After adjusting for inflation, average weekly earnings increased at an annualized rate of 4.3% in August: Hourly earnings barely budged, but average hours worked increased 3.6%. This accounted for nearly the entire increase.
The Wall Street Journal has a good roundup of higher interest rates today: The Federal Reserve’s federal-funds rate averaged 0.5% from 2009 through 2021. Today it is between 5.25% and 5.5% and markets think it will be around 3.5% for the next decade. As yet, this has caused little distress. Growth is chugging along, and ...continue reading "High interest rates are about to hit the economy"
The American economy gained a meager 187,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at an even more meager 97,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate increased to 3.8%. Unemployment rose by 514,000, most of them people who entered the ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Net new jobs through August"
Here it is compared to the previous three presidents:¹ He's right on track. ¹As usual, I've left off George W. Bush because of the huge bump he got from 9/11. It makes normal comparisons useless during the first term of his presidency.
From Politico: A looming child care funding crisis threatens Biden’s economic recovery Nearly $24 billion in federal aid for daycare centers and preschools is slated to run out Sept. 30, roiling a child care system that has underpinned the White House’s efforts to stabilize the broader economy and get people back to work. ....Daycare and ...continue reading "Child care is no longer an emergency"
Ramesh Ponnuru points to a new piece by Lyman Stone that says the decline of religion in America is mostly among the young. In fact: Most of the decline in religion is actually among children, and virtually all of it among people under age 22. This is crazy. Stone presents a whole bunch of charts ...continue reading "Everyone is getting less religious in America"
Joe Biden's press secretary says he is "constantly working every day to get things done." National Review's Charles Cooke isn't buying it: This line reflects unmitigated contempt for her audience — which, given KJP’s job, is the entire American public. She knows what she’s saying isn’t true. And she knows that everyone knows that what ...continue reading "Get real, conservatives: Joe Biden is perfectly productive and energetic"
For your amusement here are some details about consumer spending in the second quarter of the year. This chart shows the 15 biggest gainers and losers compared to the first quarter: We started buying eggs again! Sports and air transportation were up considerably too. The biggest loser, for some reason, was audio discs and downloads. ...continue reading "Consumer spending highlights: Eggs are back!"
Brian Merchant defends the Luddites: They were not opposed to progress, and certainly not to technology; most were skilled technicians themselves, who spent their days working on machines at home or in small shops. It is true that the Luddites hammered certain machines to pieces, but it wasn’t technology itself they were protesting — it ...continue reading "ChatGPT can train itself on your book. Deal with it."
Here's the latest from Russia: Russia has got to be the whiniest warmonger in history. They are constantly "accusing" Ukraine of one thing or another, as if it were somehow unfair that they're fighting back. It's a war, Vladimir, and you started it. Don't try to act offended because Ukraine is trying to win.
Consumer spending accelerated to an annualized growth rate of 7.7% in July: Spending growth was up 3.0% from a year ago. This is all good news for soft landing fans, since it suggests that consumer spending remains healthy even as the rest of the economy slows a bit. I've mentioned before that consumer spending almost ...continue reading "Consumer spending stays strong in July"
For the second month in a row, PCE inflation stayed below 3%: Both core and headline PCE came in at 2.6% on a month-over-month basis. On a year-over-year basis, headline PCE was 3.3% and core inflation was 4.2%. Core PCE, which is the Fed's favored measure, shows every sign of being well under 3% on ...continue reading "PCE inflation stays below 3% in July"
This is the Southern California shoreline around Santa Monica near sunset. I took it out of the airplane window on our flight out of LAX to France last year.
When Janet Protasiewicz ran for a seat on Wisconsin's Supreme Court, she campaigned on an explicit promise to reconsider the state's egregiously gerrymandered legislative map. Voters approved and swept her into office by a wide margin. This gave Democrats a majority on the court, which means there's a chance of drawing fair districts after years ...continue reading "Wisconsin GOP threatens to use its gerrymander to keep its gerrymander"
A few weeks ago Rudy Giuliani entered a stipulation in a defamation case against him from two Georgia election workers. The stipulation stated that he had indeed said false things about them, but it was followed by a bizarre effort to claim that the stipulation didn't really mean he had said anything wrong. He was ...continue reading "Judge finally loses patience with Rudy Giuliani"
Nonfinancial corporate profits remained elevated in Q2 but were flat compared to Q1: The pandemic turned out to be great for corporations, if for no one else, but the last few quarters have shown a slow decline since profits peaked in mid-2022. I wouldn't be surprised to see a further decline in Q3.
David Wallace-Wells is at the helm of Ezra Klein's podcast today and talks about "pandemic revisionism" with Katelyn Jetelin. It took them quite a while to get around to the topic of what worked and what didn't—thank God for transcripts!—and when we finally got there we were still left with no answers: We know vaccination ...continue reading "We still don’t know how to stop a pandemic"
I've showed you St. Michael's Abbey before, shortly after it opened in 2021. Here it is again in a different view, framed by cactus and oak trees and lit up by the late afternoon sun.
Franklin Foer has written a book about the first two years of the Biden administration. Part of the book is about Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan: By the end of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, President Joe Biden was sure he made the right decision after watching the events unfold in the Situation ...continue reading "Quote of the day: “Either the press is losing its mind or I am.”"
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