February’s jobs report; January’s trade deficit, construction spending, factory inventories, and wholesale sales

The past week’s major releases included the Employment Situation Summary for February from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and four reports that provide source data for 1st quarter GDP: the Commerce Dept’s report on our International Trade for January, the January report on Construction Spending, the Full Report on Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders for January, and the January report on Wholesale Trade, Sales and Inventories, all from the Census Bureau….in addition, the Fed released the Consumer Credit Report for January, which showed that overall consumer credit, a measure of non-real estate debt, grew by a seasonally adjusted $19.5 billion, or at a 4.3% annual rate, as non-revolving credit expanded at a 3.0% annual rate to $3,681.1 billion, while revolving credit outstanding grew at an 8.2% rate to $1,325.9 billion…

The week’s privately issued reports included the ADP Employment Report for February, the light vehicle sales report for February from Wards Automotive, which estimated that vehicles sold at a 16.00 million annual rate in February, up from the 15.60 million annual rate in January, and up from the 15.81 million annual sales rate in February a year ago, and the Mortgage Monitor for January from ICE Black Knight Financial Services, which indicated that 3.47% of all mortgages were delinquent in January, down from 3.71% in December, but up from the 3.38% of mortgages that were delinquent in January of 2024, and that 206,000 mortgages were in the foreclosure process, up from the 192,000 that were in foreclosure in December, but down from the 219,000 mortgages that were in foreclosure a year earlier…

This week also saw both of the widely followed manufacturing purchasing manager’s surveys from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM): the February Manufacturing Report On Business indicated that the manufacturing PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) fell to 50.3% in February, down from 50.9% in January, which suggests a small plurality of purchasing managers still saw improving conditions among manufacturing firms nationally, and the February 2024 Services Report On Business, which reported their Services Index rose to 53.5%, up from 52.8% in January, indicating a larger plurality of service industry purchasing managers reported expansion in various facets of their business in February…

Employers Added 151,000 Jobs in February, Unemployment Rate Rose to 4.1%

The Employment Situation Summary for February indicated a payroll jobs increase that was in line with expectations, while the unemployment rate rose 0.1% due to actual job losses, largely among white men and women over 20…estimates extrapolated from the seasonally adjusted establishment survey projected that employers added 151,000 jobs in February, after the previously estimated payroll job increase for January was revised down by 18,000, from 143,000 to 125,000, while the payroll jobs increase for December was revised up by 16,000, from a increase of 307,000 jobs to an increase of 323,000 jobs…hence, those revisions mean that this report represents a total of 149,000 more seasonally adjusted payroll jobs than the report of a month ago showed…..the unadjusted data shows that there were actually 891,000 more payroll jobs extant in February than in January, as the typical seasonal job increases in sectors such as professional & business services, leisure and hospitality and public and private education were leveled off in the report by the seasonal adjustments…

Seasonally adjusted job increases in February were spread through the private goods producing and service sectors, while the federal government shed 10,000 jobs and 27,500 jobs were lost in food services and drinking places due to the seasonal adjustment….since the BLS summary of the job changes by sector is clear and as detailed as our usual synopsis from the tables, we’ll again just quote from that summary here:

• Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 151,000 in February, similar to the average monthly gain of 168,000 over the prior 12 months. In February, employment trended up in health care, financial activities, transportation and warehousing, and social assistance. Federal government employment declined. (See table B-1.)
• Health care added 52,000 jobs in February, in line with the average monthly gain of 54,000 over the prior 12 months. In February, job growth continued in ambulatory health care services (+26,000), hospitals (+15,000), and nursing and residential care facilities (+12,000).
• Employment in financial activities rose by 21,000 in February, above the prior 12-month average gain (+5,000). Over the month, employment continued to trend up in real estate and rental and leasing (+10,000) and insurance carriers and related activities (+5,000). Commercial banking lost 5,000 jobs.
• Transportation and warehousing employment continued to trend up in February (+18,000), in line with the average monthly gain over the prior 12 months (+13,000). Over the month, job growth occurred in couriers and messengers (+24,000) and air transportation (+4,000).
• Employment in social assistance continued to trend up in February (+11,000), below the average monthly gain over the prior 12 months (+21,000). Over the month, employment continued to trend up in individual and family services (+10,000).
• Within government, federal government employment declined by 10,000 in February.
• Employment in retail trade changed little over the month (-6,000) and has shown little net change over the year. In February, employment in food and beverage retailers declined by 15,000, largely due to strike activity. Warehouse clubs, supercenters, and other general merchandise retailers added 10,000 jobs.
• Employment showed little change over the month in other major industries, including mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; construction; manufacturing; wholesale trade; information; professional and business services; leisure and hospitality; and other services.

