Back in mid-December, Political Calculations asked if California was in recession. Following Monday’s state-level employment release incorporating benchmarked data, we have a better idea of the answer — it’s likely no.
Figure 1: California nonfarm payroll employment, January release (thick blue), December release (light blue), 000’s, s.a., on log scale. Light green shading denotes period in which data revised/benchmarked. Source: BLS via FRED, ALFRED.
As one can see, there was a stall in employment in April 2017 in the pre-benchmark revision series; that dip has been revised away. It is possible the October-January data will eventually be benchmark-revised to show a dip, so that maybe a recession occurred in those months. However, for now, a California recession in 2017 seems unlikely.
Previous assessments: [1] [2] [3].
Another post by Political Calculations highlights “California’s lackluster 2017”, based on GDP statistics. Doing a corresponding calculation with updated employment data reveals an outperformance by 2017’s end.
Figure 2: California nonfarm payroll employment, January release (blue), 2016M01-2016M12 exponential trend (red) 000’s, s.a., on log scale. Source: BLS via FRED, ALFRED.
So who do we blame for this consistent economic growth in California??—Jerry Brown and the “dirty liberals” or Libby Schaaf and the “dirty Immigrants”?? Wait, hold on, is it because California’s minimum wage is $2.75 higher than Florida’s?? This is so confusing, could we get Larry Kudlow to explain this???
Oh wait here……. I just happened to have found an exclusive FOX News interview with the members of Trump’s National Economic Council. Here in respective order: Jeremy Katz, Everett Eissenstat, Steven Mnuchin, Sonny Perdue, Wilbur Ross, Rick Perry, Mick Mulvaney, and Peter Navarro giving their thoughts on these employment numbers out of California
https://youtu.be/iuy-oOJCOoM?t=5s
Oh, wait, I messed up, Rick Perry couldn’t make it, he’s still looking for a way to create clean coal energy.
Those dogs are more articulate in economics than any of Trump’s economic advisers.
So gang. What are the odds of Menzie Chinn getting an invitation to be interviewed on FOX News?
@ Erik Poole
You’ve heard of price ceilings and price controls?? FOX News and Fox Business channel have a similar mechanism, only it applies to on-air IQ level. The highest IQ allowed on FOX is 71. I’m guesstimating Menzie’s IQ to be around 130. That obviously puts Menzie at 59 points above the maximum on-air limit for FOX news.
In recession? Trump just got through saying how out of control California is.
Not much of a challenge to look at FBI crime data and figure out which cities are most dangerous, right? Here’s a list. Put them in order (first to last) by cities with the highest rates of murder/manslaughter per 100,000 people:
Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, Nashville, Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego.
Oh, my. Can’t fool anybody these days. They’re already in order. Unless my math is off, looks like the homicide rate in Cincy is about 7X that of out of control San Diego. Penceville, thankfully, is only about 6X worse.