Tag Archive: wages

Consolidation Featured Ahead of Tomorrow’s US Retail Sales and Friday’s Japanese Wage News

2024-03-13

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2024-03-13

Overview: We came into this week expecting the dollar to rise on the back of a recovery in rates. The two-year note has risen from 4.40% after the jobs report to 4.60%. The dollar's rise has been less impressive.

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China’s CSI 300 Rises for Seventh Consecutive Session and Offshore Yuan Strengthens for the Sixth Session

2024-02-21

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2024-02-21

Overview: The dollar is trading quietly after being sold yesterday. It is still soft against the dollar bloc and the Swiss franc but is firmer against the other G10 currencies. Narrow ranges have dominated. Emerging market currencies are mixed, with central European currencies and the Taiwan dollar trading softer. The offshore Chinese yuan is firmer for the sixth consecutive session. The highlights of today's North American session features minutes...

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Dollar Jumps, while Surge in Covid Cases Raise Questions about China’s Pivot

2022-11-21

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2022-11-21

Overview: Surging Covid cases in China and Hong Kong are undermining hopes of a Covid-pivot and the US dollar is broadly higher. Equities are under pressure to start the week. Most of the large bourses in the Asia Pacific but Japan, fell earlier today. Europe’s Stoxx 600 is paring last week’s minor gain, which was the fifth consecutive weekly rise. US stock futures are lower, while the 10-year US Treasury yield is flat near 3.83%. European yields...

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May Payrolls (and more) Confirm Slowdown (and more)

2022-06-07

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2022-06-07

May 2022’s payroll estimates weren’t quite the level of downshift President Phillips had warned about, though that’s increasingly likely just a matter of time. In fact, despite the headline Establishment Survey monthly change being slightly better than expected, it and even more so the other employment data all still show an unmistakable slowdown in the labor market.

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Neither Confusing Nor Surprising: Q1’s Worst Productivity Ever, April Decline In Employed

2022-05-13

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2022-05-13

Maybe last Friday’s pretty awful payroll report shouldn’t have been surprising; though, to be fair, just calling it awful will be surprising to most people. Confusion surrounds the figures for good reason, though there truly is no reason for the misunderstanding itself. Apart from Economists and “central bankers” who’d rather everyone look elsewhere for the real problem.

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For The Fed, None Of These Details Will Matter

2022-03-06

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2022-03-06

Most people have the impression that these various payroll and employment reports just go into the raw data and count up the number of payrolls and how many Americans are employed. Perhaps the BLS taps the IRS database as fellow feds, or ADP as a private company in the same data business of employment just tallies how many payrolls it processes as the largest provider of back-office labor services.That’s just not how it works, though. In fact,...

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As The Fed Tapers: What If More Rapid (published) Wage Increases Are Actually Evidence of *Deflationary* Conditions?

2022-01-05

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2022-01-05

Since the Federal Reserve is not in the money business, their recent hawkish shift toward an increasingly anti-inflationary stance is a twisted and convoluted case of subjective interpretation.

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Very Rough Shape, And That’s With The Payroll Data We Have Now

2020-01-15

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2020-01-15

Household Survey: Civilian Employment, 2017-2019
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has begun the process of updating its annual benchmarks. Actually, the process began last year and what’s happening now is that the government is releasing its findings to the public. Up first is the Household Survey, the less-watched, more volatile measure which comes at employment from the other direction. As the name implies, the BLS asks households who in them is working whereas the more closely scrutinized...

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Disposable (Employment) Figures

2019-12-11

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2019-12-11

Establishment Survey; Blowout Payrolls, 2014-2019
If last month’s payroll report was declared to be strong at +128k, then what would that make this month’s +266k? Epic? Heroic? The superlatives are flying around today, as you should expect. This Payroll Friday actually fits the times. It wasn’t great, they never really are nowadays (when you adjust for population and participation), but it was a good one nonetheless.

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Japan: Fall Like Germany, Or Give Hope To The Rest of the World?

2019-08-29

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2019-08-29

Japan JGB, Jan 2014 - Jul 2019
After trading overnight in Asia, Japan’s government bond market is within a hair’s breadth of setting new record lows. The 10-year JGB is within a basis point and a fraction of one while the 5-year JGB has only 2 bps to reach. It otherwise seems at odds with the mainstream narrative at least where Japan’s economy is concerned.

