Labor Market
We investigate the recent increase in unemployment with the goal of determining whether it is flagging an imminent US recession.
US jobless claims have been trending higher in recent weeks, confirming that labor market conditions are deteriorating. Initial claims came in slightly above consensus estimates on Thursday, increasing by 231 thousand versus expectations of a 220 thousand…
To the extent that US small businesses are typically more exposed to domestic economic conditions than larger firms, results of the NFIB Small Business Economic Trends survey are instructive. One important trend is that the October survey results…
BCA Research's Global Investment Strategy service assigns 25% odds of the recession starting in 2025 or later. Our colleagues continue to think that the US will succumb to a recession in 2024, probably in the second half of the year. They see the…
The Netherlands has a healthier and more stable economy and demography than its European peers. Investors should stay overweight developed European equities, including Dutch equities, relative to emerging European equities.
The preliminary release for the University of Michigan’s Consumer Survey sent a pessimistic signal about consumer sentiment on Friday. The headline index fell from 63.8 to 60.4 in November, below expectations of a marginal decrease to 63.7. Declines in both…
Labor markets are softening in most developed economies, as is usually the case in the lead-up to recessions. Our base case is that the global recession will begin in the second half of 2024, but we will be monitoring our MacroQuant model on a daily basis for confirmation.
After surging in H2 2021/H1 2022, the Atlanta Fed's Wage Growth Tracker has been on a general downtrend for over a year. The latest reading of 5.2% in October – albeit unchanged from September – is considerably below the peak of 6.7% just over a year ago.…
The US disinflationary trend remains intact. The core PCE deflator continued its downtrend in September, falling to 3.7% y/y from a peak of 5.6% in February 2022. Alternative measures of underlying price pressures such as the trimmed mean and median PCE…
US small-cap stocks have underperformed significantly this year. While the S&P 500 price index is up 14.0% year-to-date, the S&P 600 has lost 2.5%. However, this underperformance has not been a straight line down. Small caps benefited from a…