The Friday File: The biggest cruise ship, the Symphony of the Seas (2018) with gross tonnage of 228,081 and a maximum capacity of 6,680 people. The next largest, the Harmony of the Seas (2016) with gross tonnage of 226,963 and…
While initial jobless claims for the week ending 4/3/20 hit a stunning 6.6 million persons, and raises to a colossal 16.8 million the number who have lost jobs in the last three weeks, the Fed is offering new lending facilities…
The profoundly ill-timed oil market price-war between Saudi Arabia and Russia has not only pushed oil prices to twenty-year lows but is also pushing up storage costs. The current elevated production rate combined with depressed demand means storage facilities will…
With a new Conronavirus bill possibly working its way through Congress, the key thing it (and the $2.2 trillion CARES act) must do is help workers stay attached to employers, help small businesses stay solvent as they lose income due…
In a usual month, about a million jobs are created in the US and about 800,000 are destroyed, with net job growth of +200,000. The reason the March job report looked relatively bad at -700,000, is because there was reasonably…
The Friday File: Girl Scouts sell about 200 million boxes of cookies/year. At $5/box, that’s $1 billion in sales, more than the annual US sales of Oreos, the best-selling US cookie. Thin Mints are the favorite of 24% of Americans.…
The US labor force numbers 165 million. In the past two weeks the number of unemployed has jumped by a staggering 10 million!! Assuming job creation is currently 250,000/week as Amazon, Walmart and supermarkets ramp up, the unemployment rate in…
The first US census day was 8/2/1790 and determined that the US population was 3,893,635. The Census included the 13 original states, plus the districts of Kentucky, Maine, Vermont and the Southwest Territory (TN). It included free White males, free…
For the week ending 3/18/20, home equity loans outstanding rose $2.3 billion to $317.2 billion. Outside of an increase during the last government closure, this was the first increase in home equity loans since the week ending 2/1/12, when they…
Between hospitality & leisure, store-based retail, and other sectors that face forced limitations, about 36% of the US economy is being impacted in the effort to curb the spread of Covid-19. If the restrictions reduce activity in these sectors by…