What does the ratio of unemployment claims tell us about where we are in the business cycle and recession risk?
Multiple jobholders account for 5.1% of civilian employment. The survey captures data for four subcategories of the multi-job workforce, the relative sizes of which we've illustrated in a pie chart.
Let's take a close look at August's employment report numbers on Full and Part-Time Employment. The latest data shows that 82.5% of total employed workers are full-time (35+ hours) and 17.5% of total employed workers are part-time (<35 hours).
This series has been updated to include the August release of the consumer price index as the deflator and the monthly employment update. The latest hypothetical real (inflation-adjusted) annual earnings are at $51,005, down 6.7% from over 50 years ago. After adjusting for inflation, hourly earnings are below their all-time high from April 2020.
Let's do some analysis of the Consumer Price Index, the best-known measure of inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) divides all expenditures into eight categories and assigns a relative size to each. The pie chart illustrates the components of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers, the CPI-U.
Inflation cooled for a fifth straight month in August, dropping to its lowest level since February 2021. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the headline figure for the Consumer Price Index fell to 2.5% year-over-year, right in line with economist expectations. Additionally, core CPI cooled to 3.2% as expected.
Here’s a quote attributed to P. J. O’Rourke, an American author, journalist and political satirist: “There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud.”
When you pay attention to details in the financial services industry, you elevate your firm’s standing and demonstrate to clients that their relationships are valued. Small, considerate gestures can transform clients’ perception of your service, often bridging the gap between a satisfactory experience and an exceptional one.
Try to understand specifically where you are going off track. Many times these are behavioral disconnects. If you have a boss who is highly attuned to rules and quality and you are someone who doesn’t notice details as much, you might be failing in their eyes. First, start with seeking to understand.
Mario Draghi wants Europe to follow the United States and China down the road marked “industrial strategy.” As Europe’s most influential economist — a former head of the European Central Bank, prime minister of Italy and technocrat supreme — Draghi had enormous leeway in preparing his report on European competitiveness.
Banks and shadow banks are meant to exist in separate worlds, but the financial links between them are increasingly seen as a source of potential instability. That’s a problem for banks because the business of forging those ties has lately been among the hottest activities on Wall Street.
Forecasters expect a monthly report on US consumer prices to show another month of muted increases, possibly playing into a Federal Reserve debate over how much to cut interest rates.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has a message for benchmark managers who are weighing big reshufflings of their indexes to account for a handful of stocks growing to interstellar size: slow down.
US Treasuries rallied ahead of a closely watched inflation reading that could cement bets on the size of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate cut this month.
US mortgage rates slid last week to the lowest level since February 2023, emboldening homebuyers and spurring a pickup in refinancing applications in welcome news for the real estate market.
Is now the time for a small-caps ETF? Rate cuts and other potentially positive indicators could position the space to benefit.
The next U.S. president will face immediate fiscal challenges.
Investors may find themselves prognosticating about future rates relative to current rates in an attempt to optimize their portfolio.
While technology is a powerful driver of economic growth, it also presents challenges that can negatively impact productivity, equality, mental health, and societal cohesion. Addressing these issues ensures that technological advancements promote sustainable and inclusive economic growth.
We learned a long time ago that we wanted to know what smart professional investors were doing. It’s always better to know who is smart rather than being smart yourself. Therefore, we’ve constantly kept track of insider buying, what great investors like Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim were doing, and what the most successful hedge funds were up to. A recent chart stopped us in our tracks.
In a recent interview, Timothy Crawmer, global credit strategist at Payden & Rygel ($156.8 billion AUM), says it is the firm’s view that the Federal Reserve is going to start the rate cutting efforts in September with a 25 by 25 basis points, likely followed by another two 25 basis point cuts in November and December.
If overlays haven’t been on your radar so far this year, it’s high time to start thinking about them.
In emerging markets, technological advancements present a unique opportunity to empower underserved communities.
Market expectations and FOMC projections for rate cuts have diverged at different times. Investors remain uncertain about the timing and pace of Fed moves. Spreads are tightening, and setting your fixed income portfolio up for success presents unique challenges and opportunities.
