ADP's proprietary private payrolls jobs report gives us a monthly gain of 238,000 private sector jobs for December 2013 and November was revised upward to 229 thousand. This is the strongest growth for the year and might indicate America is finally seeing some real job creation. This report does not include government, or public jobs.
The U.S. November 2013 monthly trade deficit plunged -12.9% from last month due to a massive drop in oil imports. While the press headlines blare November's $34.25 billion trade deficit is at a four year low, what they are not reporting is just last June the deficit also dropped suddenly and very close to this figure.
Have you seen the economic recovery? I haven’t either. But it is bound to be around here somewhere, because the National Bureau of Economic Research spotted it in June 2009, four and one-half years ago.
The December 2013 ISM Non-manufacturing report shows the overall index decreased by -0.9 percentage points, to 53.0%. The NMI is also referred to as the services index and the decrease indicates slower growth for the service sector. New orders just plunged, by -7.0 percentage points, and went into contraction. So did inventories as well as order backlogs stayed in contraction.
The Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, and Orders report shows factory new orders increased 1.8% for November. Without transportation equipment, new orders increased 0.6%. October showed a drop in factory orders by -0.5%. For Q4, factory orders are starting to shape up and the signs point to increased economic demand.
“Three or four million heads of households don’t turn into tramps and cheats overnight, nor do they lose the habits and standards of a lifetime. They don’t drink any more than the rest of us, they don’t lie any more, and they’re no lazier than the rest of us. An eighth or a tenth of the earning population does not change its character which has been generations in the molding, or, if such a change actually occurs, we can scarcely charge it up to personal sin.” ~ Harry Hopkins, Federal relief administrator under Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933)
Remember how outsourcing was shoved down the throats of the American people by claiming it would save money and was more efficient? Guess what, not only is costing more, the services now provided are dismal failures. A new report, Out of Control describes the abysmal state and consequences of outsourcing public services.
Economist Dean Baker wrote an excellent call out on corruption in the economics profession. He calls it theories for sale and boy howdy is he right. This site was started due to so much statistical spin. One cannot tell the trees through the forest often, unless one has the time to go digging deep into faulty assumptions and in many cases, the mathematics manipulated to come up with an economic lie.
The December ISM Manufacturing Survey shows PMI decreased -0.3 percentage points to 57.0%. This is still strong growth, the 2nd highest in 2013, although manufacturing inventories contracted. Overall manufacturing looks stable with 13 of the 18 industries reporting growth. The employment index is at a high not seen since June 2011.
Recent comments