Soft Employment Report Lights a Fire Under Congress
December 4, 2020 Private sector employment rose 344 thousand in November which was a disappointment to us. We had expected an increase of 700 thousand. However, layoffs and the number of people receiving unemployment benefits are declining steadily which means...
GDP, Inflation, and Interest Rate Forecasts
December 4, 2020 The government's response to the corona virus stopped the economy dead in its tracks. It started to fall precipitously in March and then collapsed in April. As a result, GDP declined 31.4% in the second quarter. However, it began...
Private Employment
December 4, 2020 Private sector employment rose 344 thousand in November after having risen 877 thousand in October and 930 thousand in September Clearly, the pace of job creation slowed in November. However, the weekly data from initial unemployment claims and...
Payroll Employment
December 4, 2020 Payroll employment rose 245 thousand in November after having risen 610 thousand in October and 711 thousand in September Clearly, the pace of job creation slowed in November. However, the weekly data from initial unemployment claims and the...
Unemployment Rate
December 4, 2020 The unemployment rate fell 0.2% in November to 6.7% after having declined by 1.0% in October and 0.5% in September. After having jumped 10.3 percentage points in April from 4.4% to 14.7% the unemployment rate has declined in each of the seven...
Nonfarm Workweek
December 4, 2020 In any given month employers can boost output by either additional hiring or by lengthening the number of hours that their employees work. Payroll employment rose 245 thousand in November. The nonfarm workweek was unchanged in November at 34.8...
Average Hourly Earnings
December 4, 2020 Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% in November to $29.58 after rising 0.1% in both September and October, The jump in hourly earnings in April may seem a bit odd, but it came about because many of the jobs lost in that month were low paid...
2021 Economic Outlook Conference Photos
Here are some photos from this morning's conference taken by Mary Wessner of Mary Wessner Photography (and also my wife). While not the same as the in-person gatherings at the Daniel Island Club, the Zoom presentation allowed lots of people outside the Charleston...
Purchasing Managers Index — Nonmanufacturing
December 3, 2020 The Institute for Supply Management not only publishes an index of manufacturing activity each month, they publish two days later a survey of service sector firms. The service sector business activity index fell 3.2 points in November to 58.0 after...
Initial Unemployment Claims
December 3, 2020 Initial unemployment claims for the week of November 28 fell 75 thousand to 712 thousand after having risen 39 thousand in the previous week. After reaching a peak of 6,867 thousand at the end of March, initial claims have been steadily...
Follow Me