The Economic Indicators

The Housing market looks good, but is it? Unsold new Homes reached a new record, and if One does not know it, the Construction Labor Rolls are pushing at a record as well. Labor in Construction will start to decline if the trend of unsold Homes continues even a month. The Price of Homes has dropped some 2%, but the total number of Homes on the market is well over a half-million units (this Author needs to check on the number of Households in this Country). This Author might even had to investigate something himself, and determine the numbers on hard Capital construction. Retail construction has the problem of poor Location siteing, and is bound to decline, though remodeling and revitalization construction will undoubtedly increase.

The Question concerning Manufacturing numbers comes in the methodology utilized in the data presentation. Data coming from actual Volume stats may have been replaced with simple Dollar additions (some Administrations have been known to play with the numbers). An increase primarily based on Volume numbers is something to celebrate, but Reportage based upon Dollar additions indicate that Inflation has been rampant in the Production process. This poor Author may have to descend to Graduate Student levels, and actually study the method of how the Models were constructed.

An Employee for a local area Investment firm regularly reports on local News programs, and last night mentioned that Consumers are still paying less for Energy than 20 years ago, when they were paying near 8% of their Income. He forgot to mention how many People were actually employed 20 years ago, how many are employed today, or how many One-Income Household have transferred to Two-Income Households--which would empirically imply their Income should have positioned somewhere less than Double in size. Most Heads of Households suggest I am very foolish in that expectation, very much so when adjusting for Inflation. The interesting thing is that Two-Income Households have been replaced with Offshoring as the main element of Business in suppressing Labor income. lgl