Back in mid-December, Political Calculations asked if California was in recession. Data released by the Philadelphia Fed suggests the answer is no.
Figure 1: Coincident index for California (blue), and implied index value for June 2018 using leading index (light blue arrow, blue dot) against log scale. NBER defined national recession dates shaded gray. Red arrow at date of Political Calculations post. Source: Philadelphia Fed [1], [2], and author’s calculations.
Janet Yellen ended her term as Chair of the Federal Reserve today.
Source: Federal Reserve
Continue reading
Or, Does Mr. Trump feel lucky?
From EconoFact:
The agriculture sector in the United States depends upon exports for its vitality. Sales of U.S. agricultural products abroad are responsible for 20 percent of U.S. farm income, supporting more than one million American jobs on and off the farm, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The three biggest buyers of American agricultural products are China, Canada, and Mexico. Yet trade with these three countries faces heightened uncertainty. The Trump Administration initiated a process of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico, which includes the option of exiting the deal altogether. In addition, the United States has started a series of investigations of unfair practices leveled against China, some of which have already resulted in the imposition of new tariffs. These trade policy initiatives threaten agricultural exports both because of the potential increase of tariffs on exports to Canada and Mexico that would result from a withdrawal from NAFTA as well as the very real threat of retaliation in response to other proposed policies.
Figure 1: Share of total agricultural exports going to Mexico and Canada, by state. Agricultural exports defined as NAICS 111+112+311 (crops, livestock, and processed food). Source: Census via ITA and author’s calculations.
The entire article is here. More on agricultural sector fortunes here.
we’d have had over 340,000 more jobs in December. And over 380,000 more jobs in January
Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment (blue), and 2016 linear deterministic exponential trend set to match 2017M01 value (red), in 000’s, seasonally adjusted, on log scale. Orange shading denotes 2017 data. Source: BLS December 2017 January 2018 release, author’s calculations. (updated 2/2)