Kevin Drum 🕸

I was fiddling around yesterday and happened to notice something a little odd: Average hours of work per week fell sharply in January. It's now lower than it's been since the Great Recession with the exception of a single month at the start of the pandemic. But then, because of my musing about seasonal adjustments, ...continue reading "Hours worked per week fell dramatically in January"

A decade ago San Francisco banned 8th grade algebra in an attempt to improve math outcomes for students of color. The Wall Street Journal reports: A study by Stanford University researchers released in March 2023 found that San Francisco’s policy largely failed in its equity goals, with the proportion of Black and Latino students enrolling ...continue reading "San Francisco cries uncle in the algebra wars"

I know it's a little pointless to keep highlighting the endless lunacy of Republicans these days, but, I mean, come on. Check this out: Gov. Ron DeSantis has endorsed legislation pending in the Legislature that would make it a criminal misdemeanor to manufacture, sell, or distribute “cultivated meat,” defined as “any meat or food product ...continue reading "DeSantis: No lab meat in Florida, thank you very much"

Here's a tweet today about the high cost of renting: I’m not a big RETVRN guy but we really do need to get back to the time when urban housing was so cheap and plentiful that any kid could show up in San Francisco or New York and find a place to live that they ...continue reading "The myth of postwar New York City"

Caitlan Flanagan has an odd piece in the Atlantic today asserting that American university professors are no longer interested in presenting both sides of controversial issues—and I use the word assert advisedly here. The piece is odd because she presents literally no evidence for her argument even though she's written a whole book on the ...continue reading "How to think for yourself"

Continuing our series of Nat Bullard's climate charts, here's one about carbon capture: This surprised me. I didn't realize CCS had increased over the past few years, let alone by a lot. (But the numbers are still pretty low in absolute terms. Operational capacity in 2023 was 50 million tons compared to global CO2 output ...continue reading "Carbon capture is slowly picking up steam"

The US lost 2.6 million jobs in January: So how did that become an increase of 353,000 in the official figures? The answer is seasonal adjustments: we always lose millions of jobs after the holiday season, so the numbers are adjusted based on how many we lost vs. how many we expected to lose. This ...continue reading "Here’s a nonseasonal look at the employment situation"

The New York Times has a reputation for running silly trend stories, but I think the Wall Street Journal has them beat. They run an endless stream of trend stories backed up by virtually no evidence. So naturally I was suspicious about their latest offering: The Hottest New Bedtime for 20-Somethings Is 9 p.m. This ...continue reading "We’re all sleeping more than we used to"

Here is Hilbert emerging from the orchid tree in our backyard. It's the end of the line for him, though. A few feet further and the wall ends and is replaced by a wrought iron fence that's too narrow for even a cat to walk on. For some reason, though, he rarely turns around and ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 2 February 2024"

California has a shiny new law: As of January, California police officers are required to provide motorists and pedestrians with the reason for stopping them before asking any questions. Under Assembly Bill 2773, which was enacted in 2022 and took effect with the new year, officers are no longer allowed to begin such encounters by ...continue reading "“Do you know why I pulled you over?”"

Fani Willis has fessed up to allegations made by Mike Roman, one of the 19 defendants in the Georgia election fraud case: Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) admitted she had a personal relationship with an outside prosecutor she appointed to manage the election interference case against former president Donald Trump and his ...continue reading "Fani Willis admits to affair with Nathan Wade"

Here are a couple more samples from Nat Bullard's deck of climate-related charts. First up is EV production: China has loads of cheap EVs, but tariffs keep them out of the US. That's obviously hurting the uptake of EVs in the US, but it's not the only thing. There's also charging infrastructure: These are 2022 ...continue reading "Raw data: EVs in the China and the US"

For the past eight months India has been holding a suspected spy pigeon in custody: The pigeon’s ordeal began in May when it was captured near a port in Mumbai with two rings tied to its legs, carrying words that looked like Chinese. Police suspected it was involved in espionage and took it in, later ...continue reading "Spy pigeon cleared of all charges"

The American economy gained 353,000 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 263,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7%. This is a very nice jobs report. Employment remains strong and the unemployment level remains low. ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Net new jobs in January"

Ezra Klein asks today, "Why haven't the Democrats completely cleaned the Republicans' clock?" Actually it's Ruy Teixeira who asked that question, and it's one I share. I mean, Republicans have turned into complete loons. Democrats should have been able to build a huge and enduring lead over the past decade. Why haven't they? Teixeira suggests ...continue reading "Why aren’t Democrats steamrolling Republicans?"

Dave Roberts recommends that I take a look at Nat Bullard's deck of climate-related charts, and naturally I did. Here's a chart that should be familiar: The price of solar has plummeted over the past decade. But as conservatives are constantly reminding us, the sun doesn't always shine. Then what? The price of battery storage ...continue reading "It’s not just solar that’s getting cheaper"

Since 2000, the share of the population with a BA or higher has gone up 39%. But the share of the labor force with a BA or more has gone up 45%. At the end of last year, 72% of those with college degrees were in the labor force. Only 57% of those with only ...continue reading "Raw data: College degrees in the labor force"

The Rainbow Inn in Pierre Part, Louisiana, a little north of Morgan City.

Earlier this morning I wrote about the jump in US labor productivity at the start of the pandemic. The odd thing wasn't the jump itself, but the fact that the new higher level was permanent. I've finally tracked down quarterly figures for hours worked, so here is labor productivity since the end of the Great ...continue reading "Productivity really is higher"

Via Tyler Cowen, this is from the abstract of a recent paper that examines mortgage loans: Interestingly, we also find that same-sex couples default significantly more (53.9%) than similar different-sex couples. But that's not quite right. Here's what the paper itself says: Male-male loan originations are associated with 2.053 percentage point higher delinquency rate relative ...continue reading "Gay men apparently default on home mortgages at high rates"