Econ70

54% of Americans will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day today and will in the process spend $5.87 billion. 80% of celebrants will wear green, 34% will make a special dinner, and 26% will decorate their home or office. While St. Patrick’s…

War has traditionally worsened inflation as military demands are added to domestic ones, sanctions, embargoes, and bombs worsen supply chains, and as conflicts are often financed by printing money. While some of these effects are all but guaranteed, to date…

GDP growth is the result of increases in the labor force and improvements in labor productivity. Regrettably, the pool of new job entrants has been declining dramatically of late. The average annualized growth in the working age population went from…

The number of job openings fell to 11.3 million in January from 11.4 million in December, the December number was an all-time high. Pre-Covid-19, the number was just 7 million. Relatedly, the quit rate is now 2.8%/month, down slightly from…

The Friday File: With the price of nickel recently quintupling in value to $100,000/metric ton, a nickel is now worth about 16 cents in metal or “melt” value. Each nickel weighs five grams and contains 1.25 grams of nickel, worth…

While the Russian invasion of Ukraine is already raising inflationary pressures due to rising prices for a broad range of commodities including oil and wheat, long-term rates have counterintuitively fallen since the war began. This is because of a massive…

The Fed will raise rates a quarter point in the next week, the European Central Bank will move much slower. The EU economy was already meaningfully weaker than the US before Russia’s invasion. The US is the world’s #1 oil…

The last time WTI oil exceeded $130/bbl, like it almost does now, was between 5/21/08 when it rose to $131.58/bbl and 7/21/08 when it fell to $131.43, peaking on 7/14/08 at $145.16/bbl. That resulted in gasoline peaking at $4.11/gallon on…

Nonfarm payrolls grew by a gobsmacking 678,000 in February with upward revisions to December and January totaling 92,000. The unemployment rate dropped to 3.8% despite a rise in the labor force participation rate to a post-Covid high of 62.3%. With…

The Friday File: Among persons who’ve use food delivery services within the past year, the most popular is DoorDash with 54% of such persons using it. Second is Domino’s at 47%, then Uber Eats and Pizza Hut each at 37%.…