The establishment survey also showed that average hourly pay for all employees rose by 10 cents an hour to $35.93 an hour in February, after it had increased by a downwardly revised 11 cents an hour in January; at the same time, the average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees increased by 9 cents an hour to $30.89 an hour…employers also reported that the average workweek for all private payroll employees was unchanged at 34.1 hours in February, while hours for production and non-supervisory personnel was unchanged at 33.6 hours, after the non-supervisory workweek had decreased by 0.2 hours in January…in addition, the manufacturing workweek was unchanged at 40.1 hours, while average factory overtime was up 0.1 hours to 2.9 hours…

Meanwhile, the February household survey indicated that the seasonally adjusted extrapolation of those who reported being employed fell by an estimated 588,000 to 163,307,000, while the similarly estimated number of those considered unemployed rose by 203,000 to 7,052,000, which together meant there was a rounded 385,000 decrease in the total labor force…since the working age population had grown by 162,000 over the same period, that meant the number of employment aged individuals who were not in the labor force rose by a rounded 546,000 to a record 102,487,000….with the decrease of those in the labor force contrasting with the increase of the civilian noninstitutional population, the labor force participation rate fell by 0.2% to 62.4%….meanwhile, the decrease in number employed as a percentage of the increasing population was large enough to lower the employment to population ratio, which we could think of as an employment rate, from 60.1% in February to 59.9% in February …likewise, the increase in the number unemployed was large enough increase the unemployment rate from 4.0% in January to 4.1% in February….meanwhile, the number who reported they were involuntarily working part time rose by 460,000 to 4,937,000 in February, which was enough to increase the alternative measure of unemployment, U-6, which includes those “employed part time for economic reasons”, to 8.0% in February, up 0.5% from 7.5% in January, and the highest rate since October 2021, when employment figures were recovering from pandemic related losses…

Like most reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment situation press release itself is easy to read and understand, so you can get more details on these two reports from there…note that almost every paragraph in that release points to one or more of the tables that are linked to on the bottom of the release, and those tables are also on a separate html page here that you can open it alongside the press release to access the data while avoiding the need to scroll up and down the page..

US Trade Deficit Rose 34.0% to a Record High in January, Could Subtract 944 Basis Points from Q1 GDP

Our trade deficit rose 34.0% in January, as both the value of our exports and the value of our imports increased, but our imports increased by quite a bit more…the Commerce Dept report on our international trade in goods and services for January indicated that our seasonally adjusted goods and services trade deficit rose by a rounded $33.3 billion to a rounded $131.4 billion in January, from a December deficit that was revised from $98.4 billion to $98.1 billion, while trade deficit figures for July thru November 2024 were revised as well….

The value of our exports rose by a rounded $3.3 billion to $269.8 billion in January, on a $2.7 billion increase to $172.8 billion in our exports of goods, and an increase of $0.6 billion to $97.0 billion in our exports of services, while our imports rose by $36.6 billion to $401.2 billion on a $36.2 billion increase to $329.5 billion in our imports of goods and a $0.4 billion increase to $71.7 billion in our imports of services…prices of our exports averaged 1.3% higher in January, which means the increase in the nominal value of our exports for the month was due to higher prices, and that our real exports probably fell on the order of 0.1%, while import prices averaged 0.3% higher, meaning that a small part of the increase in the value of our imports was also price related, and that real imports probably rose about 9.7%..

