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employment

Weekly Market Commentary: Counterintuitive

By |2022-07-25T07:34:18-04:00July 24th, 2022|Alhambra Portfolios, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Where there is no hope it is incumbent on us to invent it. Albert Camus The economic data released last week was almost uniformly bad. We started the week with the NAHB Housing Index, a measure of builder sentiment, which fell from 67 to 55, much less than expected. Next up was more news on the housing market with starts [...]

Simple Economics and Money Math

By |2022-06-09T20:08:48-04:00June 9th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The BLS’s most recent labor market data is, well, troubling. Even the preferred if artificially-smooth Establishment Survey indicates that something has changed since around March. A slowdown at least, leaving more questions than answers (from President Phillips).That as much because of the other employment figures, the Household Survey. April and May, in particular, not just a slowdown but a drop [...]

More On Less Demand

By |2022-06-06T20:15:28-04:00June 6th, 2022|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Inconvenient timing, to say the least. Auto sales in the US last month were, well, not good. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the government agency responsible for GDP, unit sales of light vehicles tumbled to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 12.68 million in May 2022. That’s the lowest since December, down substantially from a not-too-high 14.50 million [...]

May Payrolls (and more) Confirm Slowdown (and more)

By |2022-06-03T17:59:03-04:00June 3rd, 2022|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

May 2022’s payroll estimates weren’t quite the level of downshift President Phillips had warned about, though that’s increasingly likely just a matter of time. In fact, despite the headline Establishment Survey monthly change being slightly better than expected, it and even more so the other employment data all still show an unmistakable slowdown in the labor market. What’s left open [...]

ADP Front-Runs BLS and President Phillips

By |2022-06-02T19:41:12-04:00June 2nd, 2022|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It’s gotten to the point that pretty much everyone is now aware of the risks. Public surveys, market behavior, on and on, hardly anyone outside politics thinks the economy is in a good place. Gasoline, sentiment, whatever, Euro$ #5 in total is much more than what’s shaping up inside the American boundary. Globally synchronized of which the US is proving [...]

President Phillips Emerges To Reassure On Growing Slowdown

By |2022-06-01T19:30:41-04:00June 1st, 2022|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Just the other day, President Biden took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to reassure Americans the government is doing something about the greatest economic challenge they face. Biden says this is inflation when that’s neither the actual affliction nor our greatest threat. On the contrary, recession probabilities have sharply risen as the real economy slows down given [...]

Neither Confusing Nor Surprising: Q1’s Worst Productivity Ever, April Decline In Employed

By |2022-05-09T20:01:38-04:00May 9th, 2022|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Maybe last Friday’s pretty awful payroll report shouldn’t have been surprising; though, to be fair, just calling it awful will be surprising to most people. Confusion surrounds the figures for good reason, though there truly is no reason for the misunderstanding itself. Apart from Economists and “central bankers” who’d rather everyone look elsewhere for the real problem. The Establishment Survey [...]

JOLTS Three (Data) Body Problem

By |2022-03-29T20:00:23-04:00March 29th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Though labor data, like the market it measures, is a lagging macro indicator, there’s some use in closely tracking any changes to it. Financial markets may send out profound warning signals, as they are now, about the future which aren’t (yet) showing up in the employment statistics, still those estimates might provide at least some background behind in this case [...]

Pay Attention

By |2022-03-11T17:32:47-05:00March 11th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Benchmark revisions have visited the BLS JOLTS survey, too. And yes, they’ve been smoothed. To that end, the hawkishly-watched Job Openings (JO) trend has been altered. Before this week’s release, JO had peaked like the Establishment Survey back last summer and had seemed to soften since. Now, JO continues on an upward bend rather than downward.For JOLTS Hires (HI), the [...]

BLS: We’ll Smooth The Payroll Data; ADP: Hold My Beer

By |2022-03-02T20:20:34-05:00March 2nd, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Remember the summer slowdown? Not last year’s, the first one. Back around July and August 2020 when what was supposed to have been a V-shaped recovery fell way off that trend. Instead, blamed on something with COVID, the US (and global economy) limped its way toward the end of that year just in time for its sugar-rush restart via helicopter.Twenty-twenty’s [...]

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