August JOLTS report was weak, but foreshadows little

 

 - by New Deal democrat

In the past year, in contrast to much other data in the jobs sector, the JOLTS reports have been very much consistent with a “soft landing” jobs scenario. In the August report released this morning, the trend weakened slightly.

As a quick refresher, this survey decomposes the employment market into openings, hires, quits, and layoffs. So to begin, here are job openings, hires, and quits all normed to 100 as of just before the pandemic:

I regard openings are “soft” data. While they have trended down for several years, they have remained above their pre-pandemic levels, and are not of much concern to me. They improved slightly this month. The trend for the past 15 months has been flat to slightly downward. Meanwhile both openings and quits declined, the latter to the lowest level since December 2024, but the former came in at the lowest level since June 2015 except for June 2024 and the pandemic lockdown months! These are both “hard” data, and were both weaker readings.

Now let’s look at several components are slight leading indicators for jobless claims, unemployment and wage growth.

Layoffs and discharges, which have trended slightly higher since last summer, but have been rangebound since last autumn, remained so again, although the three month average was the highest in the past 12 months:

This generally accords with both the increase in the unemployment rate in 2023-24, as well as its plateauing this year (red, right scale), as well as the recent trend in continuing jobless claims.:

Next, the quits rate (left scale) typically leads the YoY% change in average hourly wages for nonsupervisory workers (red, right scale):

In August the quits rate declined slightly, tying its lowest in the past 12 months. This suggests that nominal wage growth may decelerate slightly further in the next several months.

Finally, I want to discuss why I don’t pay much attention to the “Beveridge curve,” which is the relationship between job openings divided by the number of unemployed, and the unemployment rate.

In the past several months there has been some modest hysteria about the number of unemployed exceeding the number of job openings (i.e., the ratio has fallen below 1:1), leading to speculation that the unemployment rate will increase.

But the historical view shows that there is no magic ratio of the Beveridge curve which is consistent with rising or falling unemployment. Rather, it is the *trend* in openings vs. the number of unemployed which has generally correlated with the *trend* in the unemployment rate. As shown below, with the Beveridge curve inverted for ease of comparison, the ratio was *always* below 1:1 for the entire period before 2018, and yet there were two extensive recoveries during which the unemployment rate declined:

Now here is the post-pandemic view. Again, we see that the *trends* correlate well, but there is nothing magic about the 1:1 level:

Just like the layoffs and discharges metric, this suggests that the unemployment rate may increase slightly. 

In short, this was a weak report. But it was a report for August, and we already have the August jobs report. It tells us very little about what to expect for September (if it is released, given the likelihood of a government shutdown before then), except that possibly the unemployed ent rate may increase.

Repeat home sales as measured by Case Shiller and the FHFA confirm price deflation

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Last month the indexes of repeat home sales from the FHFA and S&P Case Shiller were the final confirmation that the housing market was in deflation.

That continued in this morning’s reports for July. On a seasonally adjusted basis, in the three month average through June, both the Case-Shiller national index (light blue in the graphs below) and the FHFA purchase index declined -0.1%. The peak for the FHFA index (blue in the graphs below) was in March, while that the Case-Shiller Index (gray) was in February. (note: as per usual, FRED hasn’t updated the FHFA information yet):

The actual *de*flation in the house price indexes has been -0.7% in the FHFA Index and -1.1% in the Case Shiller Index:

On a YoY basis, price gains in both indexes continued to decelerate, at 1.7% for the Case Shiller index, and 2.3% for the FHFA index; but these were the lowest YoY% increases since 2012 for both indexes excluding 5 months in 2023 for the Case Shiller index:

Because house prices lead the shelter component of the CPI by 12 - 18 months, this also indicates that they will continue to decelerate over that period. Here is the same graph as above (/2.5 for scale) plus Owners’ Equivalent Rent from the CPI YoY (red):

The last time the Case-Shiller and FHFA Indexes were in this range, excluding the Great Recession, was in the 1990s, during which time Owners Equivalent rent was in the 2.5%-3.5% range (vs. 4.1% as of the most recent CPI report).