The increase in our January exports of goods resulted from greater exports of capital goods and consumer goods, which were partly offset by lower exports of foods, feeds, and beverages and ‘other’ goods…referencing the Full Release and Tables for January (pdf), in Exhibit 7 we find that our exports of capital goods rose by $4,220 million to $56,634 million, led by a $1,111 million increase in our exports of civilian aircraft, a $703 million increase in our exports of semiconductors, a $516 million increase in our exports of computers, and a $492 million increase in our exports of civilian aircraft engines, and that our exports of consumer goods increased by $1,667 million to $21,502 million, led by a $752 million increase in our exports of pharmaceutical preparations and a $590 million increase in our exports of jewelry….partly offsetting our increased exports of those end use categories, our exports of foods, feeds and beverages fell by $1,040 million to $13,430 million on a $770 million decrease in our exports of soybeans, and our exports of industrial supplies and materials fell by $403 million to $59,433 million as a $1,332 million decrease in our exports of nonmonetary gold was offset by a $840 million increase in our exports of natural gas and a $510 million increase in our exports of crude oil….in addition, our exports of automotive vehicles, parts and engines fell by $399 million to $12,621 million as a $840 million decrease in our exports of passenger cars was partly offset by a $418 million increase in our exports of automotive parts other than engines, chassis, and tires, while our exports of other goods not categorized by end use fell by $1,270 million to $7,946 million….

Exhibit 8 in the Full Release and Tables gives us seasonally adjusted details on our January goods imports and shows that the January increase in our imports was led by increased imports of industrial supplies and materials, consumer goods, and capital goods, even as our imports of all end use products increased….our imports of industrial supplies and materials rose by $23,102 million to $90,449 million as a $20,481 million increase in our imports of finished metal shapes, a $585 million increase in our imports of nonmonetary gold, and a $423 million increase in our imports of precious metals other than gold were partly offset by a $400 million decrease in our imports of of petroleum products other than fuel oil, while our imports of consumer goods rose by $6,023 million to $78,285 million as a $5,247 million increase in our imports of pharmaceutical preparations and an $1,164 million increase in our imports of cellphones were partly offset by $823 million decrease in our imports of toys, games, and sporting goods, and a $381 million decrease in our imports of gem diamonds….in addition, our imports of capital goods rose by $4,648 million to $88,417 million as a $2,972 million increase in our imports of computers, a $1,213 million increase in our imports of computer accessories, a $1,124 million increase in our imports of telecommunications equipment, a $683 million increase in our imports of civilian aircraft, and a $563 million increase in our imports of industrial machinery not listed separately were partly offset by a $821 million decrease in our imports of semiconductors and a $745 million decrease in our imports of electric apparatuses, and our imports of automotive vehicles, parts and engines rose by $856 million to $37,969 million on a $1,003 million increase in our imports of passenger cars…at the same time, our imports of foods, feeds, and beverages rose by $834 million to $20,043 million, and our imports of other goods not categorized by end use rose by $784 million to $11,975 million….

The Press Release for this month’s report summarizes Exhibit 19 in the full pdf, which gives us surplus and deficit details on our goods trade with selected countries…

The January figures show surpluses, in billions of dollars, with Netherlands ($4.3), South and Central America ($4.3), Belgium ($0.6), and Brazil ($0.6). Deficits were recorded, in billions of dollars, with China ($29.7), European Union ($25.5), Switzerland ($22.8), Mexico ($15.5), Ireland ($12.4), Vietnam ($11.9), Canada ($11.3), Germany ($7.6), Taiwan ($7.5), Japan ($7.4), South Korea ($5.4), India ($4.2), Italy ($3.5), Malaysia ($2.5), Australia ($2.0), Hong Kong ($1.4), France ($1.0), Singapore ($1.0), Israel ($0.6), United Kingdom ($0.5), and Saudi Arabia ($0.1).

• The deficit with Switzerland increased $9.8 billion to $22.8 billion in January. Exports increased $0.6 billion to $1.8 billion and imports increased $10.3 billion to $24.6 billion.
• The deficit with Ireland increased $6.2 billion to $12.4 billion in January. Exports increased less than $0.1 billion to $1.2 billion and imports increased $6.2 billion to $13.6 billion.
• The surplus with South and Central America increased $0.7 billion to $4.3 billion in January. Exports increased $0.3 billion to $18.0 billion and imports decreased $0.5 billion to $13.7 billion.

