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unemployment rate

Payrolls Still Slowing Into A Third Year

By |2017-03-10T11:51:33-05:00March 10th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Today’s bland payroll report did little to suggest much of anything. All the various details were left pretty much where they were last month, and all the prior trends still standing. The headline Establishment Survey figure of 235k managed to bring the 6-month average up to 194k, almost exactly where it was in December but quite a bit less than [...]

Real Wages Really Inconsistent

By |2017-02-15T19:00:49-05:00February 15th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Real average weekly earnings for the private sector fell 0.6% year-over-year in January. It was the first contraction since December 2013 and the sharpest since October 2012. The reason for it is very simple; nominal wages remain stubbornly stagnant but now a rising CPI subtracts even more from them. Consumers receive no significant boost to their incomes, but are starting [...]

Recovery Begins By Overturning Neutrality

By |2017-02-10T12:09:57-05:00February 10th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Quantum physics has always had a math problem, one that even in its early days the leading physicists were troubled about. Einstein famously remarked, “God does not play dice with the universe.” Erwin Schrödinger’s thought experiment now known simply as “Schrödinger’s cat” was meant to mock the Copenhagen interpretation rather than help explain it. But we live in an age [...]

Jobless Claims Look Great, Until We Examine The Further Potential For What We Really, Really Don’t Want

By |2017-02-09T19:05:41-05:00February 9th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Initial jobless claims fell to just 234k for the week of February 4, nearly matching the 233k multi-decade low in mid-November. That brought the 4-week moving average down to just 244k, which was a new low going all the way back to the early 1970’s. Jobless claims seemingly stand in sharp contrast to other labor market figures which have been [...]

Solutions Require Good Data

By |2017-02-07T17:52:16-05:00February 7th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

There were no surprises in the updated JOLTS estimates for December 2016, just more of the same sideways. The level of Job Openings was 5.501 million (SA), practically unchanged from November’s 5.505 million. The BLS estimates that Job Openings have been stuck at around that level since April 2015. In terms of Hires, that series, too, was practically unchanged in [...]

A Payroll Monstrosity

By |2017-02-03T12:12:42-05:00February 3rd, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The payroll reports are most often assigned a level of credibility that strains credibility. As if written in stone delivered from the infallible, they are the economic stats that most people pay attention to and from where they derive most of their views on the economy. This isn’t without some good reason, as in prior economic periods there was a [...]

Still Nowhere Near Full Employment

By |2017-02-02T18:40:06-05:00February 2nd, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

In addition to all the myriad indications of a serious labor market slowdown last year, despite the fact that the unemployment rate has been 5% or less since September 2015, and in all likelihood was that again in January, there is no indication of any acceleration in wages or earnings. None. The labor market just is not as it is [...]

‘Our Employment Problem’

By |2017-02-02T18:14:59-05:00February 2nd, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Productivity in Q4 2016 was estimated to have been 1.29%, suggesting that last quarter was merely bad rather than unusually bad as it had been just before. Productivity during what was the near-recession in the three quarters including and after Q4 2015 was negative in all three. That would suggest, strongly, why labor market statistics have uniformly described a rather [...]

Where’s The Momentum?

By |2017-01-31T11:34:22-05:00January 31st, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The Federal Reserve in early 2012 altered longstanding monetary policy. In January that year, the FOMC had voted to make explicit what everyone already knew, that it considered 2% inflation to be the definition of “stable” consumer prices, casting off one of the last vestiges of 1980’s era regimes where central bankers felt silence was the best course. It had [...]

Where The New Houses Aren’t

By |2017-01-26T17:42:06-05:00January 26th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

New Home Sales fell sharply in December 2016, from a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 598k in November to 536k. That wasn’t unexpected given the behavior of interest rates since August in particular. It might suggest further declines in new sales as well as construction of new homes in the months ahead. In the bigger picture, interest rates just should not [...]

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