Federal Government Layoffs & Quits Begin to Show up in the Jobs Data, Barely Dent Solid Labor Market by Wolf Richter • Mar 7, 2025 • 70 Comments Civilian employment at the federal government accounts for less than 1.9% of total payrolls.
Fed Balance Sheet QT: -$54 Billion in February, -$2.21 Trillion from Peak, to $6.76 Trillion, Lowest since May 2020 by Wolf Richter • Mar 6, 2025 • 79 Comments Quantitative Tightening has shed 25% of total assets from peak and 46% of pandemic QE.
Explosion of Imports Causes Trade Deficit to Spike by 96% in January YoY on Tariff Front-Running by Wolf Richter • Mar 6, 2025 • 77 Comments Surge of imports not a sign of weak demand, on the contrary, but imports deduct from GDP.
Is This the Beginning of the Second Wave of Inflation? by Wolf Richter • Mar 5, 2025 • 116 Comments Companies can’t pass on those higher prices? What a bummer. But if they can without losing sales, it’s off to the races. See 2021/2022.
U.S. Demand for Gasoline Faces Long-Term Structural Problem: Plunging Per-Capita Consumption by Wolf Richter • Mar 4, 2025 • 138 Comments Even as miles driven inched to a record and the population surged, gasoline consumption in 2024 was where it had been 20 years ago.
U.S. Production & Exports of Crude Oil & Petroleum Products Hit New Record in 2024, Imports Dipped Further, SPR Refilling Halted in February by Wolf Richter • Mar 4, 2025 • 55 Comments The new mantra among frackers: “Discipline” to not trigger another oil-price collapse through overproduction. Drill Baby Drill, but not too fast.
New York Fed’s Measure of “Inflation Persistence” Nixes Friday’s Idea that YoY PCE Inflation Cooled, Using Same Data by Wolf Richter • Mar 3, 2025 • 49 Comments The game of inflation Whack-A-Mole: price pressures shifted from housing to non-housing services and core goods.
Drill-Baby-Drill for 20 Years: US Natural Gas Production and Exports via LNG & Pipeline Rose to New Records in 2024 by Wolf Richter • Mar 2, 2025 • 72 Comments Prices rose from the collapsed levels in the prior year and are back where they’d been in 1996, down by 70% from the peak in 2005.
No, Consumer Spending Didn’t Plunge in January and Auto Sales Didn’t Collapse, or Whatever, But the Huge Seasonal Adjustments Might Have Gone Awry by Wolf Richter • Feb 28, 2025 • 89 Comments Year-over-year, consumer spending jumped by 5.6% and retail sales by 4.8% in January. So there’s that.
PCE Inflation Hits 4.0% Month-to-Month Annualized, Worst since March. 3-Month PCE Hits 2.9%, Worst since April. But Massive “Base Effect” in Services Cools YoY Increases by Wolf Richter • Feb 28, 2025 • 30 Comments December, prior months revised higher. Goods prices jump month-to-month by most since August 2023, turn positive for first time in a year.
