/ , , /

Jobs: More Shuffle

Today’s weekly report on new claims for unemployment insurance don’t tell us much. The data shows a drop of 14,000 to 442,000 last week, but mot of that gain comes from a change in the seasonality adjustment which has been re-calibrated. That makes it tough to tell whether the improvement is a statistical quirk or […]

/ , , , , /

More Mediocre News

Ho hum. That seems to be the order of the day with respect to economic news this week. Nothing special. Sometime around last December the head of steam we appeared to have gathered over last fall dissipated, and we are left with a kind of patchy sideways feel. The general trend is still upwards, but […]

/ , , , , , /

The Cruelty of Productivity

Productivity is the most essential measure of the trajectory of wealth. It measures how much time and effort we put into making or doing things. As productivity rises, we spend less time and effort on those activities, which allows us to divert that time or effort into leisure, thus raising our quality of life, or […]

«< 398 399 400 401 402 >»