Economic Data

Jobless claims data around the holiday season is marred by lots of seasonality. And so, only in the coming weeks are we likely to get a 'clean' look at what's going on in real time. The latest report shows a step change that is worrying,…

The report on the US Employment Situation for November 2020 was released today. And the headline job growth number was poor, a miss of over 200,000 jobs. But as I write this, markets are mostly of a bullish mindset, looking through this…

Lockdowns are very destructive for growth. We know that from the record-setting declines in GDP from the first global lockdowns back in the Spring. And we are getting a renewed sense of that fact now as Europe's economy has contracted under…

The thread that ties today's topics at Credit Writedowns together is the novel coronavirus pandemic. That's because how various countries have fared economically is very much dependent on what they are doing to control the virus. Let me…

In the US, after the initial V-shaped basing effect of the re-opening, we have moved into a more steady state uptick in output and growth. Having seen the data since June, I believe we exited recession with the re-opening and are now far…

The jobless claims series came out again this morning showing 840,000 initial claims plus a modest revision upward of last week's number to 849,000. These numbers just aren't coming down fast enough. And we know from the last recovery that…

I want to run something by you here. It's entirely speculative but there are multiple threads hanging off of it that give me reason to speculate. It's about the trajectory of the US (and global economy) and signs that growth is slowing.…

The US Department of Labor released the latest jobless claims report this morning and the numbers were poor. From their email, announcing the figures: In the week ending September 19, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial…

Today's US jobless claims report makes clear that the boost from re-opening is now fading. And a second wave of job loss is upon us. As a result, while the US unemployment rate declined more than expected in the last jobs report, I expect…

Around the time that the re-opening rally began to consolidate, I developed a thesis that we would have to wait until September and October before we would know more clearly how the economy would perform over the medium-term. And my view…