markets

Which One of These Doesn’t Look Like the Other

A very surprising jobs report this morning. The economy added 2.5mm jobs last month!

Why is this so surprising? All the other data says the economy lost jobs last month. This graph shows the number of new jobless claims, the change in continuing claims, and then the change in jobs reported by the employment report.

Comparison of Jobs Data each month

The May Job’s number looks very odd compared to the rest of the data. It could just be some “rounding error” from the huge numbers last month.

Please note this survey was completed the week of May 12th. That means this was finish BEFORE ANY REOPENING. This is not about a recovery. This is about something else. I have a theory which I’ll discuss on Monday.

By Christopher Schwarz, ago

Inflation Problem Coming?

Inflation data shows flat core inflation in April. However, is there a coming inflation problem?

As noted in my previous post, real income was UP in April. Couple that with the fact that no one can spend much money since things are closed, we had the highest savings rate EVER.

Personal Savings Rate

What happens when people can go out and spend money when supply chains have been disrupted? It would seem prices are likely to go up.

By Christopher Schwarz, ago