PERC Blog

Inflation and Wages – The Latest Data from October 2023

Posted: November 16, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen, Somali Ghosh Sinha
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the October 2023 Consumer Price Index (CPI) on November 14, 2023.  The year-over-year CPI inflation rate came in at 3.2%, lower than September’s rate of 3.7%, but still significantly above the Fed’s 2% target.  If we look at the monthly change, which is always volatile and shoul...

Texas School Enrollment During and After Covid-19

Posted: November 07, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen, Somali Ghosh Sinha
The Covid-19 Pandemic, including the policy response, had vast detrimental effects on many industries -- healthcare, hospitality and tourism, but also education. After the surge in Covid-19 cases beginning in early 2020, on March 13, 2020, the Texas governor declared a heath disaster and schools were closed until May 4, 2020, and essentially sta...

Inflation and Wages – The Latest Data from September 2023

Posted: October 13, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
On October 12, 2023, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the September 2023 Consumer Price Index (CPI).  The year-over-year CPI inflation rate came in at 3.7%, still well above the Fed’s 2% target.  The monthly rate from August to September, annualized, came in at 4.9%.  There was little solace in CPI core inflatio...

Industry Contribution to Employment, Total Wages, and Gross Domestic Product

Posted: October 03, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen, Somali Ghosh Sinha
Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is measured as the total monetary value of all goods and services produced in a country over a particular period. Changes in GDP over time gives a snapshot of the nation’s economy. However, the industries that produce the highest GDP differ widely among the different U.S. states.   In our ...

Inflation and Wages – The Latest Data from August 2023

Posted: September 13, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
Today, September 13, 2023, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the August 2023 Consumer Price Index (CPI). While the Wall Street Journal reported a forecast that the year-over-year increase in the CPI (the increase from August 2022 to August 2023) would be 3.6%, the actual release indicated a 3.7% rise. The July 2023 year-over-year inf...

Comparing States’ Share of Employment and Share of Total Wages by Industry

Posted: September 06, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen, Somali Ghosh Sinha
It is interesting to examine the variety of industries across the U.S. by looking at details for the fifty states. For each state, we calculate the ratio of the number of persons employed within each industry group divided by the total number of persons employed. This calculation of the share of employment within a state by industry group provid...

Wind and Solar Energy in Texas

Posted: August 22, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier, Somali Ghosh Sinha
The dashboard displays the location of wind power turbines as provided in the U.S. Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB) by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the American Clean Power Association, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. (See https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb.)<br...

Inflation and Wages – The BLS Releases Data for July 2023

Posted: August 10, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
Today, August 10, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the July 2023 Consumer Price Index (CPI).  The CPI in June was 3.3% higher than a year ago, still over the Fed’s 2% target but much reduced from the peak experienced thirteen months ago, when the annual inflation rate came in at 8.9% for June 2022. Looking ...

PCE, CPI and Core Inflation - July 2023

Posted: August 01, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
Just last Wednesday (July 26) the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee announced another 25 basis point (0.25 percentage point) increase in the monetary policy rate, more specifically, the interest on reserve balances, as well as a 25 basis point increase in the target range of the Federal Funds Rate.  Then Monday of this week (July 3`1) t...

Inflation and Wages – The BLS Releases Data for June 2023

Posted: July 12, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the June 2023 reading of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) today.  The CPI in June was 3.1% higher than a year ago, still over the Fed’s 2% target but continuing its downward path since last June’s 8.9% reading.  Looking just at the monthly change, the CPI increased just over 0.2% ...

Employment and Unemployment by Metro Areas

Posted: June 14, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier, Somali Ghosh Sinha
There are a number of statistical series observers use to keep tabs on the labor market. Two leading statistics are nonfarm employment and the unemployment rate. These series are both produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics but are based on different surveys.  Nonfarm employment is from the <a href=...

Inflation and Wages – The BLS Releases Data for May 2023

Posted: June 13, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the May 2023 reading of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) today.  The CPI in May was 4.1% higher than a year ago, still well over the Fed’s 2% target.  Looking just at the monthly change, the CPI increased just over 0.1% from April to May, an annualized rate of 1.5%.    ...

Professional and Business Services Lead Employment Gains

Posted: May 18, 2023 by Andrew J. Rettenmaier, Somali Ghosh Sinha
The COVID pandemic sparked massive job market changes - some temporary and some enduring. The move toward remote work took a tremendous leap forward as many of us learned first-hand how to get things done with our coworkers even when not in the office together. Some of the highest employment growth over the last three years has been in occupatio...

Inflation and Real (Inflation-Adjusted) Wages – The Situation in May 2023

Posted: May 10, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the April 2023 reading of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) today.  The CPI in April was 5.0% higher than a year ago (rounded up from 4.96%).  This is still well over the Fed’s 2% target.  Looking just at the monthly change, the CPI increased just under 0.4% from March to April, an ...

Texas MSA Post Pandemic Employment Growth by Metropolitan Area

Posted: April 28, 2023 by Andrew J. Rettenmaier, Somali Ghosh Sinha
This dashboard presents post-pandemic employment growth in the top five industries in each Texas Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). Hovering over each mapped MSA changes the information depicted in the four figures below the map.   <im...

Inflation and Real (Inflation-Adjusted) Wages – March 2023

Posted: April 12, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) today, which includes the value for March 2023.  The CPI in March was 5.0% higher than a year ago, well over the Fed’s 2% target.  Looking just at the monthly change, the CPI increased just under 0.1% from February, an annualized rate of 0.6%, well under...

The Inflation Situation at the Beginning of April – Looking at Data Through February 2023

Posted: April 03, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
On Friday, March 31, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released data on the PCE Price Index for February 2023.  The PCE Price Index is the Federal Reserve System’s preferred measure of the price level, and the BEA report indicates that the February index was up 5.0% from a year ago.  The so-called core PCE Price Index, or the...

Wage Changes Around the Country

Posted: March 31, 2023 by Andrew J. Rettenmaier, Somali Ghosh Sinha
Wages have been rising over the past couple of years but by less than inflation has risen, resulting in declining real wages. From January 2021 through February 2023, prices rose 14.8% and the average wage rose 10.6%. This produced inflation-adjusted wages that were 96.3% of their January 2021 level as of February.<img alt="Slide...

Inflation and the Purchasing Power of Wages – March 2023

Posted: March 15, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
On March 14, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) update for February 2023, and again there is bad news for the Administration and for the Federal Reserve in the fight to rein in the inflation rate.  The CPI in February 2023 comes in 6.0% higher than a year ago, and the one-month increase from January...

The Silicon Valley Bank Failure

Posted: March 15, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is in the news, in a big way. It is the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. And, while the U.S. government and its agencies are, strictly speaking, not bailing out Silicon Valley Bank as a company, the U.S. government has guaranteed that all depositors are essentially receiving deposit insurance, even those exp...

Inflation Through January 2023

Posted: February 28, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
Well, here it is the last day of February, and as of last Friday, February 24, we have data for January on the Fed’s favorite measure of inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) Price Index.  This, along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data available from earlier in February, allows us to look at what has been happeni...

