Last week Menzie called attention to an interesting new paper by Baumeister, Leiva-León, and Sims on tracking weekly state-level economic conditions. I wanted to add that the authors have also created a really cool data dashboard that allows users to look up the latest economic situation for any individual states and sectors of interest.
Author Archives: James_Hamilton
Economy looks strong
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that seasonally adjusted U.S. real GDP grew at a 6.4% annual rate in the first quarter, well above the 3.1% average growth that the U.S. experienced over 1947-2019.
The University of California gives back to the community
About 10% of the population in San Diego have now received the vaccine. A third of these — 100,000 people– were served by a single facility operated by the University of California at San Diego. What’s the secret to their success? Answer: logistics.
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Flash-mob finance
Modern communication infrastructure can facilitate swift simultaneous action by a large number of people. If used to coordinate a surprise attack, an organized mob can overcome a store or even the capitol building. Is Wall Street the next target?
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The COVID recession is over
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that seasonally adjusted U.S. real GDP grew at a 4.0% annual rate in the fourth quarter. That’s well above the 3.1% average growth that the U.S. experienced over 1947-2019, and follows a 28.8% logarithmic annual growth rate seen in Q3.
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Record-breaking increase in GDP
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that seasonally adjusted U.S. real GDP grew at a 33.1% annual rate in the third quarter. That’s the largest change ever recorded, even bigger than the -31.4% annual rate now reported for 2020:Q2. What do those numbers tell us?
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Record-breaking drop in GDP
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that seasonally adjusted U.S. real GDP was 9.5% lower in the second quarter than it had been in the first quarter, which they reported as a decline at an annual rate of 32.9% (0.9054 – 1 = -0.329). That is four times as large a quarterly decline as anything since the BEA began reporting quarterly GDP in 1947, and represents a 10 sigma (10 standard deviations) event.
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Interpreting the unemployment numbers
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Friday that 2.5 million more Americans were working in May than in April. That’s the biggest monthly increase since 1946, both in terms of the number of workers and as a percentage of the workforce. The unemployment rate dropped from 14.7% in April to 13.3% in May, the biggest monthly drop since 1950. All this is very good news. But there are also indications that we are in a deeper hole than the headline numbers suggest. Here I explain why I believe the true unemployment rate in May was a number more like 19.8%.
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Economy in a nose dive
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that U.S. real GDP fell at a 4.8% annual rate in the first quarter of 2020. That’s a rate of decline that we only see historically during the worst quarter of a recession.
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Negative oil prices
First negative interest rates, and now negative oil prices. Is the world coming to an end?
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