The U.S. recovery is underway. But so far it doesn’t look as strong as we had been hoping.
Category Archives: employment
Prospects for Employment under Differing Econometric Specifications
Most economists are projecting a slow recovery in terms of employment. What do historical correlations imply?
No L
Real output grew significantly this quarter. Will employment follow?
Not much of a V
The latest auto and employment numbers paint a picture of an economic recovery that remains tepid and potentially fragile.
Economy improves but concerns remain
Last week we received positive readings for some key economic indicators. But I still see plenty to worry about.
State and Local Employment and Spending Trends
In a recent Economix post, Casey Mulligan asserts that aid to the states and localities is unwarranted given that state and local government employment is doing just fine. His graph highlighting cumulative gains/losses ends in January 2009, to show what had transpired by the time the stimulus bill was being debated. How do things look if one extends the sample to August 2009? And what about spending as opposed to employment?
Econbrowser Emoticon shifts to neutral
| Date | Status |
|---|---|
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Sep 13, 2006 |
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| Feb 21, 2007 | 
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| Apr 25, 2007 | 
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| Jun 27, 2007 |
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| Oct 5, 2007 |
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| Jan 4, 2008 |
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| Aug 30, 2009 |
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If you’ve only been following Econbrowser since 2008, you may have thought that the crabby countenance in the upper-right corner of our main page was a permanent fixture, conveying our general grumpiness about the state of the economy or perhaps life in general. Despite having been stuck in the pessimistic mode for quite some time now, the emoticon was in fact always intended to be a dynamic feature, adjusted from time to time to provide readers with our overall impression of incoming data. The table on the left provides links to each occasion that our Little Econ Watcher’s countenance has changed in the past.
Last week’s data persuaded me to move the Econbrowser Emoticon back into neutral, signifying that I now judge overall output to be growing slowly rather than declining. Here are details on the evidence that prompted this change in assessment, and what it signifies.
Current economic conditions
This was another week when everybody but me sees an economic recovery in the works.
Links for 2009-08-10
I spent the last week of July as a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, home to Macroblog and a number of superb economists. Their Center for Quantitative Economic Research is now going to be reporting my GDP-Based Recession Indicator Index, as you’ll see from following the link.
Jeff Miller has been looking carefully into the BLS birth-death adjustments (
[1],
[2],
[3]).
And I was interested in this story from the Wall Street Journal:
Houston-based Apache Corp. [APA] has agreed to provide natural gas for export to Asia through a proposed project in Canada, the latest sign that huge gas discoveries in North America are reshaping global energy markets. Kitimat LNG Inc., the Canadian company planning to build the liquefied-natural-gas export terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia, will announce Monday that Apache has become the second major North American gas producer to sign on to the project. Last month, another Houston-based gas producer, EOG Resources Inc., signed a similar deal….
“We’re confident that there’s going to be plenty of gas available for export for a long time,” said Greg Weeres, vice president of Pacific Northern Gas Ltd., which is planning to build a pipeline to supply gas to the Kitimat facility.
It’s not over yet
Some are greeting Friday’s employment report as an all-clear signal. But my advice is, keep your helmet on– they’re still shooting real bullets out there.