Economy

Last edited Sat Aug 3, 2024, 08:14 AM - Edit history (8)

Recent topic updates

Some page-by-page updates made 2018-2024, latest 8/3/24

# EF-0 -
. . . Added 12/10/18: given that there is a 90% chance of the payroll jobs increase is between +/- 120,000 , therefore there is a 50% chance that it is within +/- 47,200

. . . 1/25/19: Added a Myths Table of Contents -- a table of contents of common myths

. . . 5/4/19: Added LFPR and ETPR for several age groups.

. . . 6/27/19: Added Multiple Jobholders as a Percent of Employed

. . . 9/19/20: Introductory paragraphs modified to point to the latest Latest Breaking News (LBN) threads on the monthly jobs reports

. . . 12/15/22 - The seasonally adjusted civilian non-institutional population age 16+ is gone, explanation that in Table A-1, they show the same numbers for this in both the seasonally adjusted and non-seasonally adjusted columns.


# EF-1 -
. . . 10/2/20: Updated Presidential Jobs Table


# EF-2 -

. . . 6/12/18: Added Regional and state employment and unemployment http://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.nr0.htm

. . . 6/27/19: Added Erik Sherman's opinion (a Forbes contributor) why the BLS may be underestimating the number of mutliple job holders.

. . . 5/1/20: Added Unemployment rates, by ethnicity (white, Hispanic, black), age, and gender -- snapshots of 1998, 2008, 2018; and 2028 projection

. . . 5/1/20: Added Myth: "There was a big 225,000 increase in nonfarm payroll jobs, and yet the unemployment rate went up. This proves they are cooking the books, and the corporate media is playing along with their game"

. . . 5/1/20: Added: "A broader look at unemployment rates, by president, 1948-2016, and then with a graph of each presidency's unemployment rate with a mini-explanation of each"

. . . 10/6/21: Added that ADP report are derived from ADP payroll data representing 460,000 U.S. clients and nearly 26 million workers

. . . 12/18/21: Added State Jobs Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (State JOLTS) https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jltst.nr0.htm

. . . 9/1/22: Added FRED initial unemployment insurance claims link and the Continued Claims link


# EF-3, EF-5 -
. . . 4/30/19: Updated GDP and GDP-To-Debt ratios for latest GDP (2019 Q1 First Estimate)

. . . 9/19/20: Added Real Gross Domestic Product (GDPC1), FRED - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1

. . . 9/19/20: Added the end of the Obama expansion and the beginning of the Trump recession, February 2020


# EF-3 -

. . . 11/1/20: GDP - corrected the Excel links to data going back more than about 3 years

. . . 9/1/22: Added some more JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover) links

. . . 9/1/22: Added FRED initial unemployment insurance claims link and the Continued Claims link

# EF-4 -

. . . 8/15/19: Added graph of S&P 500 of the last 6 presidents (Reagan through Trump's first 2 1/2 years). Also improved the formatting of the entire EF-4 "page".

. . . 5/1/20: Added election day, 2016 closing prices for Dow and S&P 500.


# EF-5 -

. . . Added 4/9/18: Deficit to top $1 trillion per year by 2020, CBO says (2017: $665 B, Projected for 2018: $804 B. The tax cut plus the extra $300 billion in spending over the next 2 years approved in March expected to add $1.6 T to the deficits over the next decade), The Washington Post, 4/9/18

. . . Added 7/1/18: Under current law, national debt held by the public projected to expand from 78% of GDP currently to 152% of GDP by 2048 (30 years from now). By 2048, interest on the debt is projected to nearly quadruple as a percent of GDP (from 1.6% in 2018 to 6.3% of GDP in 2048) and reach the same level as spending on Social Security - CBO 6/26/18 .. ##### On 9/10/18, I found the links were bad on this item and fixed the main one and flagged the spreadsheet one as bad) ### On 10/16/18 I added the Fiscal Year 2018 deficit of $779 Billion below the Imgur table of the last 10 years of outlays and deficits.

. . . 8/31/19: More on why the national debt matters

. . . 5/1/20: Corrected some wording in the item, "Some righties telling you that Obama doubled the last Bush deficit, from less than 500 B$ to more than a trillion dollars?"

. . . 11/18/21: Updated average maturity of U.S. marketable debt (only 5.2 years), the largest portion of our national debt. The interest payments comes out of tax revenues, programs and the Pentagon get the remainder.

