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 distinct sources: Quarterly data for…
The pandemic caused U.S. job losses that are historic for their speed and scale. The impact is notable in various ways: The 22.3 million jobs lost in March and April of 2020 were the most jobs lost in the shortest time—even…
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. Macroeconomics has asserted that allowing…
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 higher employee risks, with wages…
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. To date, the inflation jump in 2021 looks modest compared to…
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, the graphic above shows that:…
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 downturn in 2020 — in…