The Bowtie Economist's Daily Dose of 70-Word Wisdom

The Friday File: The wealthiest nation is Luxembourg with per capital GDP of $135,605, followed by Ireland at $112,248 and Switzerland at $102,865. No other nations exceeded $100,000. Norway was next at $99,266. Singapore was 5th at $87,884 then, Qatar…

In 1/23, when the labor market was sizzling, Y-o-Y wage growth for those employed during the previous year peaked at 6.4%. Among those who changed jobs it was 7.7%, and among those who didn’t change jobs it was 5.7%. By…

24Q1 GDP growth is slipping. The St. Louis Fed has reduced their latest estimate from 1.4% (annualized) to 0.9%. Not to be outdone, the NY Fed has reduced its forecast from 2.8% to 2.3%, and the Atlanta Fed has pushed…

For the week ending 2/17/24, continuing unemployment insurance claims were 1.88 million. While very low, this is their highest level since the week ending 12/11/21. Moreover, the percentage of people filing for unemployment insurance has recently fallen from 36% to…

There are myriad ways to measure inflation. Among the most common are CPI and PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure. Regrettably, the gap between the two is unusually large. Historically core (which excludes food and energy) CPI has been 40bps…

The Friday File: For the year ending 11/30/23, the most popular Wordle opening word was ADIEU, at slightly over 8% of all opening guesses. STARE is the next most popular at about 4.75%, followed by SLATE at 4.5%. AUDIO is…

The Earth takes exactly 365.24219 days to rotate around the sun. Adding an extra day every four years makes the average length of a year 365.25 days, slightly too much. The Gregorian calendar eliminated leap days in years ending in…

The current share of the S&P 500 market capitalization held by the largest five firms is a staggering 25%. Those firms are, in order of market capitalization, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Nvidia. The last time the top five were…

January existing home sales rose 3.1% M-o-M to a rate of 4 million, the best level since 4.03 million in 8/23, but sales fell 1.7% Y-o-Y. Despite high rates, home prices rose 5.1% in January Y-o-Y to $379,100, the highest…

Based on 6/23 data, 19% of households used buy now, pay later (BNPL) loans in the past year. BNPL use peaks at 43% among households with credit scores below 620. Usage is also highest, at 41%, among households who had…