Similarly, the latest “National Rent Report” from Apartment List for August, released yesterday, showed a decline of -0.8% YoY. While this is only new leases, and the combined experimentsl all rent index published by the Census Bureau does not show a decline yet, after two years of YoY declines the trend continues to be that of sustained deceleration:

My conclusion this month is the same as that of last month: all phases of the housing market are either at or near their low points (sales, permits, starts), or declining (prices, construction, employment, and new spec units for sale). What is different is that the manufacturing side of the goods-producing sector has shown renewed vigor in the last couple of months. If that fades as well, it is hard to see how we avoid a recession in the next 12 months.

Weekly Indicators for September 22 - 26 at Seeking Alpha

 

 - by New Deal democrat

My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha.

Not much change this week, but there are signs that consumer spending is beginning to cool off again.

As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment as to the state of the economy, and reward me with a penny or two for my efforts in collecting and organizing it for you.

August personal income and spending: positive, but with several important yellow flags and revisions

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Personal income and consumption is one of the two big monthly reports on the state of the average American, in addition to the jobs report. In the past several months, I have looked for a rebound from April and May’s “Liberation Day” aftermath of a cutback in spending. In July we did get a rebound, and this morning indicated that it has continued. 

Nominally income rose 0.4% and spending 0.6%. Since the PCE inflation gauge rose 0.3%, real income increased 0.1% and real spending rose 0.3%. As a result, real spending is at new record high, while real income is only below its peak in April:

[Note: with the exception of the personal saving rate, and one YoY graph, all of the data in the below graphs is normed to 100 as of just before the pandemic.]

Since real spending on services (blue, right scale) rarely turns down, even in recessions, the focus is on goods (red, left scale). In August they rose a strong 0.7%, also to a new record high:

Additionally, there is authority for the fact that spending on durable goods usually turns down before spending on non-durable goods. In July, this rose 0.9%, but the absolute level remained below that of March and last December:

While this is positive, the three month moving average (which unfortunately I can’t show with FRED tools) has been almost completely stagnant since April, so we may still be topping here.

Incidentally, while I was traveling yesterday, manufacturing new orders and core capital goods orders were both reported, and these were also very positive, with core capital goods orders hitting a new near 3 year high:

This is a major reason why no recession appears imminent, although I would very much like to see what this statistic looks like without the potentially “bubble”-like capital goods spending on AI data centers.

Next, here is the personal savings rate. I follow this because just before and going into recessions it tends to turn up as consumers get more cautious. This month the Census Bureau made major revisions going back three years. As a result, what last month looked like a “typical reading of 4.4%, along with many previous months, was revised substantially higher. Thus the 4.6% rewind for August was not a significant increase, but rather a significant *decrease* from readings in the past year:

A decline in savings is typically a bullish reading for the present, indicating consumer confidence, but when near new lows is also a sign that consumers may be stretching themselves too thin. Since the revisions may be due to the income side of the equation, or the spending side, or both, I will have to take a deeper look at each before commenting in more detail.

Finally, let’s take a look at two coincident indicators from this report which the NBER pays close attention to in dating recessions. First, here is real income less government transfers:

This was unchanged from July, and further is only 0.2% above its March and June levels, as well as below April’s (blue, right scale). On a YoY basis (red, left scale) the decelerating trend dating back almost three years has continued. Should this trend persist several more months, that would be recessionary.

Second, here is real manufacturing and trade industries sales, which is delayed one month and so if for July. This rose 0.6% for the month to a new all time high:

In summary, this was mainly a positive report, but with several yellow flags. Real personal income and spending both rose, one to a new record. Real sales (delayed one month) also made a new high. This confirms the recent rebound shown in capital goods orders, as well as the Regional Fed new orders reports. This is all good.

But, there are several cautionary elements. In addition to the substantial backward revisions, the three month average on durable goods spending may be on the cusp of rolling over, and as mentioned just above, real income less government transfers has essentially flatlined since March.

A tariff-triggered recession would likely be led by a decline in purchases of consumer durable goods, which will be updated in the next two weeks. Here’s what it looks like currently:

In addition a to the ISM reports and jobs report which will be released next week, this is the next big item I will be looking for.

Initial jobless claims: on the road again . . .

 

 - by New Deal democrat

I’m on the road today, and won’t have time to update anything until tonight.

So here is what to look for in initial and continuing jobless claims.

