Posts Tagged ‘Alex Carrick’
Friday, June 4th, 2021
Big Grin Greets Big Pickup in Youth Employment
In any pre-pandemic month, May’s U.S. total jobs count gain of +559,000 would have registered as outstanding. And I don’t want to belittle the achievement, especially since it soundly beats the previous month’s figure of +278,000.
But as can be seen from Graph 1, even a swing of plus more than half a million appears as only a blip in the context of the month-to-month movements over the past year and a quarter.
The seasonally adjusted (SA) unemployment rate in May improved to 5.8% from 6.1% in April. The not seasonally adjusted (NSA) unemployment rate downshifted to 5.5% from 5.7% the month previously.
Young people are finding employment once again. The SA unemployment rate for individuals aged 16 to 19 brightened to 9.5%. And yes, ‘brightened to 9.5%’ is appropriate wording given that a year ago the SA unemployment rate for those just under aged 20 was 30.7%.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, Economic, Economist, Economy, employment, Growth, job, jobless, jobs, Labor, market
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Thursday, June 3rd, 2021
Article source: ConstructConnect
The economic world is full of odd connections these days. A case in point is the tie-in between airline travel and the price of lumber.
How can visiting Aunt Pat in Topeka have anything to do with needing a loan to purchase a two-by-four?
Graph 1 conveys very good news. U.S. airline passenger traffic, as measured by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint numbers, is solidly on the rebound.
Over the latest 14 days ending June 1st, the number of people taking to the air has been 70% of what it was during the same time frame in 2019. While that still leaves considerable room for improvement, consider that for the same 14 days last year, the comparison with 2019 yielded a percentage level of just 12%.
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Tags: airline, Alex Carrick, construct connet, ConstructConnect, Construction, Construction industry, Economist, Economy, lumber
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Thursday, May 27th, 2021
Article source: ConstructConnect
Initial Jobless Claims and UI on Right Track
This article features a quick overview of the latest key statistics for the U.S. and Canadian economies, presented mainly in graph form.
For starters, U.S. initial jobless claims have finally dropped to a reasonable level, just above 400,000 for the week ending May 22nd. Prior to the pandemic, with the economy chugging along near full speed, initial jobless claims consistently sat between 200,000 and 300,000.
Therefore, once they fall below 300,000 again, there’ll be good reason to believe that a true return to ‘normal’ has been achieved.
The number of individuals receiving unemployment insurance is also trending down in a positive way. The latest weekly figure was 3.642 million, a falloff of nearly -100,000. In the best of times, the number is shy of two million.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, Building Material, Canada, ConstructConnect, Construction, Construction industry, Economist, Economy, Housing
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Tuesday, May 25th, 2021
Article source: ConstructConnect
When presenting housing starts for the U.S. and Canada, the Census Bureau and CMHC first seasonally adjust monthly ‘actual’ units and then annualize them, to arrive at what are termed SAAR (seasonally adjusted and annualized) figures. ‘Annualizing’ takes the monthly number and projects it out over 12 months.
The January-April average of the four monthly SAAR figures for the U.S. so far this year is 1.594 million units, +18.2% when compared with January-April 2020’s average. Since the Fall of last year, a mini new housing construction boom has been underway in America.
Canada’s January-April average of monthly SAAR starts has been 295,700 units, +50.5% versus the comparable average managed in the first four months of last year. In Canada, the boom in residential groundbreakings isn’t speaking tentatively, rather it’s shouting.
Graph 1
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Tags: Alex Carrick, ConstructConnect, Construction, Economic, Housing, market
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Wednesday, May 19th, 2021
Article source: ConstructConnect
In this, the latest mid-month Nuggets report, I’ll focus on three major and interlocking (or interdependent) economic indicators: retail sales, inflation and housing starts.
Retail Sales
My world of economic analysis is being rocked in unprecedented fashion. Maybe ‘shattered’ is the better word.
For example, I’m used to studying year-over-year percentage changes to gain an understanding of what is going on in certain segments of the economy. Retail sales is a perfect example. In current dollar terms (i.e., not adjusted for inflation), they used to range from flat as a lower boundary to maybe +7% y/y as an upper limit.
