningful decline. Still, this is further evidence that the Fedcontinues to chase a phantom menace.

3 graphic signs of financial stress

 

 - by New Deal democrat

The theme of my weekly “high frequency” economic indicators update over the weekend was the sudden deterioration in some measurements of financial stress.

Tomorrow we’ll find out that house prices as measured by both the FHFA and Case Shiller have decline further, and that increases are substantially lower than as measured by the CPI, and on Friday we’ll find out what two of the NBER’s important measurements: real personal income and spending, as well as real manufacturing and trade sales, are, but since today there’s no big news, let’s take a look at those financial stress indicators I mentioned above.

First, the Leverage subindex of the Chicago Fed’s Financial Conditions Index got bigly revised last week (from gold to red in the graph below), to show that leverage is now more restrictive than at any times not shortly before or during recessions (compared with the YoY change in the Fed funds rate, blue, for comparison):

This tells us that credit has actually been pretty tight for the last year, and especially the past few months.

Second, the St. Louis Fed’s Financial Stress index, which had been below zero, i.e., un-stressful as late as one week prior, suddenly shot up to levels not seen outside the last several recessions (see sliver at far right), except for the Long Term Capital Management crisis of 1998:

Third, in the past two weeks 2.3% of all deposits have been withdrawn from smaller commercial banks:

The only other time except for the past week that deposits YoY in commercial banks have been negative was in 1985-86:

If you have any significant money on deposit, whether in savings, checking, or money market accounts, you would do well to find out what the highest interest rate a bank in your area is paying for new money, and then march into your current bank and demand that they match that rate, or you will pull your money out. Especially if your bank has been piggish about continuing to pay almost non-existent interest, chances are very good you will get what you want.

It’s getting harder and harder to find any signs outside of employment that are not flashing warning signs of recession in the immediate future, if not already here.

Weekly Indicators for March 20 - 24 at Seeking Alpha

 

 - by New Deal democrat

I’ve neglected to put this up for the past several weeks, but by now you know where to find my latest Weekly Indicator post at Seeking Alpha.

Probably unsurprisingly, in the week after the Silicon Valley Bank failure, just about every financial stress indicators suddenly spiked. In other words, credit conditions, which had already tightened by the end of last year, tightened a lot more in the past several weeks.

Like I wrote yesterday, there are only a couple of things still holding up the economy from falling into recession. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the moment, and reward me a little bit for putting in the effort.

There is now only one significant manufacturing datapoint that is not flat or down - but it’s the one the NBER relies upon

 

 - by New Deal democrat

I am increasingly of the opinion that at the moment, the only two economic data series that are important are nonfarm payrolls and the personal consumption expenditure deflator. That’s because almost every other important metric of the economy is either flat or declining. But payrolls keep chugging along (as evidenced by yesterday’s initial claims report showing that layoffs are figuratively non-existent). And the PCE deflator, which covers a broader spectrum than the CPI, keeps helping two coincident indicators important to the NBER, namely real personal income and real manufacturing and trade sales, remain in the plus column. 

This morning’s report on manufacturers’ new orders for durable goods for February is evidence of that. The broad measure (blue in the graphs below) declined just shy of 1%, while the core measure (red), which is less noisy, increased by 0.2%:

Both are below their peaks in December and August 2022, respectively. In the past few months the broad measure has been trending down, while the core measure has been basically flat.

New orders for durable goods have long been recognized as a leading indicator. Here’s the longer term view for the past 25 years:

Their record certainly isn’t perfect. The core measure continued to rise well into the Great Recession, and both declined sharply in the industrial recession of 2015-16 (that was not an actual recession because consumers kept spending merrily away, and so employment kept rising as well).

Anyway, in the below graph I’ve also added the value of manufacturers total actual shipments, and shipments for “core” capital goods, as well as *nominal* manufacturers’ sales, all normed to 100 as of October 2022:

The slowdown in growth, followed by an actual downturn in the broad measures of orders and shipments, is apparent, as is the flattening in both “core” measures, up only 0.1% and 0.2% since October, respectively.

Nominally, manufacturers sales (gold) through January are also down -0.8% since October. This is where the PCE deflator comes in. Because while there is no breakout of “real” manufacturers sales only, real manufacturing and trade sales (which also includes wholesale and retail sales, and is relied upon by the NBER) was up 0.6% as of its last reading in December.

In other words, the entire panoply of goods production and distribution in the US economy (including industrial production as well) is either flat or down - with the exception of those two measures (real personal income and real manufacturing and trade sales) which take into account the big deflation in producer prices since June, and the PCE deflator. More on that next week, as we wait for the February PCE report next Friday.

New home sales for February increase; likely bottomed last July

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Most of what you probably read elsewhere focuses on new home prices, which after finally declining -0.7% YoY in January, rebounded to +2.5% YoY. As is usual, prices  follow sales YoY with a considerable lag (note since prices are not seasonally adjusted, this is the right way to make the comparison):

In fact if you’ve been reading me and following my rule of thumb, the peak occurred  months ago, once the YoY gains had decelerated by over 50%.

But the most important news was actually in the seasonally adjusted sales, which at 640,000 annualized increased 7,000 from a seriously downwardly revised (by -37,000) January. Big deal, you say? Here’s a graph of the last several years:

While revisions can still be made to the last several months, it is apparent that the bottom for new home sales was last July, at 543,000 annualized. There has been an almost consistent monthly increase since.