Remember that the most important figure for forecasting purposes is the YoY% change. One year ago, initial claims came in at 221,000, the four week average at 225,250, and continuing claims at 1.831 million.

A positive result would be numbers lower than those. A neutral result is any number in the weekly and four week average of initial claims lower than 10% higher YoY. For initial claims, depending on revisions to last week’s number of 221,000, 10% plus higher would be 244,000. More importantly, YoY 10% plus higher for the four week average of initial claims would be 248,000, again depending on revisions to last week’s numbers.

Continuing claims + initial claims are good for forecasting the near term trend in the unemployment rate, so any number higher than 1.831 in continuing claims plus 221,000 in initial claims, or 2.052 million total) suggests a higher trend in the unemployment rate vs. one year ago. Last week that combined figure was 2.151 million. 

New home sales: despite the noisy sharp increase in August, the last pre-recession metrics are firmly negative

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Have I mentioned before that new home sales, while perhaps the most leading of all the housing data, suffer from being very noisy and heavily revised? Yes, I think I have, just about every month. And this month’s report is a good example of why.

Let me start with prices this month. Last month it was reported that the median price for new houses sold was $403,800. This month that number was revised down -2.2% to $395,100, and this month itself jumped $18,400 from there to $413,500, a 4.7% increase! This number is not seasonally adjusted, so the best way to look at it is YoY (red in the graph below, left scale), which was higher by 1.9% this month:

The three month average takes out most of the volatility, and so measured prices are down -2.8% YoY, and the declining trend in the absolute number (blue) is intact as well.

But the volatility in the price metric is chicken feed compared with sales (blue in the graph below), which jumped just over 20% (!) from an upwardly revised 664,000 last month to 800,000 seasonally adjusted and annualized this month, a 3+ year high:

I’ll come back to houses for sale (red) in a moment. But while mortgage rates did decline to 10 month lows in August (and more since):

that hardly suggests a complete turnaround in the market. For example, mortgage rates were lower last October, and there was no comparable jump in sales. So, to return to the theme of “noisy and heavily revised,” let’s see what next month’s revisions are before we make a champagne toast, because it is perfectly likely that this is an outlier.

Now let’s return to the number of houses for sale (red in the graph above), which declined another -7,000 from a downwardly revised July to 490,000 annualized, a declined of -2.8% from peak. This is nearly certain confirmation that this metric, which along with employees in residential construction is one of the last to turn in the cycle, has decisively turned down.

Here is the long term historical YoY look at new houses sold (blue) and new houses for sale (red):

It is easy to see that the former (blue) always turns first. Further, it almost always has been negative for a year or more before a recession occurs. The latter (red) - the number of houses for sale - typically turns negative YoY close in time to when a recession actually begins.

Now here is the post-pandemic look:

This month for the first time in a year, the number of houses sold zoomed higher to 15.4% YoY, while the number of houses for sale declerated to a paltry 4.0% higher YoY. It could easily turn negative by about the end of this year.

In sum: housing is recessionary, and the last shoes to drop, have dropped.

The State of the Consumer: the nowcast recession forecasting tool

 

 - by New Deal democrat

In addition to my system of long and short leading indicators, and the weekly high frequency data, the third system I use to mark to market my views of the economy is what i call “the consumer nowcast.”

Consumers are 70% of the economy. Their sources of new spending include wages and salaries, refinancing existing debt at lower rates, and cashing in or borrowing against appreciating assents. When the spigots for all of these are turned off, and consumers start getting more cautious, a recession ensues.

Yesterday and today, for the first time in many months, I updated that tool, and it is posted over at Seeking Alpha. While it isn’t negative, the situation of consumers is more precarious than it might appear on the surface.

As usual, clicking over and reading will bring me a penny or two in lunch money, as well as hopefully being educational for you.

Weekly Indicators for September 15 - 19 at Seeking Alpha

 

 - by New Deal democrat

My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha.

Along with the continuing resilience of consumer spending, which I wrote about yesterday, the other surprise in the data has been the strong rebound in manufacturing indexes in the past 45 days, as evidenced by several of the regional Fed situation reports released in the past week. All of this is part of a complex reaction to the chaos of imposition/postponements etc. of tariffs. Needless to say, it remains to be seen just how durable this is.

As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment as to the state of the economy, and bring me a penny or two for lunch money.

