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.


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Marginal Revolution

"Small steps toward a much better world”


May 20, 2013, 4:05 pm, 1095908

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 ...


May 20, 2013, 4:05 pm, 1095910

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 ...


May 20, 2013, 4:05 pm, 1095909

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.


May 20, 2013, 2:05 pm, 1095832

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 ...


May 20, 2013, 10:05 am, 1095675

May 20, 2013, 10:05 am, 1095673

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 ...


May 20, 2013, 10:05 am, 1095674

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.


May 20, 2013, 10:05 am, 1095671

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 ...


May 20, 2013, 10:05 am, 1095669

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 ...


May 20, 2013, 10:05 am, 1095670