Inflation and the Purchasing Power of Wages, January 2023

Posted: February 14, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) update for January 2023 on Valentine’s Day, and there is little for the administration or the Federal Reserve System to love in this report.  The CPI in January 2023 comes in 6.4% higher than a year ago, and the one-month increase from December 2022 to Januar...

Unemployment, Employment, and Labor Force Participation

Posted: February 06, 2023 by Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced a 3.4% unemployment rate for January 2023, the lowest rate since 1969.  The unemployment rate has been this low or lower for fewer than 5% of the months of the post-war period, and until last month all have been before 1970!  Prior to the pandemic, the unemployment rate had also reached ve...

Inflation-Adjusted GDP Growth Across the Country

Posted: January 31, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier, Somali Ghosh Sinha
Economic growth has varied considerably over the past decade across the country. The dashboard below illustrates the varied growth in terms of the change in inflation-adjusted Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between 2011 and 2021 by Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). In the dashboard, inflation-adjusted GDP growth for MSAs is compa...

PCE, CPI and Core Inflation

Posted: January 30, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
Last Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released data on the PCE Price Index for December 2022.  The PCE Price Index is the Federal Reserve System’s preferred measure of the price level, and the BEA report indicates that the December index was up 5.0% for the year.  The so-called core PCE Price Index, or the PCE Price ...

The Latest on U.S. Real GDP Growth in 2022

Posted: January 30, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its estimate of Real GDP for the U.S. through the end of 2022, and the headlines read that Real GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.9% in the fourth quarter.  The Wall Street Journal writes that U.S. economic growth cooled slightly.  But how should we interpret this estimate of Real GDP, and w...

Peaking Inflation and Real Wages

Posted: January 12, 2023 by Dennis W. Jansen
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index update for December on Thursday, January 12. The index increased 6.4% from December 2021 to December 2022. This year-over-year inflation measure continues to decline from its peak reading of 9% in June 2022.  From November to December, the index decreased ...

Population Growth Around the State of Texas

Posted: December 22, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Somali Ghosh Sinha, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
From 2010 to 2021, the United States’ population grew 7.1%.  During that same time span,  Texas grew 17.4%.  Texas’s growth rate was third among the fifty states, only trailing  Idaho and Utah. Within Texas, the population growth rates varied by metropolitan areas and by counties.  The interact...

Has Inflation Peaked?

Posted: December 13, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index update for November this morning. The index increased 7.1% from November 2021 to November 2022. This year-over-year increase is down from the 7.8% rate from registered from October 2021 to October 2022.  On a monthly basis, from October to November of this...

The Geographic Distribution of Income: The View Based on Tax Returns

Posted: December 01, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Somali Ghosh Sinha, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
As income inequality has grown in the United States in recent years, much of the focus has been on the concentration of income at the top of the distribution. The dashboards below provide another way to look at the distribution of income by focusing on the geography of the income distribution. The dashboards use data from the Stat...

October: CPI Inflation Continues to Exceed Wage Growth

Posted: November 10, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the latest data on its Consumer Price Index (CPI), showing a monthly rise of 0.44% in October, which translates into an annualized rate of 5.4%.  This is actually up slightly from September, when the monthly rise translated to an annualized rate of 4.7%. Meanwhile, the year-over-year incr...

A Tale of Four Inflation Rates: The September 2022 Data

Posted: October 31, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
Measures of U.S. inflation typically focus on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or the Personal Consumption Expenditure Price Index (PCE), and on the related so-called “core” measures, the Core CPI (CPI excluding Food and Energy) and Core PCE (PCE Price Index excluding Food and Energy).  The figure below graphs these four measures ...

You Be The Judge…

Posted: October 28, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
"And because of the action we've taken, gas prices are declining. We're down $1.25 since the peak this summer and [they’ve] been falling for the last three weeks as well, and adding up real savings for families today. The most common price of gas in America is $3.39, down from over five dollars when I took office."  ...

Inflation-Adjusted Hourly Earnings in Four Administrations

Posted: October 21, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
Our current high inflation rates are harming the middle class, and one measure of this harm is the decline in the purchasing power of middle-class wages. While their wages are rising, prices are rising faster, and the purchasing power of wages is falling. Inflation remains high. Data on September’s Consumer Price Index (CPI)...

Inflation in Four Administrations

Posted: October 18, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
The White House, over the signature of President Biden, released a statement on October 13 2022, in conjunction with and in response to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ release o...

September Real Wages Decline as CPI Inflation Picks Up

Posted: October 17, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
In September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Consumer Price Index (CPI) increases by 0.4% for the month, up from a 0.1% increase in August. September’s annualized inflation rate was 4.7%. Over the twelve months from September 2021 to September 2022, the CPI has increased by 8.2%. It goes without saying that an a...

Watching the Labor Market for a 'Soft Landing'

Posted: October 07, 2022 by Somali Gosh Sinha, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
As Wall Street and Main Street track and interpret the Federal Reserve’s every move, we are reminded in related news stories that the Fed’s actions are governed by its goals to keep the inflation rate both stable and low, while also keeping the unemployment rate low.  With inflation rates at levels not seen since the 1980s, the ...

The Federal Reserve and Interest Rates

Posted: October 06, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
The Federal Reserve System is tasked with providing a stable price level. It has interpreted success at this task as a 2% annual inflation rate as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index.  While the Fed is committed to providing this target inflation rate, it has widely failed in recent months, causing harm to many.<br...

Latest Federal Reserve System Projection: Inflation will Return to Target in 2025

Posted: September 22, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
The Federal Reserve System’s Open Market Committee finished their two-day meeting on September 21 2022, and announced they were taking the expected action to raise the Federal Funds interest rate by three-quarters of one percent.  Accompanying this, the Fed also released a set of economic projections. The Federal Reserv...

August Real Wages Eek Out Gains as CPI Inflation Moderates

Posted: September 13, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
In August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI) resumed its upward march after a respite in July but at a slow pace of just 0.1% for the month, an annualized rate of 1.4%. Over the twelve months from August 2021 to August 2022, the CPI has increased by 8.2%. It goes without saying that an annual increas...

July Real Wages Increase as CPI Inflation Shows a Sign of Moderating

Posted: August 10, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
In July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index was basically unchanged from its June value, indicating at least a temporary respite from what had been a continual monthly increase in the CPI since at least January 2021. With this July measurement, the year-over-year CPI inflation rate now stands at 8.5% and the increase in t...

Employment and GDP: Mixed Signals About a Recession

Posted: August 08, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The good news late last week was that, nationally, the employment level in July has exceeded the employment level of February 2020, the month prior to the pandemic-induced recession. Meanwhile, the U.S. experienced a second consecutive quarter of declining real GDP, often taken as an informal indicator of a recession.  The pu...

PCE Inflation Reaches 6.8% in June; Highest Since January 1982!

Posted: July 29, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
The Federal Reserve System’s preferred measure of inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) Price Index, reached a year-over-year rate of 6.8% in June.  The last time PCE inflation was this high was in January 1982, four decades in the past.  The figure below graphs the year-over-year PCE inflation rate...

