The headline number was a gain of 201,000 persons. But the two prior months were revised downward. By 40,000 in June and 10,000 in July. So, the actual gain, net of revisions is the 151,000 you see below. All of which is a reminder that you always need to look past the headlines in the […]

There are many reasons to think that improved trade agreement will not be enough to reverse the long-term decline in this category of employment. Textiles, which made up a significant portion of the jobs in 1990, are not coming back. Even so, the continuation of the recent growth trend would be welcome. Subscribe now!

The recent focus on trade and tariffs is in part due to what has been going on here. While employment in this sector has been rising steadily over the course of this expansion, the current administration has made this the principal focus of its economic agenda. While it is doubtful we will ever get back […]

After hitting a soft patch in 2015, industrial production has been moving ahead on a broad base over the past year and a half. The level and trend of this series will tell us a great deal about the staying power of the current expansion. Subscribe now!

With little to indicate that a cycle peak is near, this expansion, already the second longest of the post-war era, is poised to move into first place by next July. Subscribe now!

This chart is really starting to reflect the tight supply conditions in the industry, I am referring to the effects of having to fully implement in the Electronic Logging Device [ELD] mandate. The industry had feared that full implementation of the ELDs would reduce the available number of driver-miles (a concept analogous to passenger-miles in […]

Changes in producer prices [PPI] generally lead to changes in the same direction in consumer prices [CPI]. As such, we think that we will see higher CPI readings over the rest of 2018 and into 2019. What we don’t know is how the Federal Reserve will react. Subscribe now!