Viewpoints: June 2018

On June 27 the Philly Fed released the May estimates for state coincident economic indexes. These indexes, based largely on details of state payroll employment reports and calibrated to have trends similar to a state’s real GDP, allow [...]

State data show continued brisk job growth in May. The sum of the seasonally adjusted gains in payroll employment across the states came to 269,300—quite comparable to the national increase of 223,000. However, most states did not [...]

On June 8 BLS released the data on March Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC). This dataset offers a different perspective on labor costs than the ECI. Like the ECI, the numbers come from both private and state and local [...]

The famous American economist Mr. Herbert Stein stated, “If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.” Yet, when it comes to asset price cycles it has been hard to pinpoint when the music stops playing as it has been very difficult [...]

The minutes of the May 1 and 2 Federal Open Market Committee meeting noted “several participants thought that it would be important to continue to monitor the slope of the yield curve, emphasizing the historical regularity that an [...]