Addendum: speaking of yesterday’s post, there is one graph that didn’t make it in there, but is an important part of of the overall picture; namely, that the share of total spending by the top 10% of consumers is at an all time record high:

This doesn’t mean that the increasing trend can’t continue. In fact, with fits and starts it’s been the case since at least the start of the Millennium. But it does point to the narrowness of the support for the consumption part of the economy.

 

The AI stock price bubble and consumer spending Ponzi loop?

 

 - by New Deal democrat

One of this things that has puzzled me for the last few months is why consumer spending has remained so strong in the face of so many headwinds in the economy, some from horrible policy coming out of Washington, some embedded in the long leading and short leading sectors. 

There is no economic news today, so let me deviate from my normal routine to explain my best hypotheses: namely, that the stock market and consumer spending are presently in a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop. By this I mean that the wealth effect from increasing stock prices is causing the uppermost income brackets to spend more, which only reinforces the earnings of companies which cater to them, which gives rise to further stock appreciation and so on.

To start, here is a graph of real retail sales (orange), real personal spending (red), and the S&P 500 (blue, right scale) since mid year 2024:

It’s not difficult to see that the patterns are similar. The tariff front-running coincided with new highs in the market, followed by the post- “Liberation Day” swoon, followed by renewed optimism and purchases. This despite the fact that the housing market, some measures of manufacturing, and transportation are recessionary, new vehicle sales are roughly flat, and production has either turned flat or at best slightly increased.

Let me next re-up some graphs that have been posted in the last few days by CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla.

First, after tax wages and salaries have increased much more than those for lower income households:

Unsurprisingly, lower income households have become stretched. While they haven’t cut back on their spending, it hasn’t increased either:

But higher income households are doing just fine.

And driven by those upper income households, US stock allocation is at an all-time high, even surpassing 1999 and 2005:

Currently stock prices are up 16% YoY:

An upper income household that had $500,000 in stocks one year ago now has $80,000 more in paper wealth; if a wealthier household had $1,000,000 in stocks, it now has $160,000 more wealth on paper, and so on. 

And some of it is being spent. That’s the wealth effect.

Now, the obvious problem with all this is, what happens if and when the stock market reverses. And there is every reason to believe it will reverse. That’s because almost all of the earnings gains in stocks have been confined to a very narrow group that dominate the social media/AI space. To wit, *ALL* of the recent earnings upgrades have come from just 7 of the 500 stocks in the S&P 500:

And the advance-decline line (the number you get when you subtract the number of stocks with daily declines from those with daily increases) has remained almost flat since the beginning of July (up about 0.5%) vs. the S&P 500, up about 3%:

This by no means tells us anything about *when* there might be a reversal. But the above graphs are warning signs that stocks are very vulnerable to such a reversal. It also doesn’t tell us what the source of the reversal might be. For example, in 2000 the reversal in the internet stocks bubble began when Barron’s magazine published a front page story about the “burn rate” for various of those stocks, showing that some of them (I think pets.com was the leading example) were within 7 weeks of running out of money.

But I think the above is the best explanation about why consumer spending is holding up so well. Because people react much more strongly to losing money than gaining it, it also strongly suggests that if there is a stock market reversal, in this overall economic environment consumer spending is going to decline in pretty dramatic fashion.

Jobless claims continue higher YoY trend

 

 - by New Deal democrat

We are in the part of the year when, post-Covid, likely residual seasonality has resulted in a declining trend in new jobless claims. 

Not this year.

On a week over week basis, initial jobless claims did decline -33,000 from last week’s outlier 264,000 to 231,000, and the four week averaged declined -750 to 241,000. With the typical one week delay, continuing claims declined -7,000 to 1.920 million:

On the YoY basis more important for forecasting purposes, however, initial claims were higher by 4.1%, the four week average by 5.3%, and continuing claims by 5.1%:

These are neutral readings, consistent with a slowly expanding economy. Nonetheless, I find this noteworthy because, along with sharply rising stock market prices, during the summer they were one of the few strongly positive short leading indicators. This has now disappeared.

Finally, let me update the relationship with the unemployment rate. A reminder that initial claims have a long history of leading the unemployment rate, and initial + continuing claims are even more accurate although they only lead slightly.

