GO HERE TO PRINT CHARTS Volatility is one of the characteristics of holiday retail sales—with the focus here on stores that sell gift-type goods. These stores, in other words, exclude car dealers, gas stations, restaurants, food, and drug stores. More specifically,…
GO HERE TO PRINT CHARTS The pandemic caused U.S. job losses that are historic for their speed and scale. The impact is notable in various ways: The 22 million jobs lost in March and April of 2020 were the most jobs…
GO HERE TO PRINT CHARTS Retail e-commerce data show a dramatic shift online by category over 20-plus years — but nearly as insightful is how the picture is pieced together from U.S. Census Bureau data. The e-commerce data bring together three…
GO HERE TO PRINT CHARTS The belief in an inflation-unemployment trade-off is ingrained in macroeconomics, financial markets, and media. The trade-off is often expressed in various ways: Markets fear that if the unemployment rate gets too low, then inflation will rise….
GO HERE TO PRINT CHARTS Wages of U.S. workers—adjusted for inflation—have finally eclipsed the peak reached in 1972. The 1972 peak was eclipsed in 2020 partly because of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Business boosted wages in the face of…
GO HERE TO PRINT CHARTS For nearly 30 years until 2021, price inflation remained relatively low. That represented the longest low-inflation period over the more than 70 years that U.S consumer prices have been tracked. Despite the year-end surge, the inflation…
GO HERE TO PRINT CHARTS Economic hard times often draw comparisons to the Great Depression, but the pandemic-induced recession of 2020 may be the first to merit some amount of comparison — at least based on measures of GDP. The economic…