When the coronavirus first struck in the Spring of last year, retail sales plummeted, yielding double-digit percentage-change drops for ‘total’ and many shopkeeper sub-categories. Now, a year later, the rebound that’s underway is being vastly exaggerated by the comparison with 2020’s deeply distressed results. Looking at April 2021/April 2020, we’re dealing with ‘funhouse’ numbers on the upside.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, Economist, Economy, employment, Growth, Housing, inflation, job, jobs, Labor, retail
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Tuesday, May 4th, 2021
Article source: ConstructConnect
Below are the latest stock market results for key North American and international indices, all in standalone graphics form and as of closing April 30th.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, ConstructConnect, Construction, Construction industry, developers, Economist, Economy, Growth
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Thursday, May 21st, 2020
U.S. Home Starts -45% since January; Canada, -24%
The story of the recent deterioration in U.S. and Canadian housing starts can best be told through a series of graphs.
Both nations began this year with relatively high levels of residential groundbreakings. In January 2020, the U.S. recorded 1.617 million units seasonally adjusted at an annual rate (SAAR) and Canada, 219,000 units (also SAAR).
The decline in new home starts in the U.S. during the latest two months, however, has been brutal. First, they shrank to 1.3 million units in March, then to 0.9 million in April.
New home starts in America in April were cut by nearly half (-45%) versus January.
Canada’s contraction, January to April, has been one-quarter. The 166,000-unit figure for Canada in the latest month, though, comes with an asterisk. Construction in Quebec was shut down in April, yielding housing start counts of zero throughout the province. (Never before has there been a non-existent official number for housing starts in Montreal in any month.)
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Tags: Alex Carrick, Canada, ConstructConnect, Construction, Construction industry, Economic, Economist, Economy, Housing, residential
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Friday, May 8th, 2020
Article source: ConstructConnect
Unemployment Rate at 14.7% could have been Worse
It could have been worse. I thought it would be worse. Next month’s figure will probably be worse.
I’m speaking of April’s U.S. seasonally adjusted (SA) unemployment rate, as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It came in at 14.7%, after being just 4.4% in March.
If you’re looking for a figure that’s jaw-dropping, turn to the total number of jobs in the country. From March to April, there was a decline of 20.5 million.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, Canada, construct, Construction, Construction industry, coronavirus, COVID-19, Economic, Economics, Economist, job, jobless, jobs, money, recovery, residential, shareknowledge, US
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Friday, May 8th, 2020
Article source: ConstructConnect
ConstructConnect, in its latest (Summer) quarterly construction starts forecast, is projecting -27.4% for 2020/2019 grand total dollars and -24.6% for square footage.
Why the big drop?
By the way, ‘real’ (inflation-adjusted) GDP is likely to be something like -6% (annual/annual) and that is a big decline. The Q/Q change annualized in Q2 will be something like -25% to -30%.
Put-in-place construction spend numbers are much smoother than starts. They include a large percentage of work that is carried over from last year, so they’re not relevant for assessing what is occurring today. The put-in-place total, 2020/2019, will be on the order of -6% to -8%.
Now we come to construction starts. As background, in the last recession (2008-2009), the cumulative decline in ConstructConnect’s total starts through both years was greater than -30%.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, construct, ConstructConnect, Construction, Construction industry, Construction services, Economist, Economy, employment
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Thursday, April 16th, 2020
Article source: ConstructConnect
- A forewarning for the U.S. in Canada’s March Labor Market Numbers
- 5 Shocking Declines in Shopkeeper Sales, But 1 Good News Story
- Canadian Part-time Work Evaporates
- A Drop in Oil Demand that will Muddy the Waters for OPEC
- S. Initial Jobless Claims Climb to 22 Million in 4 Weeks
The times are turbulent. There’s no point in dilly-dallying. Let’s jump right in with an examination of the latest data releases from public and private sector sources.
5 Shocking Declines in Shopkeeper Sales, But 1 Good News Story
March’s U.S. Advance Monthly Sales of Retail and Food Services report sets out some big month-to-month percentage changes. Most, but not all, were on the downside.
Five sub-categories experienced declines from February to March of more than one-fifth. Performing worst was the category ‘clothing and clothing accessory stores’, -50.5%. The four others with severe sales contractions were: ‘furniture and home furnishing stores’, -26.8%; ‘food services and drinking places’, -26.5%; ‘motor vehicle and parts dealers’, -25.6%; and ‘sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument and book stores’, -23.3%.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, architect, Canada, ConstructConnect, Construction, Economic, Economist, Economy, employment, material, recovery
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