This joins existing home sales, which likely bottomed in December; and housing permits and the three month average of starts, both of which possibly bottomed in January. As I’ve written many times before, while new home sales are very noisy and heavily revised, they are frequently the first housing data to turn. And it appears they have. 

Nope; nobody is still getting laid off

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Initial jobless claims declined -1,000 to 191,000 last week, while the more important 4 week moving average declined 250 to 196,250. Continuing claims, with a one week delay, rose 14,000 to 1.694 million:

All of these remain excellent numbers. In particular, the higher numbers at the left end of the graph would have been considered excellent at any previous time in the past 40 years. So the paradigm that almost nobody is getting laid off remains intact.

The YoY comparisons are against the best numbers of last year, so they look comparatively bad. Weekly claims are up 15.1% YoY and continuing claims are up 9.8%. The more important 4 week average is up 8.6%, still below the 10% threshold for even a yellow flag, and bear in mind that it is only important if it lasts a month or more at that level:

This suggests that the unemployment rate in the March payrolls report will be unchanged or close thereto, and at very least there will not be a “bad” headline jobs number.

Updating 3 high frequency indictors: no recession yet, but no paucity of yellow flags

- by New Deal democrat



Aside from the Fed’s rate decision which will be announced this afternoon, it’s a slow economic news week. In general, the punditry which I read seems to be settling on a consensus that we are going to manage to have a soft landing. With the exception of jobs and payrolls, the rest of the indicators I track in sequence continue to indicate a recession is near. Let me update three high frequency indicators I’ve been paying particular attention to.

1.  Redbook consumer spending

This is a weekly update of same store spending, measured nominally YoY. The trend here is pretty self-explanatory:

YoY consumer spending was holding up in double-digits until the middle of last summer. Since then the trend, albeit with some waxing and waning, has been pretty consistent. The average of the last 3 weeks has been just below 3% YoY.

For comparison, here is monthly nominal retail sales YoY since last March:

The trend is similar, but the decline in Redbook has been considerably more pronounced. If the monthly series follows, March nominal retail sales will decline further YoY. And as indicated that’s before consumer inflation is taken into account, which as of February was 6.0% YoY.

Further, if the trend continues, even nominally Redbook will be negative YoY by midyear.

2. Temporary employment

Temporary employment is a leading sector of the jobs market. The American Staffing Association has been posting a “Staffing Index” since 2006. Typically the Index slowly increases during the year, with major seasonal fluctuations around the 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas-New Year’s. Here’s what it looks like since January 2022, and the onset of the Great Recession, 2006-07, for comparison:

The 6% YoY downturn in February through early March this year has been the biggest since the series was begun. That being said, there was a similar downturn in late 2015 (not shown) without the economy coming close to recession.

For comparison, note that there has been a similar YoY downturn in termporary employment in the official payrolls report:

The last few weeks suggest this downturn in the monthly jobs report will continue.

3. Payroll tax withholding

This is a decent coincident proxy for the total jobs market. Almost everybody pays payroll taxes, and it stands to reason if wages and/or jobs growth stagnate, so will the taxes from those paychecks.

Matt Trivisonno of the Daily Jobs Update keeps track of these graphically, and makes a free graph available with a 90 day delay. Which means that the below graph includes the period up through roughly December 15. By way of further explication, the comparison is taxes paid during the entire previous 365 day period, vs. the entire 365 day period before that:

YoY payroll taxes peaked at about 22% in March 2022. Remember that my rule of thumb for non-seasonal adjusted data is that it probably has peaked if the YoY comparison has declined by more than 50% within the ensuing 12 months.

As of December 15, this had declined to about 8.5% - i.e., more than half, suggesting that, if we could seasonally adjust, we would find that payroll taxes paid had turned negative.

Because the data is public at the Department of the Treasury’s site, I can further report to you that as of March 20, the entire previous 365 day period resulted in 5.9% more payroll taxes paid than the 365 day period between March 20, 2021 and March 20, 2022. This is almost a 75% YoY decline.

But the data is a little more nuanced. During the 1st fiscal Quarter of 2022-23, payroll taxes paid were only 1.2% higher than Q1 of 2021-22. So far in the fiscal 2nd quarter this year, taxes are up 7.1% compared with Q2 of 2022 through March 20. That’s a pretty strong rebound.

And the rebound accords with information provided by California’s Treasury Department, shown below:

After a steep YoY decline in late 2022, there has been no further YoY decline in 2023 so far. Since California includes about 1/8th of the entire US population, and an even bigger share of the economy, this is good information.

Interestingly, the Treasurer’s Office for California indicated that they believed the big shortfall in 2022 was due to the downturn in the stock market, which meant that stock options tied to an increase in share prices could not be cashed. The stock market recovered pretty nicely between November and February, so likely some of those stock options were now in the money and could be cashed.

Probably the closest monthly analog is aggregate payrolls in the jobs report, shown YoY below:

Again, there is deceleration, but no nominal downturn yet.

Put the three data series together, we see that two short leading indicators, temporary help and consumer spending adjusted for inflation (since consumption leads employment) have turned down, but no coincident downturn in overall employment. In short, no recession yet, but no paucity of yellow flags.