June CPI Inflation Hits Another High While Inflation-Adjusted Wages Continue to Fall

Posted: July 13, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) just released the Consumer Price Index for June 2022 and the price level rose 1.32% last month, an annualized rate of 17.1%, the highest since the start of the current administration.   Over the last twelve months, the CPI has increased by 9%.  Needless to say, this is far above ...

Inflation and Declining Real Wages Through May: The Never-Ending Story?

Posted: June 13, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) just released the Consumer Price Index for May 2022 and the price level rose 1% last month.  Prices are up 4.1% in just the first five months of 2022, which translate to an annual rate of 10.0%.  Prices are up 8.5% in the last year, from May 2021 to May 2022.  For the period from January 2021 t...

Retired Texas Teachers and Inflation - The Cruelest Tax

Posted: June 02, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The Teacher Retirement System, or TRS, has been in place since 1937 and has been a reliable source of income in the past. Now its retirees are in trouble. TRS is a defined benefit pension system in which teachers and their employers make contributions during their working years and receive a pension benefit that includes average final pay and ye...

Weathering the Storm

Posted: May 12, 2022 by Somali Ghosh Sinha, Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Retirees and near-term retirees have taken a financial hit since the start of the year. From the end of 2021 to the present, equity index funds are down 16% and bond index funds are down almost 13%. In addition, traditional defined benefit pension plans – especially those that do not have cost of living provisions – are worth less as...

Inflation, Rising Wages, and Declining Real Wages: The Situation through April

Posted: May 11, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) just released the Consumer Price Index for April 2022 and the price level has now increased 10.1% from January 2021 to April 2022 and 8.2% from April of last year.  This year-over-year inflation rate in April was slightly lower than the March year-over-year inflation rate of 8.6%.  For all of 2021, ...

A Tale of Seven Inflation Measures

Posted: April 29, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
We have many measures of inflation rates as they impact consumers and households.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces several versions of the Consumer Price Index.  Perhaps the most widely cited is the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).  For Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, the inflation prote...

The Federal Reserve System: Failing on Forecasting and Failing on Policy

Posted: April 22, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
The U.S. Treasury sells bonds, lots of bonds, to finance a large national debt.  These bonds pay interest, and the vast majority are traditional bonds paying explicit or implicit interest.  Economists say these bonds pay a ‘nominal’ interest rate.  It is called nominal because it embodies both a return to cover inflati...

Prices are Rising at Historic Rates, and Rising Much Faster than Wages

Posted: April 12, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) just released the Consumer Price Index for March 2022 and the price level has now increased 9.7% from January 2021 to March 2022 and 8.5% from March of last year.  Moreover, the increase in prices has been accelerating.  From the first three months of 2022, prices have risen at an annualized rate of...

Rising Gas Prices

Posted: March 25, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Each time we fill up our car we are reminded of rising gas prices. At the beginning of this week, the average price of gas across all formulations was $4.24 per gallon. While gas prices are rising along with many other goods and services we buy, the question is: are gas prices higher now than in the past? The answer is yes and no....

Inflation and Falling Purchasing Power: Wages Aren’t Keeping Up

Posted: March 11, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Over the past year, wages and prices have both grown; however, prices are growing at a faster rate, resulting in declining real wages. Average hourly earnings, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, increased to $31.58 in February, up from $30.04 a year ago for an increase of 5.1%. This appears to be a robust increase for ...

How Large are the Russian and Ukrainian Economies?

Posted: March 09, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
We have all seen numerous maps of Europe as Russia prepared for and then invaded Ukraine. Here, we’ve created a few more maps that compare countries’ GDP, GDP per capita, population, and defense budgets.  You can also limit your comparisons to specific country groups.1<div class="tableauPlaceholder" id="viz1646845...

State Tax Revenues Up to Par Post COVID

Posted: February 14, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Normally during recessions, state tax revenues fall and states that rely heavily on income taxes often see their revenues fall more than states that rely on consumption taxes, such as sales taxes. The COVID-19 recession was different from other recessions: it was short, states’ tax revenues did not fall as much as was feared, the federal g...

Wages and Prices as of January 2022 – The Spiral Has Begun

Posted: February 11, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
Wages were up substantially in the twelve months that ended in January 2022. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that average hourly earnings of all employees in the private sector increased from $29.93 in January 2021 to $31.63 in January 2022. This is a hefty 5.7% increase, and normally would be something to trumpet. However, the BLS ...

Employment, Population Growth, and the Red State – Blue State Divide

Posted: February 02, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
In a previous blog we discussed changes in state employment from the start of the pandemic to November 2021. States have seen varying levels of recovery in terms of employment, with some states recovering more rapidly than others. November 2021 employment in states with Republican governors, as of 2020, averaged 98.5 % of those states’ pre...

Employment Rebound Across the States: A Red and Blue Story

Posted: January 19, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Employment is still recovering from the pandemic-induced recession.  There were 3.6 million fewer workers nationally in December than at the pre-pandemic peak in February 2020. Nationwide, employment fell almost 15% between February and April 2020 and since then it has grown  every month except for December 2020.  As of December 2...

Wages and Prices in 2021 – Looks Like Old Keynesian Policy

Posted: January 18, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
Wages were up in 2021.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that average hourly earnings of all employees in the private sector increased on a seasonally adjusted basis from $29.91 in December 2020 to $31.31 in December, an increase of 4.7% year-over-year.  This seems like great news for workers. Workers, howeve...

The Great Resignation? No, The Great Worker Churn

Posted: January 10, 2022 by Dennis W. Jansen
‘The Great Resignation’ is all over the news.  Millions of Americans are quitting their jobs – 4.5 million in November.  A record number, and a phenomenon that needs to be explained.  Most commentators mention pay, but we also read about burnout, concerns about management and opportunities for advancement.  ...

This Just In - Local Area Real GDP Numbers (for 2020)

Posted: December 10, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen
Yesterday and today, December 7 and 8, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its estimates of real GDP (RGDP) for counties and for metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) for 2020.  That is, for last year.  Further, unlike national estimates, the local county and MSA-level estimates are only annual, and thus do not capture the large c...

How Transitory is Transitory Inflation?

Posted: December 03, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
‘Transitory’ is the adjective used by the Federal Reserve System to describe the recent rise in inflation. Regardless of the inflation measure, since May, inflation has been higher than it has been since 2010, as seen in Figure 1. The consumer price index (CPI) rose 6.2% between October 2020 and October 2021 and the index that exclud...

The Great Resignation?

Posted: November 04, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
In recent weeks we have seen a rash of articles focused on the rise in workers quitting their jobs. As seen int the figure below, more than 4 million workers quit their jobs in both July and August. Why are so many people leaving their jobs? The explanations given range from burnout to a realization that there is more to life than work. These ex...

College Enrollment During the Pandemic: Texas and the U.S.

