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 [...]
The greatest mistake any statistician can make is to confuse correlation for causation. It is quite natural to do so, of course, a limitation not limited to modern society where information can at times seem limitless. There are also cases where you are left with little other alternative. But within them requires even more robust evidence and more thorough examinations, [...]
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 [...]
Inventories in the fourth quarter rebounded rather sharply, at least in terms of how inventory is calculated as a contribution to GDP. The GDP version of inventory turned negative in Q2, and was only slightly positive in Q3. In the final quarter of 2016, however, the total change is preliminarily estimated to have been $51.1 billion. That isn’t quite back [...]
Gross Domestic Product for the fourth quarter of 2016 disappointed once again, which is to say that it was perfectly consistent. At just 1.856%, quarter-over-quarter, it was the fifth time out of the past six quarters less than 2%. Only last quarter where unusual export activity pushed GDP up was the growth rate anywhere close to what it should be [...]
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 [...]
As with all innovation, the roots of any specific trend usually cast back a very long time. In terms of Enterprise computing solutions, Software as a Service (SaaS) dates to the earliest days of the internet. In the middle 1990’s Application Service Providers started popping up, but they were largely erased in the dot-com bust (not without good reason). For [...]
The Federal Reserve reported this week that consumer credit increased by $24.5 billion in November, the largest expansion since August and one of the biggest monthly changes in the data series. Non-revolving credit was actually subdued at least as compared to what has become typical. Revolving credit, on the other hand, surged by $11 billion. That was nearly as much [...]
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 [...]
There are a few parts of the payroll reports that do make sense without requiring alternative interpretation. Among these face value statistics is the estimate for manufacturing payrolls. The BLS figures that employment in the manufacturing sector peaked in July 2015 and has been declining ever so gently since then. Total job losses are just 61k over that year and [...]
Stay In Touch