Economics Roundtable
Calculated Risk
Read the Bill McBride interview.
Jobs
The best summary of the state of our economy is the graph (below) of employment as a fraction of population for people over 16 years old. The decrease is large, but the most troubling feature of the graph is the flat trend .
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
June Payroll Employment
The slowndown in employment growth over the past few months is starting to become more apparent in the graph below.
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
Focus on the Problem
U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million jobs in February 2001. For April 2012, U.S. payroll employment had reached 133.0 million jobs, marking the third month in a row above the February 2001 level.
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
Graph-of-the-Year Candidates
Donald Marron likes European interest rates. Click on the image to get a bigger version. Can you find three distinct subperiods?
Brad DeLong favors the U.S. gdp gap.
Finally, it's hard to argue against the payroll employment graph below (straight from FRED) and the comparison across recessions (courtesy of Calculated Risk).
Looking Up At 2001
In February 2001, U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million. The November 2011 figure of 131.7 million still falls 800,000 jobs short of the earlier peak.
Click on the chart for a larger version.
Remember M1?
Money Supply M1 growth is now over 20% per year over a 12 month lag. M1 growth has touched 20% before, but not with excess reserves of $1.6 trillion. Where is M1 headed?
Click on the chart for a larger version.
EconModel
The Economics Roundtable is sponsored by EconModel.
The Classic Economic Models cover micro, macro, and financial markets.
Marginal Revolution
"Small steps toward a much better world”
From Christopher Weaver and Anna Wilde Mathews:
Employers are increasingly recognizing they may be able to avoid certain penalties under the federal health law by offering very limited plans that can lack key benefits such as hospital coverage.
Benefits advisers and insurance brokers—bucking a commonly held expectation that the law would ...
You will find it here, at MRUniversity.com. We have recorded videos covering, annotating, and explaining every single chapter of Smith’s masterwork Wealth of Nations, along with some coverage of surrounding historical material. Having to explain a book “along the way” is a very interesting way to read, and ...
Fashion models are almost twice as likely to get their visas as computer programmers, by one rough measure.
Here is more, and for the pointer I thank Andrew Rowe.
Mr. Tyler’s entire home was only 78 square feet. And while his “Midtown mansion,” as he called it, was a far cry from the lavish town homes and shimmering penthouses that have spawned a thousand lustful television shows, a video tour posted on YouTube of Mr. Tyler’s little room ...
1. Does parenting suffer from a cost-disease?
2. Ezra Klein interviews Bill Gates about public health and development. Excellent piece. Gates, by the way, is now the world’s richest man once again.
3. College enrollment is falling more than had been expected.
4. “The french fries arrive soggy.”
5. ...
The most expensive hospital in America is not set amid the swaying palm trees of Beverly Hills or the luxury townhouses of New York’s Upper East Side.
It is in a faded blue-collar town 11 miles from Midtown Manhattan.
Based on the bills it submits to Medicare, the Bayonne Medical ...
A family can get implicitly taxed 238% on that additional $501.
The thing is, I don’t even need to tell you what the topic is. The original source is here.
What Tyler calls a liquidity leak, I call markets at work. The ECB provides enough stimulus to get all of the Eurozone going but it all leaks to Germany. Fine. The German market heats up. German wages and rents rise. Retired German doctors start considering the virtues of a flat in Lisbon ...
Natasha and I have finished watching the first season, and I am pleased to report it is one of the few TV series I like. It pretends to be about “two Soviet KGB officers posing as an American married couple in the suburbs of Washington D.C. in order to ...
1. Memoir of an internet troll.
2. Photo of Iceland, via GH.
3. Restrictions on doctor-owned hospitals.
4. How Laura and John Arnold wish to give away their money (recommended, and cameo by Steve Levitt).
5. “…the Colorado cannabis industry is purely cash-based…” You also can take on-line classes ...