For the first time since 2014, the CPI was above 2% in December. Unlike the PCE Deflator, the CPI has been above 2% on other occasions after the 2012 slowdown, notably in mid-2014 when policymakers were making the same extrapolations as to its meaning. The inflation index had been as high as 2.13% in May 2014, before the economy of [...]
The updated estimates from the BLS for its JOLTS data largely confirm observations from other labor markets figures. The rate of Job Openings in November 2016 was slightly more than October, but still not appreciably different than what it has been over the past two years. The JOLTS survey indicated Job Openings first reached 5.5 million for the first time [...]
The BLS reported what was on the surface another lackluster payroll report. All the headline numbers conformed to the slowed economy view of 2016. The Establishment Survey gained just 156k in December, following an upward revised 204k in November. The 6-month average, a far more appropriate interpretation given inherent statistical volatility month to month, is just 189k. The Household Survey [...]
For the 55th consecutive month, the PCE Deflator came in under the 2% inflation target for the Federal Reserve’s inflation mandate. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported last week that inflation in November 2016 actually decelerated slightly from its meandering pace set more by oil price base effects than $4.5 trillion on the Fed’s balance sheet. Year-over-year the PCE Deflator [...]
Wages and slack have been at the center of the economic discussion for almost three years now. The massive shedding of employees that took place during the Great “Recession” left behind a huge pool of potential labor for the economy to work through as it was expected to recover. That never happened. So instead, economists have been working backward to [...]
The JOLTS survey continues to show a lack of acceleration in the labor market. Even previously robust Job Openings estimates have plateaued. After surging throughout 2014 and into the middle of 2015, the level of estimated job openings has been more or less the same since. That might indicate the labor market reaching saturation, or it might suggest, as all [...]
There is a distinction between actual, meaningful growth and plain positive numbers. Recession everyone can agree on, as nearly every economic account (but not all) finds itself with a negative sign. Because of the binary model that the mainstream associates with all economic conditions, the absence of contraction is conflated with meaningful growth, even where the statistics are nothing like [...]
According to the BLS’s latest figures, real hourly compensation increased 2.2% Q/Q (annualized rate) in Q3. Wages and earnings are being closely watched, of course, for signs of acceleration due to the so far ethereal full employment level. That idea is taken from the unemployment rate even though, as in November, it has been as much determined by the lack [...]
Last summer was perhaps the most pivotal period of the past two years for the economy in a number of ways. It was that moment stuck in between what was supposed to be, even if acceleration and liftoff were delayed by the “rising dollar” of late 2014, and, of course, what has become accepted that it never will. Less than [...]
Nominal personal spending grew by just over 4% in October 2016, a number that sounds impressive by virtue of what we have become used to in this economy. That was much less than the 5.2% in spending growth from the middle of 2014 just prior to the effects of the “rising dollar”, which was itself a low point for a [...]
Stay In Touch