US Publications
Below is a list of our US Publications for the last 5 months. If you are looking for reports older than 5 months please email info@pantheonmacro.com, or contact your account rep
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Still an unreliable guide to services spending.
- Unadjusted initial and continuing jobless claims are almost unchanged from a year ago...
- ...But this is partly due to low seasonal hiring; claims also miss rising youth and long-term unemployment.
- The Q3 productivity jump merely returns it to trend; tariffs and immigration curbs will limit growth in 2026.
- JOLTS hiring less separations ought to provide a useful cross-check on payrolls, but the track record is poor.
- Small business openings remain low, but they lag the NFIB hiring index too much to refute its recent pick-up.
- The inclusion of retailers means the ISM services survey provides a useful steer on tariff-driven inflation.
- We look for a 0.3% increase in the December core CPI, with the risks skewed strongly towards a 0.4% print.
- Late data collection biased downwards the November CPIs for core goods and lodging away from home...
- ...These CPIs will rebound in December, alongside a big rise in airline fares and possibly auto insurance.
Still struggling for momentum.
- Tariff revenues fell in December and remain well below levels expected by independent fiscal watchdogs.
- Nearly all of the boost to consumer prices from the tariffs has filtered through; the outlook is benign.
- Home sales are likely to recover in 2026 as mortgage rates fall, but still fall short of pre-pandemic levels.
Yet more grim news on the labor market.
Manufacturing is surviving rather than thriving.
Q3's strength is unlikely to be sustained.
- We look for a modest 75K rise in payrolls and a small fall in the unemployment rate to 4.5% in December.
- Retailers and hospitality firms hired cautiously; consumers continue to report worsening job availability.
- The FOMC still looks likely to pause in January, but the case for easing again will be robust by March.
- We think GDP grew by 3½% in Q3, underpinned by a solid increase in consumers’ spending.
- AI-related capex likely also lifted fixed investment, while net trade made a big positive contribution too.
- But growth seems to have slowed sharply in Q4, mostly due to weakness among households.
THE PAUSE IN THE FED’S EASING CYCLE WILL BE BRIEF...
- ...THE LABOR MARKET WILL REMAIN WEAK, INFLATION FALL
Limited further upside for sales.
- Only a small fraction of the big downward benchmark revision to payrolls is due to the birth-death model.
- The sectoral mix of the revision implies benchmarking is removing only a few unauthorized workers.
- The main problem—still unresolved—is the BLS is not obtaining a representative sample of firms.
- Measurement issues depressed November goods prices, airline fares, rent and auto insurance....
- ...We see no evidence of a slowing in the trend in core-core services prices yet.
- But the outlook looks benign; tariffs are now mostly passed through, while wages and rents are slowing.
The implied jump in services inflation makes little sense.
October's strength in control sales looks unlikely to last.
Lackluster, but not alarming enough for a January easing.
- The NFIB survey’s hiring intentions index increased in November to its highest level since May 2023...
- ...But first estimates of private payrolls have undershot its implied level by 50K on average since Q1.
- The regional Fed surveys and the Census Bureau’s biweekly business survey show weaker hiring plans.
- Private payrolls are no longer slowing and the jump in unemployment was mostly due to the shutdown.
- Unemployment ex-temporary layoffs, however, is above its pre-Covid norm, and wider slack is building.
- Some indicators of hiring indicators have improved recently, but layoff plans also have picked up.
