Morning Report: Wage inflation heats up

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Stocks are lower this morning as we await comments from Jerome Powell. Bonds and MBS are flat.

Employers added 184,000 jobs in March, according to the ADP Employment Survey. This was 150k higher than the estimate, and a touch lower than Friday’s 200k forecast. Pay increases were flat at 5.1% for job stayers, but rose 10% for job changers.

“March was surprising not just for the pay gains, but the sectors that recorded them. The three biggest increases for job-changers were in construction, financial services, and manufacturing,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist, ADP. “Inflation has been cooling, but our data shows pay is heating up in both goods and services.”

Mortgage Applications fell 0.6% last week, according to the MBA. Purchases rose 1% while refis fell 2%. “Mortgage rates moved lower last week, but that did little to ignite overall mortgage application activity. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate declined slightly to 6.91 percent, while the 15-year fixed rate decreased to its lowest level in two months at 6.35 percent,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. “Elevated mortgage rates continued to weigh down on home buying. Purchase applications were unchanged overall, although FHA purchases did pick up slightly over the week. Refinance applications decreased to fall 5 percent below last year’s pace.”

Job openings were more or less unchanged in February, according to the JOLTS jobs report. Job openings were down about 11% on a year-over-year basis. The quits rate, which tends to lead wage increases, was flat month-over-month at 2.2% and down significantly from a year ago.

Home prices rose 5.5% in February, according to CoreLogic. The Northeast saw the biggest increases.

“Home price growth pivoted in February, as the impact of the January 2023 Home Price Index bottom finally faded,” said Dr. Selma Hepp, chief economist for CoreLogic. “As a result, the U.S. should begin to see slowing annual home price gains moving forward.”

“Nevertheless,” Hepp continued, “with a 0.7% increase from January to February 2024, which is almost double the monthly increase recorded before the pandemic, spring home price gains are already off to a strong start despite continued mortgage rate volatility. That said, more inventory finally coming to market will likely translate to more options for buyers and fewer bidding wars, which typically keeps outsized price growth in check. Still, despite affordability challenges, homebuyer demand appears to favor already expensive, coastal markets with a limited availability of properties for sale.”

Filed under: Economy |

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33 Responses

  4. jnc4p, on April 6, 2024 at 3:15 pm said:

    This is amusing:

    The Meltdown at a Middle School in a Liberal Town

    A post-pandemic fight about racism, the respectful treatment of trans kids, and the role of teachers’ unions has divided Amherst, Massachusetts.

    By Jessica Winter

    April 3, 2024

    https://archive.ph/CHXjG

    Perfect quote:

    “Another joke you hear, albeit less often, is that Amherst has more Black Lives Matter signs than Black people.”

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  5. jnc4p, on April 6, 2024 at 9:00 pm said:

    Paul Waldman’s latest:

    An Utterly Misleading Book About Rural America

    White Rural Rage has become a best-seller—and kindled an academic controversy.

    By Tyler Austin Harper

    Rage is the subject of a new book by the political scientist Tom Schaller and the journalist Paul Waldman. White Rural Rage, specifically. In 255 pages, the authors chart the racism, homophobia, xenophobia, violent predilections, and vulnerability to authoritarianism that they claim make white rural voters a unique “threat to American democracy.” White Rural Rage is a screed lobbed at a familiar target of elite liberal ire. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the authors appeared on Morning Joe, the book inspired an approving column from The New York Times’ Paul Krugman, and its thesis has been a topic of discussion on podcasts from MSNBC’s Chuck Todd and the right-wing firebrand Charlie Kirk. The book has become a New York Times best seller.

    It has also kindled an academic controversy. In the weeks since its publication, a trio of reviews by political scientists have accused Schaller and Waldman of committing what amounts to academic malpractice, alleging that the authors used shoddy methodologies, misinterpreted data, and distorted studies to substantiate their allegations about white rural Americans. I spoke with more than 20 scholars in the tight-knit rural-studies community, most of them cited in White Rural Rage or thanked in the acknowledgments, and they left me convinced that the book is poorly researched and intellectually dishonest.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/white-rural-rage-criticism/677967/

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  6. jnc4p, on April 7, 2024 at 10:01 am said:

    The Washington Post is unintentionally making the case to elect Donald Trump again.

    Inside Donald Trump’s secret plan to end the Ukraine-Russia war

    Foreign policy experts and some Republicans warned that pressuring Ukraine to cede land would reward Putin

    By Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Michael Birnbaum
    April 7, 2024 at 8:00 a.m. EDT

    Former president Donald Trump has privately said he could end Russia’s war in Ukraine by pressuring Ukraine to give up some territory, according to people familiar with the plan. Some foreign policy experts said Trump’s idea would reward Russian President Vladimir Putin and condone the violation of internationally recognized borders by force.

    Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential. That approach, which has not been previously reported, would dramatically reverse President Biden’s policy, which has emphasized curtailing Russian aggression and providing military aid to Ukraine.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/05/trump-ukraine-secret-plan/

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    • Let the mutherfuker burn!, on April 7, 2024 at 11:19 am said:

      Imagine, working out a peace deal. The horror. I can’t think any lefty would accept a deal that doesn’t punish Putin sufficiently for electing Trump.

      If I’m Putin, what faith do I have the next D administration doesn’t reverse everything and start stuffing Ukrainians into the abattoir again? There is that much faith among lefty’s that Putin is the direct and indisputable cause of all their problems.

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  7. Let the mutherfuker burn!, on April 7, 2024 at 8:44 pm said:

    The party absolutely hates its base.