Here’s the current situation expressed in YoY% changes:

After a brief detour in July and most of August, with both initial and continuing claims having resumed their trend of being higher YoY, this suggests that the unemployment rate in the next several months is likely to be 4.3% or 4.4%, i.e., 1.05x the 4.1% and 4.2% readings of one year ago.

August housing construction: even more recessionary than before

 

 - by New Deal democrat

A puzzling relationship this year has been that the housing data has been classically recessionary for a number of months, and yet the economy has not rolled over. And this morning’s dismal report on housing construction was even more recessionary. 

Let’s start with the most dismal number of all: permits (gold in the graph below) declined -50,000 to 1.312 million annualized. Excluding the immediate COVID lockdown months of April through June 2020, this was the lowest number since June 2019. The more noisy starts (blue) also declined by -122,000 to 1.307 million annualized. And the metric that is the least noisy of all and conveys the most signal, single family permits (red), declined -19,000 to a 3+ year low of 856,000 annualized:

From the post-pandemic peaks, starts are down 28.2% from their peak, permits 31.7%, and single family permits 31.1%. Although I won’t bother with the graph this month, all of those have been typical readings for the onset of most of the recessions of the past 50+ years, although in two cases - 1991 and the Great Recession - they were down by over 50%. 

On the other hand, on a YOY% basis, starts are down 6.0%, permits are down -11.1% and single family permits are down 11.5%. Typically all three have been down 20% or more at the onset of recessions in the past, although in the 1991 and 2001 recessions, they were only down about -10%:

Note that there have been a number of times, for example 1966, 1987, and 1995, where construction has been down -10% or more YoY without a recession occurring.

Let’s turn next to the number of housing units under construction. As I have written many times in the past several years, it is the best “real” measure of the economic impact of housing (blue in the graphs below). In August they declined -20,000 to a new four year low of 1.317 million annualized. They are also down 23.2% from their peak:

The above graph shows how they have followed single family permits (red), as expected. More often than not in the past by the time a decline in units under construction had declined by this much, a recession had already begun. The only two exceptions were the late 1980s, where the pre-recession decline was -28.2%, and 2007, where the pre-recession decline was -25.6%. 

Now let’s update housing units under construction with the typical final shoes to drop before recessions, houses for sale (gold) and residential construction employment (red), in comparison with units under construction, all normed to 100 as of their respective post-pandemic peaks. As I noted in the past month, after revisions both the number of employees in residential construction and new one family homes for sale peaked in March and have declined almost uniformly since:

Now here is the same data presented in YoY% change format:

Note that with the exception of 1974 and the COVID recession, houses for sale and (once available) employment in residential construction had turned down YoY before the recessions had begun. By contrast, at present these metrics are higher by 8.1% and 1.5% respectively. But at their present rates of decline, both could be negative YoY by January.

Finally, as I discussed last month, one reason why the steep decline in housing has not caused a recession yet is that other durable goods purchases, and in particular motor vehicle purchases, have not followed suit. Since then we did get an update on both passenger vehicle (gold in the graphs below) and heavy truck sales (red). Here’s the historical pre-pandemic record, averaged quarterly to cut down on noise:

Note that both types of vehicle sales were lower YoY, with truck sales typically down over 10% YoY.

Here is the monthly post-pandemic view:

While truck sales are down -15.8% YoY, passenger vehicle sales are higher by 6.2%. But as the graph below shows, in their present range passenger vehicle sales (gold) could easily turn negative YoY as early as next month:

Meanwhile, even with yesterday’s increase, nominal retail sales of motor vehicles remain in their range since last November.

To sum up, today’s housing construction report for August was very much recessionary, although in some YoY comparisons, I would expect further damage before the actual onset of one. But that could easily occur within the next four to six months. The next big datapoint to watch for will be the update on persona spending on durable and consumer goods.

August industrial production: overall neutral trend continues

 

 - by New Deal democrat

So much is imported that industrial production is much less central to the US economic picture than it was before the “China shock,” but it remains an important if diminished economic indicator. It has been trending generally sideways this year, and that trend continued in August.

Headline industrial production (blue in the graph below) rose 0.1%% in August, but after revisions to prior months, the net was a decline of -0.1% compared with the initial reading last month for July. Manufacturing production (red) increased 0.3%, but after revisions was up 0.2% compared with the initial reading for July:

Total production has not exceeded its post-pandemic high in June, but with its increase this month manufacturing production is now the highest since early 2019.