To estimate the impact of January’s trade on eventual 1st quarter GDP growth figures, we use exhibit 10 in the pdf for this report, which gives us monthly goods trade figures by end use category and in total, already adjusted for inflation in chained 2017 dollars, the same inflation adjustment that’s used by the BEA to compute trade figures for GDP, with the only difference being that the amounts given here are not annualized…from that table, we can figure that the 4th quarter’s real exports of goods averaged 143,833.7 million monthly in chained 2017 dollars, while inflation adjusted January goods exports were at 142,285 million in that same 2017 dollar quantity index representation… figuring the annualized change between those two figures, we find that January’s real exports of goods are falling at a 4.24% annual rate from those of the 4th quarter, or at a pace that would subtract about 0.29 percentage points from 1st quarter GDP growth if continued at the same pace through February and March…in a similar manner, we find that our 4th quarter real imports of goods averaged 244,241.3 million monthly in chained 2017 dollars, while inflation adjusted goods imports in January were at 285,184 million in 2017 dollars….that would indicate that so far in the 1st quarter, we have seen our real imports of goods increase at a 85.9% annual rate from those of the 4th quarter…since increases in imports subtract from GDP because they represent the portion of consumption or investment that occurred during the quarter that was not produced domestically, their increase at a 85.9% rate would subtract roughly 9.15 percentage points from 1st quarter GDP….hence, if our January trade in goods deficit is maintained at the same level throughout the rest of the 1st quarter, the deterioration in our balance of trade in goods would subtract about 9.44 percentage points from the growth rate of our 1st quarter GDP….

Note that while we have not computed the impact of the change in international trade in services here, we’d note that our exports of services rose by about $0.6 billion in January, while our imports of services rose by $0.4 billion, so the impact of the month’s services trade on GDP appears to be positive, but since we have no appropriate price indexes we could apply to adjust the aggregate for inflation, we can’t say for sure…

Construction Spending Fell 0.2% in January after December and November Spending Were Both Revised 0.2% Higher

The Census Bureau’s report on January construction spending (pdf) estimated that January’s seasonally adjusted construction spending would work out to $2,192.5 billion annually if extrapolated over an entire year, which was 0.2 percent (±0.7 percent)* below the revised annualized estimate of $2,196.0 billion for construction spending in December, but 3.3 percent (±1.3 percent) above the estimated annualized level of construction spending of January last year…the December spending estimate was revised from the $2,192.2 billion annual rate figure published a month ago to $2,196.0 billion, while November’s annualized construction spending was revised from $2,180.3 billion to $2,184.8 billion…since those figures are already annualized, the combined upward revisions of $8.3 billion to November and December construction spending figures would be averaged over the 3 months of the 4th quarter and therefore raise the quarter’s annualized construction spending by about $2.8 billion across the GDP components it is source data for, and would thus imply an upward revision of about 0.03 or 0.04 percentage points to fourth quarter GDP when the third estimate is released at the end of March, assuming there are no major changes to or imbalances in the previously applied inflation adjustments…

A further breakdown of the different subsets of construction spending is provided in a Census summary, which precedes the detailed spreadsheets:

• Private Construction - Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,686.0 billion, 0.2 percent (±0.7 percent)* below the revised December estimate of $1,690.1 billion. Residential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $932.7 billion in January, 0.4 percent (±1.3 percent)* below the revised December estimate of $936.9 billion. Nonresidential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $753.3 billion in January, virtually unchanged from (±0.7 percent)* the revised December estimate of $753.2 billion.
• Public Construction - In January, the estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of public construction spending was $506.6 billion, 0.1 percent (±1.3 percent)* above the revised December estimate of $505.9 billion. Educational construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $109.8 billion, 0.4 percent (±2.0 percent)* below the revised December estimate of $110.3 billion. Highway construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $145.0 billion, 0.6 percent (±3.9 percent)* above the revised December estimate of $144.1 billion.

As you can tell from that summary, construction spending would input into 3 subcomponents of GDP; investment in private non-residential structures, investment in residential structures, and into government investment outlays, for both state and local and Federal governments…however, getting an accurate read on the impact of January’s construction spending reported in this release on 1st quarter GDP is difficult because all figures given here are in nominal dollars and as you know, data used to compute the change in GDP must be adjusted for changes in price…moreover, there are multiple price indexes for different types of construction listed in the National Income and Product Accounts Handbook, Chapter 6 (pdf), so in lieu of trying to adjust for all of those types of construction separately, we’ve opted to just use the producer price index for final demand construction as an inexact shortcut to make ​a​n aggregate price adjustment and come up with an estimate… that index showed that aggregate construction costs were up 0.4% in January, after they had risen by 0.2% in December but were unchanged in November…

