The BLS released its updated productivity estimates showing that Q1 2016 was negative for the second straight quarter and the fourth of the past six. Such negative and flat productivity in any real sense doesn’t make sense. This disparity seems to be, as always, in the BLS serially overstating the employment gains. The level of increase in total hours worked [...]
There was a robust debate inside economics earlier in the recovery period over Okun’s “Law”, the seemingly stable relationship between the unemployment rate and real GDP. The Great Recession was stunningly large in terms of the skyrocketing unemployment rate given that initial estimates for real GDP were bad but not as catastrophic. This was more than a theoretical problem for [...]
If there is any doubt as to the confusion inside the FOMC, one needs only to examine its models. The latest updated projections make a full mockery of both monetary policy and the theory that guides it. Ferbus and the rest don’t buy the labor market story, either, which is why the Fed can only be hesitant at best about [...]
The Bank of Japan had previously “disappointed” last December when it failed to announced more “stimulus.” Setting aside who might actually have been frustrated by the lack of renewed distortions, the Japanese central bank did make some minor alterations to its QQE regime at that time. They expanded the list of eligible collateral and extended the average remaining maturity range [...]
With the BLS’s release of Q4 productivity figures, we get to check the BLS’s estimates just in time for tomorrow’s increasingly irrelevant payroll report. That much has become thoroughly apparent especially since the middle of last year as the Establishment Survey and unemployment rate only diverge with the overall breadth of economic indications. With GDP no longer corroborative, the labor [...]
Productivity estimates were better in Q2 than certainly Q1, even revised, but that still doesn’t change the clear disassociation between the BLS’s version of the economy and the BEA’s. That disparity becomes even messier as the BEA’s last benchmark revision sawed off significant “output” dating back to the now-recognized 2012 slowdown. In tandem, the BLS only revised hours worked (back [...]
Since Q1 GDP was revised lower by almost 1% that meant estimates of productivity were going to be even more out of alignment than they were at the first release. Of course, in a less massaged environment productivity might have preserved some sense if there was less rigidity from the BLS on the employment side. In other words, when “output” [...]
The BLS updated its figures for economic and labor productivity, including the revisions for the first quarter. As it stood prior, the calculation for productivity was among the worst of the past four decades. Given that GDP was already revised lower in the interim, that meant that productivity estimates were going be also sent further downward. Since productivity is a [...]
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