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  8. Let the mutherfuker burn!, on April 7, 2024 at 8:47 pm said:

    Very fine people on both side.

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  9. Let the mutherfuker burn!, on April 9, 2024 at 2:55 pm said:

    Oh.

    Some of these judges that Donald Trump put on or are judges out of his ilk, they actually have said, oh, agencies shouldn’t do that, we should have Congress and the judges make those decisions.

    https://12ft.io/proxy

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  10. Brent Nyitray, on April 9, 2024 at 7:41 pm said:

    The scales are starting to fall out of the left’s eyes

    https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust

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    • jnc4p, on April 10, 2024 at 2:54 pm said:

      No, they haven’t. He’s now a heretic, just like Taibbi. As an organization, NPR will learn nothing from this.

      NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public’s trust

      https://www.npr.org/2024/04/09/1243755769/npr-journalist-uri-berliner-trust-diversity

      This is the funniest part:

      “The philosophy is: Do you want to serve all of America and make sure it sounds like all of America, or not?” Lansing, who stepped down last month, says in response to Berliner’s piece. “I’d welcome the argument against that.”

      https://www.npr.org/2024/04/09/1243755769/npr-journalist-uri-berliner-trust-diversity

      His argument is that under their own framing of what constitutes success of the diversity initiatives, NPR has failed.

      Despite all the resources we’d devoted to building up our news audience among blacks and Hispanics, the numbers have barely budged. In 2023, according to our demographic research, 6 percent of our news audience was black, far short of the overall U.S. adult population, which is 14.4 percent black. And Hispanics were only 7 percent, compared to the overall Hispanic adult population, around 19 percent. Our news audience doesn’t come close to reflecting America. It’s overwhelmingly white and progressive, and clustered around coastal cities and college towns.

      https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust

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    • jnc4p, on April 11, 2024 at 8:16 pm said:

      As an institution NPR is clearly incapable of change. Trump’s right, they should be defunded:

      NPR in Turmoil After It Is Accused of Liberal Bias

      An essay from an editor at the broadcaster has generated a firestorm of criticism about the network on social media, especially among conservatives.

      …

      “Mr. Berliner’s remarks prompted vehement pushback from several news executives. Tony Cavin, NPR’s managing editor of standards and practices, said in an interview that he rejected all of Mr. Berliner’s claims of unfairness, adding that his remarks would probably make it harder for NPR journalists to do their jobs.

      “The next time one of our people calls up a Republican congressman or something and tries to get an answer from them, they may well say, ‘Oh, I read these stories, you guys aren’t fair, so I’m not going to talk to you,’” Mr. Cavin said.”

      https://archive.ph/0CZ66

      “Mr. Berliner’s criticism was the latest salvo within NPR, which is no stranger to internal division. In October, Mr. Berliner took part in a lengthy debate over whether NPR should defer to language proposed by the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association while covering the conflict in Gaza.

      “We don’t need to rely on an advocacy group’s guidance,” Mr. Berliner wrote, according to a copy of the email exchange viewed by The Times. “Our job is to seek out the facts and report them.” The debate didn’t change NPR’s language guidance, which is made by editors who weren’t part of the discussion. And in a statement on Thursday, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association said it is a professional association for journalists, not a political advocacy group.”

      https://archive.ph/0CZ66#selection-785.0-789.473

      They can’t help lying about eveything.

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  11. jnc4p, on April 10, 2024 at 2:56 pm said:

    Speaking of Taibbi:

    The Real Book About the “White Working Class”

    Interview with Les Leopold, author of “Wall Street’s War on Workers,” the book neither party wants you to read

    Matt Taibbi

    Apr 10, 2024

    https://www.racket.news/p/the-real-book-about-the-white-working

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    • Brent Nyitray, on April 10, 2024 at 7:36 pm said:

      The point about layoffs being driven by stock buybacks is dumb. Layoffs are expensive, although I have worked for companies that did annual layoffs to dump the bottom 10%. But they aren’t doing it to goose the stock.

      Assuming a layoff announcement will make the stock go up is also wrong. Often the street will take it as a signal that something is wrong, especially if it comes out of the blue, which will be negative for the stock and defeat the purpose.

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      • jnc4p, on April 10, 2024 at 10:02 pm said:

        The flip side is that if the company is already and trouble and say has missed earnings projections, announcing layoffs can indicate that they are taking action and I’ve seen it boost the stock price under those circumstances (at least in the immediate short term).

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        • Brent Nyitray, on April 11, 2024 at 8:41 am said:

          It can go either way. The assertion that layoffs = higher stock prices by the author is wrong.

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  12. jnc4p, on April 10, 2024 at 8:26 pm said:

    The Washington Post Editorial Board goes all in for the surveillance state.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/09/fisa-section-702-warrant-congress/

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  13. jnc4p, on April 10, 2024 at 10:00 pm said:

    The more The Washington Post tells me that something is explicitly false, the more I believe it’s actually true:

    Trump supporters falsely claim that without reforms, the “weaponized” Justice Department under President Biden will continue to target Trump and other conservatives. Spy agencies, however, do not have authority to surveil U.S. citizens under FISA.

    …

    Many Republicans are looking to reform FISA, acknowledging that spy agencies have at times misused their authority.But far-right members appear to have misconstrued the agency’s powers, often speaking in platitudes and falsely charging that U.S. agencies are purposely spying on Americans.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/10/fisa-house-republicans-mike-johnson-spying-section-702/

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