Posted: November 01, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Enrollment in colleges and universities across the county has fallen over the past two years. Based on results from the National Student Clearinghouse, enrollment at public four-year colleges and universities fell 2.3% from 2020 to 2021 and fell 4.6% between 2019 and 2021.1 Community College enrollment fell even more at 9% between 201...

Good News for Workers Born in 1960

Posted: October 22, 2021 by Andrew J. Rettenmaier
If you were born in the year 1960, you should be breathing a sigh of relief. The reason for this relief has to do with how Social Security benefits are calculated. The national average earnings in the year in which you turned 60 – 2020 for workers born in 1960 – is critical in calculating your base monthly benefit. If wages go up in ...

Labor Market Entry Restrictions and Crony Capitalism

Posted: October 22, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Many years ago, Adam Smith famously wrote, “[p]eople of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” This quote is often used to warn of the evil tendency of those involved in the world of business to collu...

Medicaid Growth

Posted: October 01, 2021 by Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Medicaid enrollment and spending have grown substantially since the start of the pandemic. Such growth is expected during an economic downturn as unemployment rises, hours worked fall, and people become eligible for Medicaid coverage. However, the program has also been growing faster than other categories of health care spending over the past te...

Before Thinking About Expanding Medicare, Read the Trustees Reports

Posted: September 16, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports were finally released on August 31, or almost five months after their scheduled release date of April 1. This year’s release date was the latest since 1967 when the April 1 release date was established. You may think that the delay was due to some surprising development with the programs&rs...

College Station – Bryan MSA Unemployment Rate Released

Posted: September 08, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) just released unemployment rates for Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) for July 2021, and the College Station – Bryan (CSB) MSA rate fell from 5.0% in June to 4.4% in July. Meanwhile, the state of Texas rate fell from 6.5% to 6.2%, and the national rate fell from 5.9% to 5.4%. (The U.S. rate is avai...

It’s Time to End the Eviction Moratorium

Posted: August 19, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Amid controversies and legal challenges, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention recently extended the federal eviction moratorium once again, this time to October 3, to cover areas with high levels of Covid-19 (which are about 80% of U.S. counties as of August 18, 2021). A few states, including California and New York, have also im...

Is There a Limit to Government?

Posted: August 03, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
A central tenet of a free enterprise market economy is limited government. In this limited role, the government protects and ensures property rights, individual freedoms, economic opportunity, and competitive markets largely through an agreed-upon and enforceable set of rules. Government also has a limited role in addressing the provision of goo...

Tariffs as Crony Capitalism

Posted: August 03, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
At a time when the lumber prices are skyrocketing, the Biden administration is considering increasing tariffs on Canadian lumber from the current 8.99% to 18.32%. The announcement was immediately cheered by the U.S. Lumber Coalition, but criticized by Canadian authorities, who called the increase a “tax on the American people,&rdq...

U.S. Farm Subsidies: A Prime Example of Crony Capitalism

Posted: July 29, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Nearly a century after the Great Depression, why are we still subsidizing farmers? U.S. farm subsidies are designated in the “Farm Bill” that is updated every five years. The latest version of the Farm Bill was signed into law in December 2018, and the federal government is currently paying about $25 billion annually to farmers prima...

The Tale of Two Recessions

Posted: July 21, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Its official; the Pandemic Recession lasted just two months! The previous cyclical peak was February 2020, and the trough occurred in April 2020.  March and April 2020 are in the books for the shortest recession on record. Since that time, we have been in an expansion.  This  news comes from the Business Cycle Dating Committee of ...

Equal Opportunity Yes. Equal Talent No.

Posted: July 15, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen
I wonder if anyone else is dismayed by that emotional and uplifting television advertisement from a certain university, the ‘Stand Up’ commercial. If you watch enough TV you have heard it. You know, “Stand up if you are a working mother” and “Stand up if you are a first-generation college student.” But my dism...

Supply Chain Risk: Is Government the Solution?

Posted: July 09, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, and Andrew J. Rettenmaier
According to Kaygisiz (2019), active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) intended for the U.S. market are overwhelmingly manufactured outside the U.S. with India and China supplying 26% and 18%, respectively.  In addition, India is currently supplying 21% of prescription drugs in final dosage forms (FDFs) that the U.S. market consumes. This r...

Not There Just Yet

Posted: July 06, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
With the summer travel season in full swing, airlines are seeing their passenger counts increase.  For two days last week, the number of travelers through Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints exceeded the number of travelers on the same days of the week in 2019.  This was the first time since the start of the pandem...

Sacrificing Education to Covid-19: The Texas Story

Posted: July 06, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The Covid-19 pandemic and our response to it has certainly generated much discussion and even controversy about the relative weights on public health and economic health.  Perhaps even more important to our nation’s long-term future is the pandemic’s impact on our system of public education.  In terms of how they would oper...

This Time College Station-Bryan is not Different: the Current Recession

Posted: June 17, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
During a recession we expect to see employment decline, the jobless rate go up, the total wage bill shrink, and the overall consumption level contract. However, the impact of a recession varies across regions and metropolitan areas. Here we examine how employment, unemployment, and total wages changed during the last three recessions.  Thes...

Federal Government ‘Debt’: Much Larger than You Have Been Told

Posted: June 14, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
When we think of the federal government’s liabilities, we primarily think of the debt held by the public, but its liabilities encompass much more. Each year, the Treasury publishes the Financial Report of the United States Government (FRUSG) which is intended to include the accounting of all liabilities. The liabilities reported in the FRU...

Texas has a Balanced Budget Requirement, Except When it Doesn't

Posted: June 11, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen
As is widely known, Texas has a balanced budget amendment and our legislators are required to pass a balanced budget. Our legislators are even now writing budget bills that will apply to the coming biennium, the two fiscal years from September 2021 – August 2023. However, forecasting future tax collections and even spending for the next tw...

Apology Forthcoming?

Posted: May 26, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen
On March 2 Governor Abbott announced that businesses in Texas could reopen at 100% capacity, and he lifted the statewide mask mandate.  (Local businesses were of course allowed to require their customers to wear masks inside their shops.) The very next day, President Biden called this decision by Governor Abbott a “big ...

Employment, Hours and Earnings

Posted: May 13, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Between March and April, nonfarm employment rose by 266,000. April’s employment was down 5.4% from its pre-pandemic high in February of 2020. The figure below tracks nonfarm employment, total private sector employment and employment in the Leisure and Hospitality industry. Relative to their respective pre-pandemic highs, total private empl...

The Pandemic Misery Index of North American States/Provinces

Posted: May 06, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Over the past year, the Private Enterprise Research Center has presented its Pandemic Misery Index, or PMI, to assess how different states and metropolitan areas have fared over the course of the Coronavirus pandemic. PERC’s PMI adds together the COVID-19 death rate per 10,000 of population to the average unemployment rate over the period ...

U.S. GDP, Employment, and the State of the Economy in Late April 2021

Posted: April 30, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) just reported the advance estimate of U.S. Real GDP (or inflation-adjusted GDP) for the first quarter of 2021. Headlines report that Real GDP grew at an annual rate of 6.4% this quarter, which is what would happen if the actual quarterly growth rate of 1.6% continued for four consecutive quarters. ...

