Econ70

US employers added 531,000 jobs in October. Moreover, the lousy months of August and September were upwardly revised by 235,000, leaving the jobs number just 18.6%, or 4.2 million, below its pre-Covid-19 high. Unfortunately, the labor force grew by just…

The Friday File: In 2019, 127 billion metal cans were manufactured in the US, up 1.5% from 2018. 76% were for beverages, 24% were for canned food. In 2018, 22.7% of consumed vegetables were canned, down from a peak of…

In 2/20, the month before Covid-19, real personal income (including wages, bonuses, rents, dividends, royalties, and interest payments) excluding government monies (such as stimulus checks, unemployment benefits, social security and so on) was $14.23 trillion. In 9/21, the latest month…

To the surprise of nobody, the Fed announced that tapering at the rate of $15 billion/month will soon start. The mild surprise, tapering will start this month and will thus probably end in June. This expedited start to tapering will…

Raising taxes is difficult, the Democrats have made it unnecessarily hard. They should have begun treating carried interest as regular income because that’s what it is, not capital gains. They could have also eliminated stepped-up basis at death by explaining…

One day before being announced, the Blue-Chip consensus of top business economists predicted 21Q3 GDP growth of 4%. The Atlanta Fed GDPNow model anticipated 0%. To prove all wrong, 21Q3 GDP was 2%! The future, even when a day away,…

The Friday File: When asked to compare two randomly matched different fun-sized candy varietals against one another, the most popular is (drumbeat please) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, winning 84.2% of their head-to-head matches against the rest of the field. Reese’s…

Like many other commodities, the price of oil exhibits a strong seasonal pattern. Since 1986, oil prices start the year low and bottom in mid-February. From there, prices steadily rise and peak in late September at 15% to 20% higher…

The most pressing problem China faces and the one that forced Evergrande’s default, is overreliance on debt. China’s debt has vertiginously risen from 169% of GDP in 2008 to 306%, the same as the US, a developed nation with deep…

In 19Q4, before Covid-19, the labor force participation rate was 63.2%. It fell to 60.8% in 20Q2, and by 20Q4 the rate had recovered to 61.5%. That is where it has, unfortunately, remained since, meaning that 5.25 million persons have…