The Covid Delta wave appears to have peaked; a steady decline in cases is a good bet.

Most states now appear to have immunity rates above 70%; that's enough to limit future waves.

The seasonals point to another drop in jobless claims today, but Delta is a wild card.

Some of the near-real-time data are flattening; don't worry, it had to happen, and some will re-accelerate.

The recovery is still on track, though we'll be much happier once clarity emerges in the labor market.

We see hefty downside risk to June new home sales; forecasts ignore the plunge in mortgage demand.

For most of the decade before the pandemic, core CPI inflation ran a few tenths higher than core PCE inflation, mostly because rents, which are twice as important in the core CPI, rose faster than broad inflation.

What should we make of the news that manufacturing production fell outright in June—just—but that the Empire State manufacturing index has rocketed to a record high?

We're expecting the third straight outsized jump in the core CPI when the June report is released today.

We find ourselves at odds with a couple of ideas gaining currency among the commentariat, namely, that markets are becoming less worried about inflation risk, and that the rise in oil prices will materially slow the rate of U.S. economic growth.

The June auto sales numbers attracted very little attention last week, as the data came sandwiched between the ISM manufacturing survey and the payroll report. 

The Dallas Fed last week published a short blog post—seehere—focused on the predictive power of their trimmed mean PCE inflation measure. 

We have never taken much notice of the quits rate from the JOLTS report, on the grounds that it’s usually just a proxy for the unemployment rate, released with a lag and prone to odd jumps and dips which turn out not to be significant.

We're pleased that a net 850K people moved into payroll employment in June. But most of the improvement from
the 583K headline increase in May was in the state and local government sector, while the increase in June private sector payrolls was not statistically significantly bigger than in May.

Our June payroll forecast is 1,050K, based largely on the Homebase small business employment data, which were dead right in May and pretty close in April.

We're not sure what to make of the 692K increase in the ADP measure of private payrolls, reported yesterday.

We see substantial upside risk to the June ADP employment reading today, but we think the data will overstate the official private payroll number, for a third straight month. 

Emerging evidence from the Homebase employment data suggests that the ending of federally-financed enhanced unemployment benefits in many states has not clearly pushed people back into the labor force, yet.