December 26, 2019 The US economy is more and more concentrated in a very few very large urban centers, and not just because of the tech boom. Despite the fact that the internet now allows individuals [...]

October 24, 2019 The number of jobs in September was up 1.4 percent from last year, a repeat of August and a confirmation that the August data weren't an outlier. It's now most likely that we'll see [...]

September 20, 2018 I've been harping about consumer debt for a while now because I think it will cause the next recession. It won't trigger it, that will be some unrelated event, but all of a sudden [...]

September 10, 2019 The number of jobs in August was up just 1.4 percent from last year, the smallest increase in the last two years, and down significantly from the 2 percent rate of January. Any fur [...]

August 15, 2019 The data on Gross Domestic Product for the second quarter are as unenlightening as always. The 2.1 percent annualized growth over the first quarter was a combination of heavy consumer [...]

July 23, 2019Month-to-month changes in economic statistics usually tell us nothing about where the economy is headed, there's too much variability. But a six month comparison might be enlightening at [...]

May 16, 2018 Like most people, I'm most confident talking about an economy that produces physical things like airplanes or soybeans or TV shows, or even data. I'm less sure when it comes to financial [...]

May 13, 2019 Measured by Gross Domestic Product, the economy grew at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the first quarter, after growing at a 2.2 percent rate in the fourth quarter of 2018. If you do away [...]