Are your clients receiving proceeds from property or business sales? They rely on your expertise to navigate tax-advantaged solutions. This free webcast will equip you with the expertise to guide clients through complex real estate transactions and provide them with the best financial strategies.
How do you convey your value and convince qualified prospects that hiring you will be a worthwhile investment without breaching your compliance obligations as an advisor?
The safest way to ensure retirement security is to match, on a year-by-year basis, future spending needs with a reliable stream of inflation-adjusted income and maturing fixed-income assets. As we’ve already seen, a conventional stock/bond portfolio may not cut that mustard.
State Street Global Advisors and Galaxy Asset Management are launching a trio of cryptocurrency-focused exchange-traded funds even as investors pull back from spot Bitcoin funds.
Given the backdrop of monetary policy stimulus, the global economy is poised for growth and international stocks for continued leadership.
Investors weighing election risks ahead of the first US presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are already a lot more jittery than they were before Trump and his onetime opponent, President Joe Biden, met onstage in June.
Apple Inc. lost its court fight over a €13 billion ($14.4 billion) Irish tax bill and Google lost its challenge over a €2.4 billion fine for abusing its market power, in a double boost to the European Union’s crackdown on Big Tech.
The next-generation processor was unveiled six months ago, but has faced engineering snags that delayed its release. While Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang tried to reassure the market last month that revenue from the chip is coming soon, some investors were left wanting for details.
The all-in view of Tesla Inc. was summed up in a line from a report this summer by one of the more all-in analysts covering the company: “The car is to Tesla what the video game chip is to Nvidia.
When John D. Rockefeller wanted to punish a rival, he cut prices to force them to operate at a loss. The father of the modern oil industry had a name for it: a “good sweating.” A century later, OPEC+ is giving Big Oil the modern equivalent of Rockefeller’s time-tested tactics. Not everyone will be fit enough for it.
On the back of recent cooling in economic growth, an uptick in unemployment, and moderating inflation, the Federal Reserve (Fed) looks set to begin its rate-cutting cycle at its September meeting.
An analysis of the leadership reversal and market sell-off observed in recent weeks and why an emphasis on equities with consistent fundamentals is justified.
August’s employment report, which was weaker than markets were expecting but stronger than our call, cements our view that the easing cycle will begin during the next FOMC meeting, September 17-18.
The BRICS Pay initiative aims to better integrate currencies for trade and facilitate cross-border transactions among its members.
Last week’s big day in the markets and for the economy was on Friday. I characterized the jobs report as being weakish—not disastrous but certainly not strong. The payroll report came in a bit short of expectations with weak lowered revisions to past reports, and although the unemployment rate adjustment was expected, the U-6 unemployment rate, a broader measure of labor underutilization, continued to rise indicating underlying weakness in the job market.
Friday’s employment report suggests the US economy may be slowing down faster than most investors think
Last week, the BlackRock Target Allocation Team reduced their equity exposure and reduced some growth allocations in favor of value.
Shares of Nvidia are down 17.22% for the week ending Sept. 4. The firm is widely viewed as one the equity proxies on the AI investment theme.
To tackle the costs of higher education, many families use a 529 plan to bolster savings. An ETF strategy can bring long-term savings growth.
78 million baby boomers are about one-third of the voter-eligible population and 77 percent of them vote, so there are 60 million baby boomer votes. That 60 million is 38 percent of the 158 million votes cast in the 2020 presidential election. The baby boomer voters’ bloc is a big deal.
Part one of this series described the burgeoning bull steepening yield curve environment and what it implies about economic growth and Fed policy. It also discussed the three other predominant types of yield curve shifts and what they suggest for the economy and Fed policy.
In this article, we’re going to throw some cold water on the DI love-fest by explaining why most tax-sensitive investors would be better off with a simpler approach to tax loss harvesting.
US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have posted their longest run of daily net outflows since listing at the start of the year, part of a wider retreat from riskier assets in a challenging period for global markets.
Bond traders who struggled to predict how high the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates are finding the way down just as vexing.
Cloud computing has been one of the first industries to get a demonstrable boost from artificial intelligence. Oracle Corp.’s quarterly results on Monday are likely to extend that trend.
