By Floyd Norris The labor market is booming. The average unemployment rate in 2023 was 3.64%, down a smidgen from the previous year and the lowest for any total year since 1969. But is that just because fewer people are looking for work, and therefore are not counted as unemployed? A way to seek that […]
Author: jwrigh10
Why Don’t Americans Believe Inflation Is Coming Down? Because (Most) Prices Aren’t
To an economist looking at the government CPI report that came out Tuesday, it is clear that inflation is receding. Over the past 12 months, the overall CPI is up 3.2%, far below the peak annual rate of 9.1% seen in the summer of 2022. The co-called “core” rate, which excludes volatile food and energy […]
Inside Baseball
Seasonal adjustment is one of the more obscure potential casualties of the pandemic recession. A well known problem with seasonal adjustment is that an outlier observation will lead the seasonal adjustment process to shift its belief about what is normal for that month. In cases like the coronavirus recession, this is undesirable because the unusual […]