On that basis, we can estimate that January construction costs were roughly 0.6% more than those of November, and also about 0.6% more than October, and of course, 0.4% more than December….we’ll then use those percent increases to inflate the lower priced spending figures for each of the 4th quarter months and compare them to January, which is arithmetically the same as deflating January construction spending, for purposes of comparison.…this report gives annualized construction spending in millions of current dollars for the 4th quarter months as $2,195,985 in December, $2,184,796 in November, and $2,176,627 in October….thus to compare January’s annualized construction spending of $2,192,540 million to ‘inflation adjusted’ figures of the fourth quarter, our calculation is: (2,192,540 / ((( 2,195,985 * 1.004) + (2,184,796 * 1.006) + (2,176,627 *1.006)) / 3) = 0.997764, hence indicating that adjusted for inflation, construction spending in January was down 0.22% vis a vis that of the 4th quarter, or down at a 0.89% annual rate….to then figure the potential effect of that estimated change on GDP, we take the difference between the 4th quarter “inflation adjusted” spending average and January’s inflation adjusted basis as a fraction of inflation adjusted 4th quarter GDP, and find that January construction spending was falling at a rate that would subtract about 0.10 percentage points from 1st quarter GDP, if in the unlikely event we see no further change in real construction over the next two months..

Factory Shipments Rose 0.4% in January, Factory Inventories were 0.1% Higher

The Full Report on Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, & Orders (pdf) for January from the Census Bureau reported that the seasonally adjusted value of new orders for manufactured goods increased by a rounded $9.8 billion or 1.7 percent to $589.9 billion in January, following a decrease of $3.5 billion or 0.6% to $580.2 billion in December, which was revised from the decrease of $5.2 billion or 0.9 percent to $578.5 billion that was reported for December a month ago….however, since the Census Bureau does not even collect data on new orders for non durable goods for this widely watched “factory orders report”, both the “new orders” and “unfilled orders” sections of this report are really only useful for their revised updates to the January advance report on durable goods, which was released last week….on those durable goods revisions, the Census Bureau’s own summary, which precedes their detailed spreadsheet of the metrics included in this report, is quite clear and complete, so we’ll just quote directly from that summary here:

• Summary: New orders for manufactured goods in January, up following two consecutive monthly decreases, increased $9.8 billion or 1.7 percent to $589.9 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. This followed a 0.6 percent December decrease. Shipments, up three consecutive months, increased $2.4 billion or 0.4 percent to $592.1 billion. This followed a 0.6 percent December increase. Unfilled orders, up six of the last seven months, increased $2.7 billion or 0.2 percent to $1,400.6 billion. This followed a 0.3 percent December decrease. The unfilled orders-to-shipments ratio was 6.85, down from 6.93 in December. Inventories, up three consecutive months, increased $0.8 billion or 0.1 percent to $863.7 billion. This followed a 0.3 percent December increase. The inventories-to-shipments ratio was 1.46, unchanged from December.
• New Orders for manufactured durable goods in January, up following two consecutive monthly decreases, increased $8.7 billion or 3.2 percent to $286.1 billion, up from the previously published 3.1 percent increase. This followed a 1.8 percent December decrease. Transportation equipment, also up following two consecutive monthly decreases, led the increase, $8.7 billion or 9.9 percent to $96.6 billion. New orders for manufactured nondurable goods increased $1.0 billion or 0.3 percent to $303.8 billion.
• Shipments of manufactured durable goods in January, up two consecutive months, increased $1.4 billion or 0.5 percent to $288.3 billion, up from the previously published 0.4 percent increase. This followed a 0.8 percent December increase. Transportation equipment, also up two consecutive months, led the increase, $1.3 billion or 1.4 percent to $94.5 billion. Shipments of manufactured nondurable goods, up four consecutive months, increased $1.0 billion or 0.3 percent to $303.8 billion. This followed a 0.5 percent December increase. Petroleum and coal products, also up four consecutive months, led the increase, $0.6 billion or 0.9 percent to $64.0 billion.
• Unfilled Orders for manufactured durable goods in January, up six of the last seven months, increased $2.7 billion or 0.2 percent to $1,400.6 billion, unchanged from the previously published increase. This followed a 0.3 percent December decrease. Transportation equipment, also up six of the last seven months, led the increase, $2.1 billion or 0.2 percent to $902.3 billion.
• Inventories of manufactured durable goods in January, up three consecutive months, increased $0.4 billion or 0.1 percent to $533.1 billion, unchanged from the previously published increase. This followed a 0.4 percent December increase. Transportation equipment, also up three consecutive months, led the increase, $0.3 billion or 0.2 percent to $174.9 billion. Inventories of manufactured nondurable goods, up three consecutive months, increased $0.4 billion or 0.1 percent to $330.7 billion. This followed a 0.2 percent December increase. Petroleum and coal products, also up three consecutive months, led the increase, $0.3 billion or 0.7 percent to $48.5 billion.

