70 Words

While wholesale used-car prices (on a mix- mileage-and seasonally adjusted basis) inched up 0.7% in May compared to April, they are up just 9.7% Y-o-Y. While still large, Y-o-Y prices were up 45% as recently as January and 14% in…

From mid-2019 through early 2021, housing inventory declined increasingly fast. Peak decline occurred in early 2021 when Y-o-Y inventory fell a whopping 55% due to unrelenting Covid-19-induced demand. Since then, the declines have steadily shrunk, to -30% in January 2022,…

The economy created 390,000 jobs in May, the labor force participation rate recovered half of April’s decline, rising from 62.2% to 62.3%, and the female labor force participation rate hit a post-Covid high of 57%! Because the labor force grew…

The Friday File: The nation with the fifth most number of islands is, somewhat amazingly, the US with 18,600. Canada comes in fourth with 52,500 islands. In third, with 179,000 islands is Finland, in second is Norway at 239,000 and…

For the first time since 2014, the number of US births rose! In 2021, there were 3.66 million newborns, up 1% from 2020; the increase spanned all cohorts of women over 24. Births remain at very low levels after peaking…

While higher crude oil prices are partly why gasoline is so expensive, it’s only part of the story. The bigger reason is a lack of global refining capacity. Since Covid-19, about three million bbl/day of refining capacity has been permanently…

The Fed’s recently released annual Economic Well-Being of US Households 2021 report shows US households in better shape than at any time since the Survey commenced in 2013. 78% of households reported living comfortably, up from 75% in 2020, the…

The Friday File: Last week, at auction, a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe sold for $142 million. This price nearly triples the previous auto auction record of $48.4 million, set in 2018, for a 1962 Ferrari GTO. Yes, the…

US CO2 emissions rose steadily from a recession trough of 4.4 billion metric tons in 1983 to 6.0 Bmt in 2007. Since, they have steadily fallen, bottoming in 2020, due to Covid-19, at 4.6 Bmt, the same level as 1984.…

April new home sales dropped 7% M-o-M, and 27% Y-o-Y to an annual rate of just 591,000, the lowest level since 4/20, the worst of the pandemic. Moreover, for sale new home inventory has skyrocketed from 4.7 months in 4/21…