The headline writers for this morning’s payroll reports can’t really help themselves. In a clickbait world, any kind of record or new high or low is bound to make its way into every article title. The unemployment rate fell to 4.6% in November, the lowest since 2007, therefore it isn’t surprising to see reporting on the labor statistics to have [...]
I think it necessary to qualify and clarify the conventional stance on the unemployment rate. In the mainstream, as noted yesterday, it has been something of an absolute. The lower it goes the more provocative the rhetoric on the positive side. After all, an economy at full employment cannot possibly be unhealthy, can it? That has been the great dividing [...]
It’s easy to set aside the nostalgia, so to speak, since this is likely the last Christmas holiday season to be talked about in the media in the positively glowing terms of the unemployment rate. Ever since the “recovery” began, each and every year the internet and TV channels are filled with stories about how strong the consumer is and [...]
The BLS reported that the rate of hiring in the US continues to be sluggish and sideways. Total hiring across the labor market was estimated to be 5.08 million (SA) in September, down from August and the second slowest rate this year. Since first surpassing 5 million back in September 2014, the overall pace of employer engagement has been largely [...]
The LMCI was positive in October for the third time in the past five months. Revisions are to be expected in any statistic, but more so with the Fed’s factor model by its construction where it has to predict certain parts of its nineteen inputs. Not all those statistics are readily available when it is published and many undergo benchmark [...]
The payroll report disappointed again, especially since October has in the past marked the end of seasonal weakness. Last year the headline for the Establishment Survey followed the usual summer doldrums: July +277k, Aug +150k, Sept +149k, and October 2015 +295k. This year, the sequence has been (with revisions): July +252k, Aug +176k, Sept +191k, and October 2016 +161k. To [...]
ADP Research Institute’s National Employment Report has the reputation of being a solid proxy for the BLS’s monthly payroll figures. In my view, that makes it superfluous unless there is some missing trading value for being two days earlier. But if we think of the government’s statistics as of limited use themselves, then there is perhaps the same limited use [...]
Home resales rebounded in September according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) from an admittedly lackluster summer. Outside of that narrow view of just the past three months, resales, however, really haven’t grown at all going back to last summer. Year-over-year, sales were down 1.8% in July, up just 0.2% in August, and only 0.6% in September. Like Ford’s [...]
Woe to the unemployment rate. Without it so much confusion and angst might have been avoided, though admittedly that more realistic view would have been itself darker but at least clear. In August 2014, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer unleashed a brief but powerful storm of realism upon the bubble of monetary policy. Perhaps it was because his target [...]
The Federal Reserve’s Labor Market Conditions Index (LMCI) fell back -2.2 in September. Revisions to the last few months were also downward, suggesting once again that there is no positive economic momentum this year. Apart from a positive change in July, the LMCI declined in every other month of 2016. With increasing negatives after July, it appears that any hopes [...]
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