Category: Economic Outlook
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Potent Cocktail
November was another good month for jobs with 178,000 new ones created and unemployment dropping to 4.6%. The bad news was that after an encouraging 0.4% gain in October, average hourly wages dropped back by 0.1%. Flat wages are not hurting home prices–at least so far. They continue to defy forecasts of smaller increases.…
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Jobs Return, Builders Don’t
We know by now that the housing inventory is the root of all evil, blamed for home sales that aren’t quite where they should be, the steady erosion of the homeownership rate, rising home prices, and rising rents. One factor underlying the current tight supply of homes is the lack of single-family construction, especially in…
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Waiting on the Fed Again
The markets were expecting that the week’s big news would be Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellin’s speech on Friday, but it came and went without much of a stir. Yellin reiterated that the Fed continues to watch key economic numbers as they come in; and that, “In light of the continued solid performance of the…
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Economic Update–Construction Chills
Commentary ~ January 22, 2016 As we recall, we, along with most of the nation, were in shirtsleeves while we wrapped up the holiday shopping and partying last month. Still, reports this week indicate that an unseasonably warm December didn’t do much for the construction industry. First there was the National Association of Homebuilders Housing…
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Piggy Banks Are Back
Commentary ~ January 15, 2016 Last week ended with an absolute blow-out of a jobs report. Newly created jobs for the month of December came in at 292,000–nearly 30% over the 200,000 that the majority of Econoday analysts had predicted. Adding to that good news was a significant upward revision in the November…
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Playing Catch-Up
Commentary ~ December 4, 2015 While most of us were more engaged by cooking, eating, visiting, and shopping than by what was happening on the housing front, the gears ground on without us. There is a lot to catch up on. Three major price indices–the Case-Shiller and the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s indices…