Since January, we are supposed to believe that the jobs market is recovering when the official labor force contracts by 168,000 persons? I cannot think of any economic reality where that incongruity can be resolved outside of a central planning paradise. What that means, strictly according to the numbers, is that the civilian non-institutional population rose by just shy of [...]
The Gallup Daily US Employment poll has seen a sharp rise in respondents indicating employment difficulties in the past month or so. The unemployment rate jumped as high as 8.9% on August 20, before settling back down. But it still remains well-above not just the BLS estimations, but levels from earlier in the year and in 2012. The Gallup data [...]
The discrepancy I highlighted in last month’s jobs report (June) closed a bit in July as the Household Survey reported growth at a higher rate than the Establishment Survey (+227k vs. +162k). On the other side of the BLS ledger, the same charade continued with the official labor force falling by 37k. Those “not in the labor force” increased by [...]
Apparently it is time to celebrate inflation, however it might be defined. Inflation is looked on no longer as the bane of central bankers, but their reason to exist. This is now near universal, as one after another nation is forced by central banks to appeal to debasement as economic salvation. On the surface, it looks as if the Bank [...]
I rarely take on the issue of measuring inflation properly because there really is no “right” answer or methodology for it. But in the case of current “growth”, such that it is, inflation actually becomes a far more important component. “Real” growth in the past two quarters has been less than 2%, meaning nominal growth was somewhere around 2.5 - [...]
The headline employment growth for May 1974 totaled 165,000 jobs. That followed a weaker report from April where only 89,000 new jobs were created. Only a few months before, the headline beancount of job quantity was 304,000. For the seven months between November 1973 and May 1974, the headline averaged +135,000. That was notable because the entire period fell within [...]
Joe covered the GDP release for Q1 2013 earlier where he noted that: “While on the surface that seems better than the 4th quarter rate of 0.4%, the details were actually worse in many ways.” I wanted to follow up with one of those “worse” features – consumer spending on housing “services”. This is a topic I have covered many [...]
Headline employment figures had been displaying a far better indication of the labor market than most of the internal, non-adjusted numbers for January and February. Unfortunately, in March the headline finally converged with disappointing internals rather than the other way around. In the Establishment Survey, the headline increase of 88k was far below expectations, and even below the lowest estimate. [...]
Year over year retail sales in January were the best in a few months, but on an adjusted basis were rather lackluster. Again, I don’t find the pursuit of month-to-month precision illuminating and it has clearly caused disconnects between adjusted and unadjusted data (I know, a recurring theme). The adjustment factor (the divisor) for January 2013 was 0.92, while the [...]
Headline employment continues to look tepid, but at least moving in the right direction. However, that does not square with the GDP report from earlier this week. The headline Establishment survey average of the past few months appears inconsistent with such GDP weakness. Economists have been quick to point to the BLS employment numbers as confirmation that GDP is not [...]
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