Unemployment

We are only seven months into Donald Trump’s presidency. And I think we can call it a failure. I’ll have a lot more to say on that momentarily. But I want to flag this as not being a dealbreaker for the US or global economy because people…

I see that Dartmouth economics professor Danny Blanchflower is talking about slack in the US labour market because he believes the Fed is premature in assessing its full employment mandate as fulfilled. I have a few thoughts on this issue I…

Recent statements by monetary authorities in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom tells us rate hikes are possible in all three this year. This trio of English-speaking G7 nations is at a different phase of the monetary policy…

New York Fed President William Dudley has reiterating Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s determination to push forward with interest rate hikes despite inflation below 2%. The Fed will continue to have this stance unless and until economic data…

Remember the debates about structural unemployment back during the beginning of this recovery. The question was whether policymakers would write off a whole cadre of workers as ‘unemployable’ and formulate policy as if they weren’t…

Claims data are still consistent with an economy adding 200,000 per month, meaning we should expect a snap back from last month’s low figure when the US jobs numbers are released tomorrow.

The 98,000 jobs added to payrolls in the US in March were well below the consensus estimate of 178,000, especially when you consider downward revisions to January and February totalled 38,000. I don’t believe this matters for the Fed…

The consensus for the March jobs report is for an addition of 178,000 jobs. The unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged at 4.7%. Other data show the risk is to the upside here.

I have heard some people dismiss jobless claims as a data series for two distinct reasons that I want to flag given my view that claims data matter.

The composite picture I am getting shows the US economy still in that 2%ish channel it has been in for some time. This is lower than certainly President Trump wants and it is also lower than growth levels at cyclical peaks in the past. But…