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No Surprise, Hysteria Wasn’t a Sound Basis For Interpretation

2019-02-28

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2019-02-28

Labor Utilization Total Hours Worked 2008-2018
What gets them into trouble is how they just can’t help themselves. Go back one year, to early 2018. Last February it was all-but-assured (in mainstream coverage) that the US economy was going to take off. The bond market, meaning UST’s, was about to be massacred because the overheating boom would force a double shot down its throat.

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Inflation Falls Again, Dot-com-like

2019-02-16

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2019-02-16

CPI Changes On Energy 2016-2019
US inflation in January 2019 was, according to the CPI, the lowest in years. At just 1.55% year-over-year, the index hadn’t suggested this level since September 2016 right at the outset of what would become Reflation #3. Having hyped expectations over that interim, US policymakers now have to face the repercussions of unwinding the hysteria.

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Hall of Mirrors, Where’d The Labor Shortage Go?

2019-01-20

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2019-01-20

Federal Reserve Beige Book 2010-2019
Today was supposed to see the release of the Census Bureau’s retail trade report, a key data set pertaining to the (alarming) state of American consumers, therefore workers by extension (income). With the federal government in partial shutdown, those numbers will be delayed until further notice. In their place we will have to manage with something like the Federal Reserves’ Beige Book.

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Economics Is Easy When You Don’t Have To Try

2018-12-11

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2018-12-11

Japan GDP, Quantitative and Qualitative Easing, Jan 2008 - Mar 2018
The real question is why no one says anything. They can continue to make these grossly untrue, often contradictory statements without fear of having to explain themselves. Don’t even think about repercussions. Even in front of politicians ostensibly being there on behalf of the public, pedigree still matters more than results.

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Another ‘Highest In Ten Years’

2018-11-01

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2018-11-01

ECI, Jan 2001 - Oct 2018
Upon the precipice of the Great “Recession”, US workers were cushioned to some extent by what economists call sticky wages. Before the Great Depression, as well as during it, companies would attempt to deal with looming economic contraction by cutting pay rates before workers.

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No Such Thing As An 80 percent Boom

2018-10-26

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2018-10-26

Payrolls LF Participation, Jan 1995 - 2018
Many attribute the saying “a rising tide lifts all boats” to President John Kennedy. He may have been the man who brought it into the mainstream but as his former speechwriter Ted Sorenson long ago admitted it didn’t originate from his or the President’s imagination. Instead, according to Sorenson, it was a phrase borrowed from the New England Chamber of Commerce or some such.

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Buybacks Get All The Macro Hate, But What About Dividends?

2018-07-13

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2018-07-13

S&P500 Stock Repurchases 2000-2018
When it comes to the stock market and the corporate cash flow condition, our attention is usually drawn to stock repurchases. With good reason. These controversial uses of scarce internal funds are traditionally argued along the lines of management teams identifying and correcting undervalued shares. History shows, conclusively, that hasn’t really been true.

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The Retail Sales Shortage

2018-04-22

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2018-04-22

US Retail Sales, Jan 2014 - Apr 2018
Retail sales rose (seasonally adjusted) in March 2018 for the first time in four months. Related to last year’s big hurricanes and the distortions they produced, retail sales had surged in the three months following their immediate aftermath and now appear to be mean reverting toward what looks like the same weak pre-storm baseline. Exactly how far (or fast) won’t be known until subsequent months.

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U.S. Unemployment: The Dissonance Book

2018-01-20

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2018-01-20

US Federal Reserve, Jan 2010 - 2018
I’ve found the word “dissonance” has become more common in regular usage beyond just my own. Whether that’s a function of my limited observational capacities or something more meaningful than personal bias isn’t at all clear. Still, the word does seem to fit in economic terms more and more as we carry on uncorrected by meaningful context.

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The Reluctant Labor Force Is Reluctant For A Reason (and it’s not booming growth)

2018-01-10

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2018-01-10

Labor Market Growth Rates, 1968 - 2017
In 2017, the BLS estimates that just 861k Americans were added to the official labor force, the denominator, of course, for the unemployment rate. That’s out of an increase of 1.4 million in the Civilian Non-Institutional Population, the overall prospective pool of workers. Both of those rises were about half the rate experienced in 2016.

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