Should the Corporate Income Tax Be Raised?

Posted: April 26, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Negotiations among lawmakers of both parties over President Biden’s infrastructure plan have centered on two issues. First, the Biden administration sticks to a large $2.3 trillion spending program that includes not only many broadly-defined infrastructure spending items but also spending items that can hardly be regarded as spending on in...

A Texas Puzzle: High Employment, High Unemployment Rate

Posted: April 05, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
This is an unusual, interesting recession. Personal savings are up, as is personal income. In this recession, unemployment did not increase gradually, it skyrocketed, reaching its recession maximum in just two months. Currently, Texas has an unemployment rate that is above the national rate, and by a fair bit.  Typically, Tex...

The Employment Situation and Recovery in Texas

Posted: March 24, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
What is the employment situation in Texas, as well as in select Texas Metropolitan Statistical Areas (or MSAs), and how does it compare nationally?  What was the impact of the pandemic and the pandemic-inspired business closures on employment?  Where are we now, and what is needed to restore employment to pre-pandemic levels? &n...

Trade-Offs in Winterizing the Texas Power Grid

Posted: March 17, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, and Andrew J. Rettenmaier
On February 8, a Monday, ERCOT notified power generators that freezing temperatures were on the way, and at that time were forecast for February 11 to 15, Thursday through Monday.  Versions of this warning were repeated on future days.  On February 11, Thursday, ERCOT announced that there could be record peak demand for winter power du...

PERC’s Pandemic Misery Index: February 2021 State-level Update

Posted: March 01, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
PERC introduced its Pandemic Misery Index, or PMI, in a blog post on September 8, 2020. Taking a cue from Arthur Okun’s misery index that added together the inflation rate and the unemployment rate, PERC’s PMI includes a measure of the public health impact of COVID-19 by using the total number of deaths per 10,000 of population, and ...

Pandemic Misery Index: February 2021 Update for Metropolitan Areas

Posted: February 26, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The Private Enterprise Research Center introduced the Pandemic Misery Index (PMI) to provide a simple metric to measure the performance of various political entities for both states and metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. This post provides an update to our reported PMI values for various MSA’s throu...

U.S. GDP 2020

Posted: February 01, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Late last week, the preliminary Q4 2020 Real GDP estimate was released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Real GDP increased 1% from Q3 to Q4, increasing from $18.597 trillion to $18.780 trillion. For the year, Q4 2019 through Q4 2020, Real GDP was down 2.5%.  But it was a volatile and rocky road during the coronavirus pandemic &ndas...

The Comptroller and the Texas Budget: A Primer

Posted: January 13, 2021 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The Comptroller's Duties The Texas legislature is meeting again beginning Tuesday January 12, to set the budget for the coming biennium.  As part of this budgeting process, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar is on the news discussing revenue forecasts for the next two years. What is a comptroller, an...

Personal Income and Consumption

Posted: December 21, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
We are living in strange times.  The unemployment rate rose from 3.5%  to 14.7% in April, and in November, the rate dropped to 6.7%, still far higher than a year ago.  In a typical recession, personal income would surely have fallen.  With such a spike in the unemployment rate, it would not be surprising to think that persona...

Federal Fiscal Aid to States: Insurance or Bailout?

Posted: December 16, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu
One major reason for the difficulty of arranging a second major federal Covid-19 relief package is disagreement between the Senate majority and the House majority regarding federal fiscal aid to state and local governments.  The issue of providing fiscal aid to states has been so difficult that the proposed legislation is now split into two...

County and MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) GDP Data Released Today

Posted: December 09, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Today, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released its estimates of county-level Real GDP for 2019.  That’s right, today - almost mid-December of 2020 - we have official Real GDP values for the calendar year 2019.  We now ‘know’ what happened a year ago.  And it goes without saying that 2020, the year of the vi...

PERC’s Pandemic Misery Index Updated -- How the States Stack Up

Posted: December 09, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The PMI is an easy-to-use metric of how states are dealing with the twin crises brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, the public health crisis and the economic crisis.  Taking a cue from Arthur Okun’s misery index that added together the inflation rate and the unemployment rate, PERC’s PMI includes a measure of the public heal...

Higher Education Enrollment Takes A Hit

Posted: December 03, 2020 by Ashley Bullock, Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Yet again we have events in 2020 bucking a long-standing trend.  This time it is college enrollment during a recession.  Traditionally enrollment in public and private 2-year and 4-year colleges increases rather dramatically during an economic recession.  With fewer employment options many individuals return to school, or stay in ...

Texas Statewide Unemployment Rate for October is Back to August Levels

Posted: November 23, 2020 by Dennis W, Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported late last week that the statewide Texas unemployment rate for October, seasonally adjusted, was 6.9%, essentially the same as the 6.8% rate reported for August. The statewide rate took a large upward turn in September to 8.3%, the first upward movement since April. The October reading indicates a return of...

2020 Pandemic Misery Index: Update for Metropolitan Areas

Posted: November 09, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The Private Enterprise Research Center introduced the Pandemic Misery Index (PMI) to provide a simple metric to measure the performance of various political entities, both states and metropolitan statistical areas (or MSA’s) in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.  This posting provides an update to our earlier reported PMI values for ...

The Recession: This Time It's Different

Posted: November 04, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
This recession is different, to say the least. It began with government-mandated business restrictions and business closures aimed at mitigating the public health ravages of Covid-19, and these led to a dramatic rise in unemployment that has no match in our history for speed and magnitude. Then as these government restrictions were lifted, there...

Unemployment Rates and Nonfarm Employment

Posted: October 30, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Starting in March, the labor market has been rocked by the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, from the initial public health responses involving government-imposed lockdowns, followed by staged business reopenings, and overlaid with individual behavioral changes in response to the health implications and risks of the virus. In April, unemployme...

"U.S. GDP Grew 33.1% In the Third Quarter!"

Posted: October 29, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) just reported that U.S. Real (or inflation-adjusted) Gross Domestic Product, U.S. Real GDP, grew at a record rate in the third quarter. This follows a record decline in the second quarter of 31.4%. What does this all mean with respect to our current economic condition? First, note that th...

Texas Unemployment Rates Rise in All Texas MSAs

Posted: October 29, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The unemployment rate increased between August and September in all 25 Texas metro areas according to yesterday’s release of labor area unemployment statistics by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The figure below depicts the August and September unemployment rates for all Texas MSAs. The solid portion of each bar shows the Au...

2020 Pandemic Misery Index: Assessing Metropolitan Areas in the U.S.

Posted: October 05, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Last month, the Private Enterprise Research Center published the Pandemic Misery Index (PMI) for states, which measures the effects of the pandemic on each state and the states’ responses to the pandemic in terms of impact on health an...

Texas A&M University Highly Ranked for Freedom of Speech on Campus

Posted: October 01, 2020 by Ashley Bullock
“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” -- Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989) Colleges and universities, ideally, are places where one can he...