To gauge the effect of January’s nominal factory inventories on 1st quarter GDP, they must first be adjusted for changes in price with appropriate components of the producer price index…by stage of fabrication, the value of finished goods inventories was virtually unchanged at $294,727 million; the value of work in process inventories decreased 0.3% to $254,862 million, and materials and supplies inventories were valued at $314,130 million, 0.4% more than December…meanwhile, the producer price index for January indicated that prices for finished goods increased 0.6%, that prices for intermediate processed goods were 1.0% higher, and that prices for unprocessed goods were on average 5.5% higher….assuming similar valuations for like inventories, that would suggest that January’s real finished goods inventories were about 0.6% smaller December’s, that real inventories of intermediate processed goods were about 0.7% smaller, and that real raw material inventory inventories were around 5.1% smaller…given that, it appears that total real factory inventories were down on the order of 2.1%…since there was a modest increase in real factory inventories in the 4th quarter, any 1st quarter decrease in real factory inventories would first subtract that 4th quarter increase, and then also subtract the first quarter decrease from the growth rate of first quarter GDP…

January Wholesale Sales Fell 1.3%, Wholesale Inventories Rose 0.8%

The January report on Wholesale Trade, Sales and Inventories(pdf) from the Census Bureau estimated that the seasonally adjusted value of wholesale sales was at “$680.0 billion, down 1.3 percent (±0.5 percent) from the revised December level, but were up 3.5 percent (±0.7 percent) from the revised January 2024 level.”… the December preliminary estimate was revised up to $689.0 billion from the $686.5 billion sales reported last month, which meant “The November 2024 to December 2024 percent change was revised from the preliminary estimate of up 1.0 percent (±0.5 percent) to up 1.4 percent (±0.7 percent).*”….as an intermediate activity, wholesale sales are not included in GDP except insofar as they are a trade service, since the traded goods themselves do not represent an increase in the output of the goods produced or finally sold….

On the other hand, the monthly change in private inventories is a major factor in GDP, as additional goods in a warehouse represent goods that were produced even if they weren’t sold, and this January report estimated that wholesale inventories were valued at $906.2 billion at month end, an increase of 0.8 percent (±0.2 percent) from the revised December level and 1.2 percent (±0,9 percent) higher than January a year ago…the December preliminary inventory estimate was concurrently revised upward from $898.5 billion to $899.0 billion, now down 0.4% from November…

In national accounts data, January’s wholesale inventories will be adjusted with components of the producer price index for January to determine their real change…with notable exceptions such as farm products, chemicals and petroleum & its products, we’ve estimated that wholesale inventories appear to be roughly 70% finished goods…with the January producer price index for finished goods up by 0.6%, the producer price indexes for intermediate goods 1.0% higher, and with prices for unprocessed goods on average 5.5% higher, it appears that January’s real wholesale inventories will be flat or down a bit….however, since real wholesale inventories were down sharply the 4th quarter, almost offsetting ​the quarter​'s increases in retail and factory increases, any first quarter real wholesale inventory decease that’s smaller than that of the fourth quarter decrease will add to 1st quarter GDP by an amount equal to the difference between the two decreases.….

 

 

(the above is the synopsis that accompanied my regular sunday morning news links emailing, which in turn was mostly selected from my weekly blog post on the global glass onion…if you’d be interested in receiving my weekly emailing of selected links, most of which are picked from the aforementioned GGO posts, contact me…)