United States non-farm jobs fell by 95,000 jobs in September driven by a 159,000 loss of government jobs that was offset by a 64,000 gain in private sector payroll jobs. The government job losses resulted from Census cutbacks and continued local government sector declines. Non-farm job growth has been negative for four months now, i.e.… Read more

Molly Clancy & Dan Hamilton In July we discussed the topic of Multiple-Equilibria in the United States economy. This blog is an update to that post, which can be found here. We argued there that the United States is currently in a “good-deflation” equilibrium, where consumers and producers find low price growth as helpful in… Read more

Modern economic theory has come to think of important macro-economic events as caused by shocks. The types of shocks are usually organized into four broad categories: supply shocks, demand shocks, policy shocks, and bubbles/debt shocks. United States examples of very large shocks include the recession of 1974, (a supply shock), the Great Depression, the 1981… Read more

California’s unemployment rate edged up from 12.3 in July to 12.4 percent in August, the Employment Development Department reported today. This was driven more by changes in jobs, (losses), rather than changes in labor force. California’s unemployment rate is third highest in the nation behind Michigan and Nevada. California’s month-on-month non-farm job growth rate worsened… Read more

The Fed’s national wealth report for the second quarter is out today. For a New-Classical Macroeconomist, this is one of the most important data releases. Wealth is one of the most important theoretical drivers of consumption, and it is one of the drivers in our forecast model of the United States economy. National wealth, i.e.… Read more

The August employment report is out this morning. The United States unemployment rate rose slightly from 9.5 to 9.6 percent, driven more by labor force gains than employment losses. The non-farm job losses occurred in the public sector, the largest component of which was likely related to the Census wind-down. The bulk of the Census… Read more

The FDIC’s quarterly banking profile, providing data for quarter 2, was released today. The number of 2010 United States bank failures will likely exceed the 2009 failures, the FDIC reported. This was as I reported in this space back in May. Thus far this year there have been 118 bank closings, which compares to about… Read more

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released their second estimate of United States 2010 second quarter Gross Domestic Product today. The revised estimate of 1.6 percent real GDP growth is much lower than the initial estimate of 2.4 percent, but some commentators spoke of this release in favorable terms, as it was higher than pre-release estimates… Read more

The July California jobs report shows continued weakness for the Golden State’s labor markets. Annualized month-on-month job growth declined 0.8 percent. Year-on-year job growth also declined 0.8 percent, and the unemployment rate held at 12.3 percent. The unemployment rate remains almost 300 basis points higher than the United States unemployment rate. To some extent, as… Read more

The Center for Responsible Lending has published a report “Dreams Deferred: Impacts and Characteristics of the California Foreclosure Crises”. I focus my comments on two of the points made in their report. According to their data and analysis, houses purchased in California from October 2006 to November 2009 were relatively small homes, median size of… Read more