Unemployment Rate in College Station-Bryan Remains One of the Lowest in Texas

Posted: October 01, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The August unemployment rate in College Station-Bryan dropped to 4.3% from a revised 5.3% in July. The local area unemployment rate continues to improve here, and throughout Texas.  The local rate was second only to Amarillo’s 4.1% rate among the 25 Texas Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Tied for the third-lowest rate were Sherman-Deni...

2020 Pandemic Misery Index: How the States Stack Up

Posted: September 08, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Which state has been more effective at dealing with Covid-19, New York or Texas? Who has done better at stemming the spread of the virus and keeping businesses afloat, California or Florida?   The answer to these questions depends on how we define and measure ‘effectiveness.’  As shelter-in-place orders...

The Summer Without Vacations and the Hospitality and Leisure Industry

Posted: August 11, 2020 by Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Between June 2009, the end of the Great Recession, and February 2020, the start of the COVID Recession, total nonfarm employment grew by over 16%. In the private sector, employment grew almost 20%.  The figure below depicts employment by industry indexed to the respective industries’ employment in June 2009. Employment in Transportati...

Hope Mounts as Covid-19 Counts Decrease in Texas – Updated August 4, 2020

Posted: August 05, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen
The continued economic growth and reopening of the economy in Texas, and in Brazos County, critically depend on getting a handle on the recent surge of Covid-19 cases. Fortunately, recent evidence over the past weeks shows very good news, with declining rates of new infections and decreasing counts of active cases in most of the major population...

Forecasting Recovery from the Covid-19 Recession: The Long (and Winding?) Road

Posted: August 04, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The nation’s output, real GDP (i.e., GDP adjusted for inflation), took a big hit in the second quarter, falling almost 10%. Looking forward, should we expect an improvement in economic conditions for the remainder of 2020? The second quarter includes the months of April, May, and June. Up to this point, April was the hardest...

Plunging U.S. and European GDP in the Second Quarter of 2020: A Tale of Two Headlines

Posted: August 03, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen
Recent estimates on GDP that show drastic declines for both the U.S. and Europe have taken a firm hold in the news cycle over the past few days. But these headlines point to very different magnitudes of change. For example, cnbc.com has the following two headlines: For the U.S. on July 30: “<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020...

GDP Fell 32.9% in the Second Quarter! What Does that Mean?

Posted: July 31, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported yesterday that in its preliminary estimate the U.S. Gross Domestic Product – GDP – fell at an annualized rate of 34.3% in the second quarter. (The BEA also reported that Real GDP – GDP adjusted for inflation – fell at an annualized rate of 32.9%.) These are unprecedented...

June Unemployment Rate for College Station-Bryan MSA Ranks Among Lowest In Texas

Posted: July 29, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
In data just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the June unemployment rate for the College Station – Bryan Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) was 5.9%, second only to Amarillo’s rate of 5.8% among Texas’ 25 official MSAs. Abilene came in third with an unemployment rate of 6.1%. For comparison, the May unemployment rat...

Hope Mounts as Covid-19 Counts Decrease in Texas

Posted: July 28, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen
The continued economic growth and reopening of the economy in Texas, and in Brazos County, critically depends on getting a handle on the recent surge of Covid-19 cases. Fortunately, the recent evidence from last week is relatively good news, with declining rates of new infections and declining counts of active cases. There are positive signs in ...

Unemployment Rates Are Headed in the Right Direction

Posted: July 17, 2020 by Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The unemployment rate in the U.S. reached 14.7% in April, declined to 13.3% in May, and fell further to 11.1% in June.  While the trend is in the right direction, the June rate is still higher than the peak monthly rates in all of the post-war recessions. As the Great Recession waned, the national rate reached 10% in October 2009, and it re...

The Unemployment Rate for May in the College Station–Bryan MSA Tied for Lowest in Texas

Posted: July 01, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
In data just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in May for the College Station–Bryan Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) was 8.9%, tied with Amarillo for lowest among the states’ 25 official MSAs.  Abilene came in third with an unemployment rate of 9.1%.  At the other extreme, McAllen-Edinburg...

What’s The Beef? Economic Theory meets Antitrust Lawsuits During a Pandemic

Posted: June 25, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
“Grocers File Lawsuit Against Meatpackers for Violating the Sherman Act!”[1]  Plaintiffs claim that meatpackers conspired to limit the supply of and fix the prices of beef sold to Central Grocers and others in the U.S. wholesale market.  This is one of many such cases that claim...

Initial UI Claims Decline for the Tenth Week in a Row; Still High by Historical Standards

Posted: June 12, 2020 by Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The figure below shows the counts of initial unemployment claims in the U.S. from the week ending March 14, 2020 to the week ending June 6, 2020. The week ending on March 28 had the highest number of initial claims at 6,867,000, with the number of initial claims declining each week since that time. Last week, 1,542,000 workers filed a claim. Ove...

This Just In: April Unemployment Rates in Texas Range From 9.2% in Amarillo to 19.1% in McAllen-Edinburg-Mission

Posted: June 04, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The figure below depicts the April rates for all of the Texas metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). These data were released on June 3 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only three Texas MSAs had unemployment rates less than 10%. Amarillo had the lowest rate of 9.2%, Abilene’s rate was 9.3% and College Station-Bryan’s rate was 9.4%....

New U.S. Unemployment Insurance Claims Drop to 2.1 Million for the Week Ending May 23; Number of Insured Unemployed Decline

Posted: May 29, 2020 by Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
For the week that ended on May 23, 2020, 2,123,000 workers filed unemployment insurance (UI) claims. This is the eighth week that initial weekly claims have declined from the previous week. Initial claims averaged a week-to-week decrease of 13.5% since April 4th. The highest initial claims were recorded the week ending March 28 when they reached...

Dealing With COVID-19 in Texas: Goodbye China, Hello Sweden

Posted: May 27, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu
Among the many strategies undertaken by the countries in the world to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, two extreme forms stand out prominently. One is China's heavy-handed authoritarian approach which prescribes what individuals and businesses should and should not do with little consideration of civil liberties.  The primary goal...

U.S. Unemployment Insurance Claims Fall to 2.4 Million for the Week Ending May 16; Texas’ April Unemployment Rises to 12.8%

Posted: May 22, 2020 by Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
For the week that ended on May 16, 2020, 2,438,000 workers filed unemployment insurance (UI) claims. This is the seventh week that initial weekly claims have declined from the previous week. The highest initial claims were recorded the week ending March 28 when they reached 6,867,000.  In the last nine weeks, we have seen 38.6 million initi...

Regrets? Yes, Regrets About the CARES Act

Posted: May 20, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen
An article in The Wall Street Journal says that Bill Gates has regrets that the world was not better prepared for the pandemic.  While clear when vision is 20-20, would we make the same statement without the benefit of hindsight?  Should the world have been better prepared?  Quite possibly, although it is hard to predict the occur...

Private-Public Partnership in Fighting Covid-19

Posted: May 18, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu
Mitigating the Covid-19 pandemic is a public health campaign that requires the joint efforts of both the private sector and the government.  Private enterprises provide creative solutions to a host of problems encountered in the pandemic, whereas appropriately placed government interventions take a social perspective in the fight against Co...

