**Story by Bloomberg’s Interactive Insight Desk… U.S. employees old enough to retire are outnumbering their teenage counterparts for the first time since at least 1948 when Harry Truman was president, a sign of how generations are now having to compete for jobs. Rest of the story and interactive graphics: http://www.bloomberg.com/insight/teens.html
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MikeMcD82
In a sign of China’s slowing economy passenger car sales in the country grew at the slowest pace in 15 months, moving off historic highs stoked by the country’s unprecedented fiscal stimulus. As the attached chart highlights, the spike in car sales was highly correlated to strong consumer lending growth catalyzed by the government’s stimulus […]
As everyone is aware—excluding possibly the IMF— the Chinese government has begun tapping the brakes on the country’s economic engine to prevent overheating and curtail inflationary fears. With this in mind, the IMF surprised quite a few people yesterday increasing their 2010 growth forecast for China to 10.5% y/y from 10.0% in April; well above […]
Many investors hoped a modest decline and a leveling off in mortgage delinquencies the end of last year signaled a top for the index, but those hopes were dashed when delinquencies for all types of mortgage hit a new high during the first quarter. Fears were further exacerbated yesterday when Lender Processing Services released their […]
Recently I’ve come across several headlines comparing recent activity in the stock market to what occurred during the Great Depression, so I ran the numbers. The attached chart tracks the S&P 500 20 months prior (t-20) to its respective high prior to the Great Depression and the recent recession; ‘t’ indicates the actual high. You […]
Historically, payroll growth rarely exceeds 400K in any given month, even in the best of times, not good news considering the US has lost 8mn jobs since the start of the recession. Some analysts have discussed a best case scenario where payrolls rise by 1mn a month, bringing us back to the pre-recession peak within […]
Disheartened job seekers who fled the labor market in mass during the height of the recession have begun to return putting pressure on the US unemployment rate. Based on a simple interpolation the U.S. labor force today should total 157.2mn, however due to the exodus of job seekers the labor force presently amounts to only […]
Those looking for evidence of an upcoming double dip recession may have found their canary. The Economic Cycle Research Institute’s (ECRI) Weekly Leading Index is pointing to serious trouble ahead for U.S. economy with the index falling seven consecutive weeks moving into negative territory. According to Laksham Achutan, managing direction of ECRI, “The continuing decline […]
Despite Friday’s better than anticipated confidence number it’s unlikely the index can show sustained gains until initial jobless claims move well below current levels. As the attached chart highlights, in 2009, as claims began to fall, confidence began to rise off of crisis lows. However, since the start of 2010 this trend came to an […]