. . . Added the Forecast of the upcoming GDP by Atlanta Federal Reserve, "GDPNow"

. . . 4/22/23: Federal deficit by president year-by-year from Bush I thru Biden's first year - yes it rose under all the Repukes and declined under all the Dems


# EF-6 -

. . . Added another U.S. dollar index FRED link because the one that was there in no longer updated


# EF-9 -

. . . Added 6/2/18: BLS Occupational Employment and Wages Summary - Mean and Median Hourly Wages of Hundreds of Occupations

. . . Added 9/9/18: Minimum Wage

. . . 8/10/19: Added some 5/26/19 wealth inequality statistics

. . . 9/3/19: Added "Historic Asset Boom Passes by Half of Families", Wall Street Journal, 9/1/19

. . . 9/28/19: Added "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2018", released 9/10/19.

. . . 9/28/19: Added "US income inequality grows to its highest level in 50 years, Census Bureau, MSN.com, 9/26/19" (it's actually much more than 50 years -- Census Bureau figures only go back to 1967. There's a graph that goes all the way back to 1913).

. . . 6/14/21: Added CPI-W (the CPI used to adjust the Social Security COLA) and the CPI-E for the elderly

. . . 11/10/21: Added real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory workers to the CPI section for convenience of reference. As well as the nominal (not inflation-adjusted) links

. . . 12/10/21: Added gasoline prices and gasoline prices adjusted for inflation

. . . 4/29/22: Added a link in the personal income, consumer expenditures, PCE inflation section

. . . 5/31/22: Added Consumer Confidence Index, Consumer Sentiment Index

. . . 9/1/22: Added some explanatory material to "That one that comes with the Employment Cost Index (BLS)" -- in particular "The ECI shows changes in wages and benefits in a manner that fixes the composition of the workforce. This is important, particularly when there are large changes in employment, because these data are not subject to the same distortions as the monthly average hourly earnings series, which can artificially be increased when low-wage workers lose their jobs and drop out of the sample (as happened in 2020) or artificially be decreased when these same workers are hired back (as happened in 2021)"

. . 2/4/23: Added What to know about personal income and savings - BEA.gov

. . . . . . Added some more links to the CPI.

. . . . . . Added the Prime Interest Rate

. . . . . . Added the Federal Funds interest Rate

. . . . . . Added Real Personal Income (FRED) and Real Personal Income excluding current transfer receipts

. . 2/4/23: Added Treasury interest rates (yields)

. . . . . . Added another Fed Funds rate graph -- Federal Funds Effective Rate - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

. . . . . . Added Chained CPI

. . . . . . Added inflation for food and food away from home to the existing food at home.

. . . . . . Added # CME FedWatch Tool - the market's prediction of the Federal Reserve's next interest rate move (probabilities of different size moves)

. . . . . . Added Effective Fed Funds rate (daily), and the target range: https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/reference-rates/effr

. . 2/4/23: Added PCE Inflation (the Core PCE is the Fed's favorite inflation indicator)

. . 2/28/23: Added "Common Misconceptions about the Consumer Price Index: Questions and Answers"
. . . . . . Added FRED series for PCE Inflation and for CORE PCE Inflation

. . 8/3/24: Added Chained CPI section, and to that section added NOT Seasonally Adjusted versions of the regular CPI and regular core CPI to compare it to (The Chain CPI is not seasonally adjusted and there isn't a seasonally adjusted version, unfortunately).

. . . . . . Added USUAL WEEKLY EARNINGS OF WAGE AND SALARY WORKERS (Of full-time workers) (a quarterly report)
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf

. . . . . . Added INFLATION-ADJUSTED EMPLOYMENT COST INDEX of private industry workers) ##AND## AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS ##AND## median usual earnings of full-time worker, https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2018/02/are-wages-increasing-or-decreasing

. . . . . . Added Energy component of CPI https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0E
- Added Food CPI data series https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SAF1

. . . . . . Added Core Less Shelter (CPI)

. . . . . . Added Shelter component of CPI and its components: Rent of Primary Residence and Owners' Equivalent Rent Of Residences


# EF-10 -

. . . 5/31/22: Added another Retail Sales link

. . . 2/28/23 - Added some Retail Sales FRED series