The outlook for the sustainability of strong consumer spending remains excellent. The less sanguine view that only focuses on moderate increases in wages or average weekly earnings is overlooking the following positive developments: Full-time workers dominate employment growth. Since the…
There is growing frustration that a very low unemployment rate has not yet resulted in an acceleration in wage growth. This is true whether one looks at Average Hourly Earnings, the Employment Cost Index or the Atlanta Fed Wage Tracker.…
Much of the current discussion regarding geographic inequality, e.g. the urban-rural divide, the coasts versus the midsection, makes it appear that the underlying causes of inequality are of fairly recent origin. A recent paper by Rodriguez-Pose et al (2017), however,…
The May labor market report was greeted with many commentators wondering if there were enough synonyms for “excellent” to describe the results. Increases in both payroll and household employment were strong – payroll employment rose by 223,000; household by +293,000. …
Recently released provisional data on births for 2017 has led to a plethora of negative commentary regarding the state of fertility in America. Comprehensive analysis, however, reveals that this abundance of adverse observations is misleading because it overlooks several important…
Contrary to most expectations, average hourly earnings increased by only 2.56% in April versus 2.64% in March. The annualized three-month change, which had spiked up in March, fell to 2.0% in April, further reinforcing our view that wage inflation remains…
The total PCE deflator reached the Fed’s 2% target for the first time since 2012 although the core PCE deflator did not quite reach the target. While the year-ago percent change for both measures is genuine, it is very important…
Although the current lull in personal consumption expenditures may raise some concerns regarding the consumer, the latest release on Employment Characteristics of Families argues for a resumption of robust consumer outlays. The vast majority of consumer decision units (households) in…
Although being a home owner is usually viewed positively, a recent paper by Ringo (written in 2017; posted March 2018) concluded “…home ownership is a significant hindrance to mobility, and homeowners suffer longer unemployment spells and more frequent job losses…
The long-awaited uptick in core CPI inflation resulting from the “base effect” came in about as expected. The year-on-year percent change of 2.1% puts the inflation rate a bit below where it was in the first two months of 2017. …