Updating my graph from yesterday, mixing production (gold, left scale) increased 1.1% for the month, but remains below its June peak, while utility production (yellow, narrow, right scale) declined -0.8%:

The overall trend in the past six months remains flat to slightly increasing, after strong increases in 2024 into the beginning of this year.

Nevertheless, my conclusion this month remains the similar as it was last month, when I wrote: “Along with retail sales, this is the second coincident positive for the economy this morning.”  Because after revisions total industrial production declined -0.1% this month vs. July, they are neutral vs. positive, but the net of both is that, unless and until consumers pull back, there is no recession.

Consumers say “hold my beer” to DOOOMing about sales

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Retail sales is the first of two very important indicators we got this morning. Per yesterday, with employment growth “dead in the water” since April, consumer spending - which leads future employment - is the single most crucial element of a turning point. 

 It really is incredible how it takes a major shock for American consumers to cut back on spending. Because in August nominally retail sales rose 0.6%, confirming the very positive weekly data that has recently shown up in Redbook. Additionally, July was revised 0.1% higher, from 0.5% to 0.6%. After taking into account consumer inflation in August, which rose 0.4%, real retail sales rose 0.2% for the month, after a 0.4% increase in July.

This means that real retail sales are now at their highest since January 2023, as shown in the graph below (blue):

The above graph also shows real personal spending on goods (gold, right scale), which is a broader measure and tends to trend similarly to retail spending, but won’t be reported until the end of this month.

Further, with several exceptions, most notably in 2022-23, in the past 75 years whenever real retail sales turned negative YoY, a recession was about to begin or had just begun. If it was positive and not sharply decelerating, a recession was unlikely in the immediate future. At present real retail sales are higher YoY by 2.1%, so there is no sign of any imminent downturn in the economy:

Finally, because consumption leads employment, here is the updated graph of real retail sales YoY, together with real personal consumption of goods compared with nonfarm payrolls (red):

Based on historical experience, after the last two good months, real retail sales now suggest that YoY jobs growth will not roll over, but remain in a similar weakly positive range for the next several months.

The big question continues to be whether the continuing chaos of the imposition of tariffs at the highest rate since Smoot Hawley in 1931 creates enough of a shock to derail consumers. So far, (at least perhaps at the top end)  it most emphatically has not.

Employment growth is dead in the water; tomorrow we will find out about production and sales

 

 - by New Deal democrat

With no news today, let’s take a look at why two releases tomorrow are especially important.

Let me begin with employment, which is “dead in the water.”  I’ve written before about how manufacturing and construction employment, and now the entire leading sector of goods-producing employment, is down. But today let me point out how narrow the poor situation in services as well. [NOTE: all FRED graphs in today’s post are normed to 100 as of April of this year].

Below is the graph of total employment (blue), total employment excluding health care (red), and services sector employment excluding health care (gold):

Not only is total employment down by more than -100,000 since April excluding healthcare, but even in the services sector (which is everything except goods production), employment in every other job except health care is up by a grand total of 2,000. Total employment in *all* sectors is up only 107,000 - and it’s all healthcare.

Domestic goods production looks shaky as well. Below is total industrial production (blue), manufacturing production (red), mining (gold), and utilities (right scale, narrow, orange):

Since March nearly all forms of production are either virtually flat or down. Only utilities (probably due in great part to AI data mining operations) are significantly higher. Tomorrow we will find out if this continues or not.

If employment is flat, and if production is also close to flat, what has really been keeping the economy growing has been consumer spending. 

One measure I keep track of weekly is Redbook’s consumer spending report, which is nominal and is only reported YoY:

In the past few weeks there have been strong grains of 6.5% YoY or more.

But more importantly, below are real personal spending on services (blue) which almost always grow even during many recessions, real personal spending on goods (gold) which tend to turn down shortly before recessions, and real retail sales (red) which also turn down prior to recessions, and while similar to goods spending are more sensitive to the downside:

Real retail sales are down from their tariff front-running March peak. Tomorrow they will be reported for August. Keeping in mind that consumer inflation was 0.4% last month, unless there has been strong nominal growth, real sales are likely to be negative.