- by New Deal democrat
The government shutdown is continuing. The only significant national economic news will be the NAR’s existing home sales report on Thursday. Additionally, the remaining regional Fed surveys will come at the end of this week or next week.
And, as I am still on vacation, don’t be surprised if I play hooky until then.
In the meantime, there are a couple of nuggets with a whiff of a suggestion that the consumer services sector is weakening.
First, the Philadelphia Fed’s nonmanufacturing report was very week. Here’s a graph of employment (blue), new orders (red), and prices paid (gold):
Services inflation has accelerated this year, while employment has been flat, and shrank a little this month, while the new orders component came in at one of the lowest readings in the survey’s entire 15 year history.
Additionally (via Renaissance Macro), the general outlook and diffusion indexes in the survey also came in at among the lowest readings outside of the pandemic lockdowns and the Tariff backlash earlier this year:
Finally, after a strong September, Redbook’s national retail spending survey came in at a weak +5.1% YoY this week:
Well within the range of weekly readings in the past 18 months for this survey, so of course it could very well just be noise.
But without national economic numbers, this is the best information we have. Once more regional Fed’s report, we’ll have a more reliable average.