This Time Is Different: Women's Unemployment Rate Tops Men's

Posted: May 13, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Starting with the recession of July 1981 to November 1982, and continuing with the three subsequent NBER-dated recessions of July 1990 to March 1991, March 2001 to November 2001, and December 2007 to June 2009, the unemployment rate for men has increased more during (or immediately after) a recession compared to the increase in the unemployment ...

Texas: the 2020 Fiscal Crisis

Posted: May 08, 2020 by Carlos I. Navarro
Contrary to what may be suggested, it is very difficult to assess public performance in an unprecedented situation. However, the natural law is constant in any equation. It is natural for humans to thrive in freedom. The right to enterprise, work and trade freely has been the most important variable when measuring the increase in real income in ...

Unemployment Rate in the US Hits Historic High Since Great Depression

Posted: May 08, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases an Employment Situation Summary for the United States. The summary released on May 8th, 2020, includes national unemployment estimates for the month of April 2020. The unemployment data depicted below are seasonally adjusted and are reported by the BLS. The last reported data point for t...

Over 30 Million Unemployment Claims During the Last Six Weeks

Posted: May 01, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
For the week that ended on April 25, 2020, 3,839,000 workers filed unemployment insurance (UI) claims. The revised count for the week ending April 18 is 4,442,000 claims. The highest initial claims were recorded the week ending March 28, when they reached 6,867,000. In the last six weeks, we have seen over 30 million initial claims, a number whi...

Unemployment Claims Over the Last Four Weeks Top 22 Million

Posted: April 17, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
For the fourth week in a row, millions of U.S. workers filed unemployment insurance (UI) claims. For the week that ended on April 11, 2020, 5,245,000 workers filed UI claims. The revised count for April 4 is 6,615,000 claims. For the weeks ending on March 28 and March 21, the number of initial claims were 6,867,000 and 3,307,000, respectively. I...

The U.S. lost 10% of its workforce in only three weeks; Texas lost almost 6%!

Posted: April 09, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
For the second week in a row, seasonally adjusted initial Unemployment Insurance (UI) claims topped 6 million workers. For the week that ended on April 4, 2020, 6,606,000 filed UI claims. Last week’s revised count is 6,867,000 claims, and for the week ending on March 21, the revised number of initial claims is 3,307,000. In the last three ...

Unemployment Insurance Claims Reach Another Record High

Posted: April 03, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Seasonally adjusted initial UI claims reached an unheard mark of 6,648,000 for the week that ended on March 28, 2020. This more than doubled last week’s record of 3,283,000, which has been revised upward to 3,307,000. The initial claims over these past two weeks are as large as the first 28 weeks, or almost 7 months, of the Great Recess...

Unemployment Claims by State

Posted: April 01, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
For the week ending on March 21, seasonally adjusted initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims soared to 3,283,000.  While seasonally adjusted state-by-state numbers on initial claims are not reported in the weekly news release, the claims that have not been adjusted for seasonality are reported. These unadjusted initial UI claims are depi...

Our Fight against Covid-19

Posted: March 31, 2020 by Dennis Jansen, Liqun Liu
As of the morning of March 31, 2020, the U.S. has 164,610 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 3,170 deaths.  These numbers are not evenly distributed across the country. The State of New York alone has 67,384 confirmed cases and 1,342 deaths,1 becoming the newest hotspot in the Covid-19 pandemic, following earlier hotspots such as th...

A Staggering Increase in Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance

Posted: March 26, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The figure below presents the seasonally adjusted initial claims for unemployment insurance in the U.S. for the first week of 2007 through the week ending March 21, 2020.  As is evident, there was an unprecedented increase in claims last week, to 3,283,000.  This is an increase of 3 million over the previous week, and this weekly numbe...

How Did China Do It?

Posted: March 25, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
By the time a lockdown was imposed on January 23, 2020 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, ground zero of Covid-19 pandemic, five million people had traveled out of the city in the previous few weeks, according to the city’s mayor.  It was the peak of the pre-holiday traveling season, and Wuhan is a major transportation center in Ch...

Coming Soon: A Massive Rise in Local Unemployment

Posted: March 20, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Bars closed.  Cinemas and theaters and sporting arenas closed.  Concert halls closed.  Graduations and ring day and parents/family weekend-all canceled.  Hotel occupancy dropping through the floor.  Restaurants struggling to make a go of it serving food to go.  Companies are hurting. But it’s no...

Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance

Posted: March 19, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The figure below presents the seasonally adjusted initial claims for unemployment insurance in the U.S.  beginning the first week of 2007 to the week ending March 14, 2020.  As is evident, there was an abrupt increase in claims last week by 70,000 workers from the previous week. While the initial claims reported for the past week will ...

Covid-19 and the Cost-Benefit Analysis

Posted: March 19, 2020 by Dennis Jansen, Liqun Liu
The novel coronavirus "Covid-19," first found in December 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has as of the morning of March 18, 2020 spread to 157 countries/regions with 207,615 confirmed cases and 8,249 deaths.  The corresponding numbers for the U.S. are 7,324 confirmed cases and 115 deaths, respectively.1 March 11 the...

Phase One U.S.-China Trade Agreement

Posted: January 30, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
After twenty months of mutual tariff escalations and numerous rounds of negations, the U.S.-China trade dispute finally reached a temporary resolution.  The phase one trade agreement between the U.S. and China was signed on January 15 at the White House by President Trump and China’s lead negotiator, Vice Premier Liu He.  ...

NAFTA to USMCA

Posted: January 30, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
On January 16, 2020 the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was passed on a Senate vote of 89-10.  The new USMCA is an update of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and includes several notable changes. The new trade agreement comes 26 years after NAFTA became effective on January 1, 1994. While the provisions in the USMCA affe...

A January FOMC Post-Mortem

Posted: January 29, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
Media coverage the day following the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) action on January 29, 2020 widely applauded the Fed’s decision to maintain its target for the Fed Funds rate.  But the most important aspect of the December meeting was the decision to increase the interest paid on bank reserves, the IOER, from 1...

Interest Rates and Fed Policy in 2019

Posted: January 27, 2020 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
The year 2019 was a year of declining market interest rates. In fact, 10-year Treasuries fell from 2.8% in January to a low of 1.47 in early September, during the period of the interest rate inversion. At that point, 3-month Treasuries were yielding almost 2%. The inversion ended in early October but the 3-month, 1-year and 10-year rates were al...

A December FOMC Post-Mortem

Posted: December 12, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
Media coverage the day following the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) action on December 11, 2019 widely applauded the Fed’s decision to maintainin its target for the Fed Funds rate.  But the most important aspect of the December meeting was to maintain the interest paid on bank reserves, the IOER, at its current l...

Medicare Around the Country

Posted: December 11, 2019 by Carlos I. Navarro, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
PERC’s Medicare Maps have been updated this year using data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Medicare Geographic Variation da...

A Year of Interest Rates and Fed Policy

Posted: December 10, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
The year 2019 was a year of declining market interest rates.  In November 2018, the 10 year treasury rate was as high as 3.24% and then it declined steadily through the first eight months of the year, reaching 1.47% at the beginning of September 2019.  Importantly, the Fed had raised its upper bound target for the Federal Funds Rate (a...

An October FOMC Post-Mortem

Posted: October 31, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
Media coverage the day following the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) action on October 30 widely applauded the Fed’s lowering of its target for the Fed Funds rate. The most important change in the October meeting was reducing the interest paid on bank reserves, the IOER, by 25 basis points, from 1.80% to 1.55%.  T...

The Fed and Interest Rates: Where to Now?

Posted: October 25, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
Since September, when the Federal Reserve reduced the top of the target range for the Fed Funds rate from 2.25% to 2.00%, a reduction 25 basis points, and reduced the interest rate paid on bank reserve balances from 2.1% to 1.8%, a cut of 30 basis points, market interest rates have continued to fall. As a result, the interest rate paid to banks ...

Lifetime Implications of Childhood Peers

Posted: October 21, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen
“The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you closely associate - for the good and the bad.”  --Colin Powell   “A man is known by the company he keeps” ― Aesop   Wise parents tell their children to choose their friends carefully.  This has lon...

A September FOMC Post-Mortem

Posted: September 20, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
Media coverage on the day following the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) action, as announced on September 18, widely applauded the Fed’s lowering of its target for the Fed Funds Rate.  The most important change in the September meeting was reducing the interest paid on bank reserves, the IOER, by 30 basis points. ...

The Fed and Interest Rates: Where Do We Go From Here?

Posted: September 13, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
As market interest rates continue their downward slide, the press is awash with predictions of how much the Fed will reduce interest rates at its September 17 and 18 meeting. The very fact that market interest rates are changing without Fed action begs the question of whether the Fed can even influence the direction of change in market interest ...

FOMC July 31: A Post-Mortem

Posted: August 05, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
On July 31 the Fed announced a 25 basis point cut in both its target band for the federal funds rate and in its rate of interest on excess reserves (IOER).  The new IOER would be 2.15%.  Media coverage widely parroted the statement that the Fed had lowered interest rates for the first time since the onset of the Great Recession.  ...

FOMC July 30-31: Ten Reasons to Cut Rates

Posted: July 29, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
Speculation is running high regarding whether the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will cut interest rates – either the Federal Funds Rate upper bound or more importantly, the interest rate on reserves– at its next meeting scheduled for July 30 and 31.  Opinions are split on what the FOMC should do, and what they will do.&nb...

FOMC June 18: A Post-Mortem

Posted: June 25, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
Media coverage of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee’s action on June 18 reported that the Fed left interest rates unchanged, with the Federal Funds Rate range holding steady at 2.25% -2.5%.  Unremarked upon by the financial media, and unmentioned in the lead section of the Fed's statement, was the fact that the Fed’s...

The Cost of Tariffs on Chinese Products

Posted: June 13, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Who pays for U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods?  According to some in the popular press, the answer is that the tariffs on China are paid entirely by U.S. importers, and eventually by U.S. consumers.  This answer seems to be based on the observation that U.S. importers must pay the tariff to the U.S. Customs authorities before the imported...

The Fed Must Reduce Rates Now!

Posted: June 11, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
The FOMC’s press release from its May 1 meeting emphasized that the economy was on an even keel, and that no change in the Fed Funds Rate target was in store. This steady-as-you-go decision was highlighted in the popular press. Hardly noticed was the small 5 basis point reduction in the interest rate on excess reserves, IOER, despite the f...

Reforming Social Security the Right Way

Posted: June 04, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Social Security (and specifically the Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance, or OASDI) is in deficit.  We are collecting less in Social Security taxes than we pay out in benefits,  the trust fund is declining and is expected to be fully depleted in sixteen years, in 2035. Baby Boomers are retiring in record numbers, the number of...

The Downsides of Minimum Wage Increases

Posted: May 10, 2019 by Jonathan Meer
The House of Representatives recently took up the Raise the Wage Act, which would more than double the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next five years. The debate among economists over the impacts of minimum wage increases on employment is still ongoing, even as there is widespread agreement that low-income families need support. Bu...

Federal Liabilities and Individual Assets: The Case of Social Security

Posted: March 01, 2019 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Each spring or early summer, the Social Security and Medicare Trustees issue their annual reports on the status of the programs’ Trust Funds. The news stories that follow primarily focus on the year when the Trust Funds will be exhaust...

The Cost of Democratic Socialism

Posted: February 20, 2019 by Svetozar Pejovich
A defining feature of the 20th century was the struggle between capitalism and three major types of socialism: Communism, national socialism, and fascism. All three types of socialisms, as well as Cuba and Venezuela today, failed to duplicate the accomplishments of capitalism in raising the standard of living. Yet, a supposed new brand of social...

The Little-Known Fact That Will Make the National Debt Even Harder to Tackle

Posted: December 19, 2018 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
The federal government is skirting dangerous shoals with an irresponsible fiscal policy. We are running massive budget deficits in a booming peacetime economy. These deficits are increasing our federal debt—which means we are also paying more to service the debt and more interest on every dollar of debt. While the Federal Reserve has be...

Pensions Rescued by Borrowing: What Could Go Wrong with That?

Posted: October 02, 2018 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
A Tale of Two Cities   The dominant form of pensions for public sector workers are defined benefit plans. Such plans typically specify a retirement age and a benefit formula that determines the yearly payment to retirees. The benefit formulas are based on the number of years of employment, the average of their...

How Not to Solve the Problem of Trade Deficits

Posted: July 09, 2018 by Dennis W. Jansen, Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The U.S. has run persistent trade deficits since the early 1990s and the annual trade deficit has increased to $566 billion in 2017.  This has raised concerns that our trading partners are taking advantage of us.  Since March, President Trump has roared about our trade deficit with China, equal to $375 billion in 2017, as well as China...

Riding the Spending Wave

Posted: July 06, 2018 by Andrew J. Rettenmaier
The Congressional Budget Office’s recently released long-term forecast does not paint a pretty picture of the federal government’s financial future.  Deficits are expected in all future years as federal spending grows faster than tax revenues. The aging of the US population combined with rapidly growing per capita health care sp...

Social Security Trust Fund Underscores Need for Reform

Posted: July 03, 2018 by Dennis W. Jansen, Thomas R. Saving
The Social Security Trust Fund is basically an interest-bearing I.O.U. from the U.S. Treasury to the U.S. Social Security Administration.  As long as general revenue is used to cover all shortfalls in Social Security taxes, the trust fund plays no important economic role in allocating resources, but may highlight the need for reform...

Fiddling While Rome Burns?

Posted: June 05, 2018 by Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Economists often counsel that we should look at 'revealed preferences,' the idea that actions speak louder than words.  What does this viewpoint tell us about our commitment to fiscal responsibility since last January? Recent actions by Congress have both lowered tax revenues and raised previously set spending caps....