-The article also discusses the vandalizing of Rep. Ilhan Omar's office

-CAIR (Minnesota Council on American-Islamic Relations) has gotten enough in donations to hire a full-time professional who will work with the 92 mosques in the state to apply for grants for safety measures

-Little will make his first court appearance Monday (that's today). Pic below.

- Good news video at the link

Consumer Sentiment, and PCE inflation.

I'll be particularly interested in looking at the Employment Cost Index as it is said to be a much better indicator of wages and compensation than the usual go-to metric of average hourly earnings that comes out on first Fridays (usually). The ECI is said to looks at trends in the same occupations, whereas average hourly earnings gets distorted by job losses or gains occurring in certain sectors more than others; last hired first fired stuff (in the pandemic that caused the averages to soar). Whatever. I'm saying this off the top of my head, there are better explanations out there.

The downside of the ECI is that it's quarterly - meaning a long wait for updates, and then the updates have some old data in them.

The AP story I linked to has just this on today's ECI report:



That looks good because the CPI rose 0.94% in the last 3 months, and the PCE 0.98%. So that means an actual real (inflation-adjusted) increase, for a change.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/eci.nr0.htm

Their table shows the 12 month inflation-adjusted number is -0.2%. At a glance I don't see their inflation-adjusted 3 month number anywhere.

==================================================================
From: https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/us-wages-grew-fastest-pace-decades-2021-prices-grew-even-more


[1] The Pandemic’s Effect on Measured Wage Growth, The WHite House, 4/19/21
https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/04/19/the-pandemics-effect-on-measured-wage-growth/

=====================================================


This particular one is inflation-adjusted wage and salaries for private sector workers.

Note the build-up to the Q2.2020 peak. Then it plateaued through Q1.2021, President Biden's first quarter, then went down.
Finally it has been turning up since a local bottom in Q3.2022 for a couple of quarters.
The last reading is 3.7% below the peak, and 3.4% below the Q1.2021 value.

Source: https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2018/02/are-wages-increasing-or-decreasing

I tediously moused over point by point gathering the data from their graph (the numbers for each point pop up, so I didn't have to "read" the graph like back in middle school). Edit: There's a "Download data" link at the lower left of the second graph at the Source that I had been aware of and had clicked and thought it was just downloading a PDF file of the page. But it turned out it was offering to download the Excel data for the graph which is of course what I wanted. So I did that and verified that the data was the same, to within 0.0 accuracy, as used for my graph, but I went ahead and replaced my old data with it (since it has a few more digits to the right of the decimal, and heck why not).

The source link just above also compares to inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings and also to inflation-adjusted median usual earnings of full-time workers.

This (the ECI) is reportedly the Fed's favorite wage and salary indicator as explained earlier in the post.

The PCE Inflation report came out today, Friday 4/28/23. It was good on the overall inflation (see the red bars in the below graph), but the core PCE inflation still remains high, and has not come down much in recent months -- see the blue bars.

The Federal reserve's favorite inflation gauge for projecting FUTURE inflation has been the core PCE (which is the PCE less food and energy). It's not that food and energy are unimportant, but are quite volatile from month to month. The core measure is thought to be better for projecting trends into the future.




Below is the CORE PCE inflation trend -- the rolling 3 month average and the rolling 6 month average


The rolling 3 month average should improve quite a bit next month when the January +0.6% number falls outside the 3 month period.

*********LINKS
PCE News release: http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/pinewsrelease.htm

The above shows the last 5 months. I found the latest 12 months (and way beyond) at FRED:

PCE: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCEPI
CORE PCE: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCEPILFE

The rolling 3 month and 6 month figures are calculated from the index values from the above FRED series for the CORE PCE (not from doing one digit math averages).


Consumer Price Index (CPI) released April 12

For comparison purposes, here is the most recent consumer price index graph (through March, released April 12)

CPI - https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0&output_view=pct_1mth
CORE CPI - http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0L1E&output_view=pct_1mth
(Choose "More Formatting Options" at the upper right of the page for other views such as rolling averages of past 12 months, past 6 months, past 3 months)


Inflation measures - last 3 months annualized

. . REGULAR     CORE
PCE 4.00%     4.85%
CPI 3.82%     5.11%
PPI -0.28%     3.61% (Producer Price Index, aka Wholesale Prices)

Cooling wholesale prices should ideally be reflected in the PCE and CPI in the next month or two, but seems not to be that good of a predictor.



Interestingly it says that rents carry twice the weight in the CPI as in the PCE.

This is an excellent summary not only of the PCE inflation report that came out today, but also of the Employment Cost Index and the Personal Income and Personal Consumption Expenditures (consumer spending) reports that were also released today.

Here are some excerpts from the inflation part --

Advance Real Retail and Food Services Sales (RRSFS) (1982-84 dollars)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRSFS


The bottom is April 2020, the peak is March 2021. Very interesting how Covid / stimulus money pushed it way up above pre-pandemic levels to the March 2021 peak, and since then its been treading water at best, but still above the level of the pre-pandemic trend line.

====== The below are NOT adjusted for inflation: =======

Advance Retail Sales: Retail Trade and Food Services (RSAFS) (FRED) - this matches "retail sales" in media reports
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAFS

Percent change from prior month: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MARTSMPCSM44X72USS

(it's a 4.7% annualized rate when calculated with the actual index values) and its rolling 3 month average is 5.1% annualized. This 3 month average was 5.2% annualized in February. So RECENT CORE inflation still seems stuck at around 5%. (Reminder: the Fed uses core measures to predict future inflation, whether we like it or not, although specifically they target the core PCE, not the core CPI https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143053501#post5 )



CPI news release: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm

CPI time series: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0
    Monthly increases: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0&output_view=pct_1mth

CORE CPI: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0L1E
    Monthly increases: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0L1E&output_view=pct_1mth

CPI excluding shelter - https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SA0L2
FRED: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SA0L2

Core CPI excluding shelter - I sure would like this time series, but apparently I haven't found one yet. It's said to be a Fed favorite.

Table 3 has CPI ex shelter, as well as Core ex shelter https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t03.htm

Rent (SA) https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SEHA
Fred: (SA) Rent of Primary Residence in U.S. City Average https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SEHA
(NSA) CUUR0000SEHA

SA is seasonally adjusted. NSA is Not seasonally adjusted

Real average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory workers
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000032
private workers: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000013

In all of the BLS ones, one can change/add 1 month, 2 month, 3 month, 6 month and 12 month rolling averages by clicking "More Formatting Options" at the top right and checking the appropriate check boxes

Below is a graph of the Federal Reserve's target interest rate and the CPI from 4/1998 to 12/2001


# CPI: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0
(In "More Formatting Options" at the upper right one can change/add 2 month, 3 month, 6 month, and 12 month rolling averages, as well as show the 1 month changes. All with graphs.

# Fed Funds Target Rate (until 2008) -- https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFEDTAR
  (Context: it spent most of late 94 to late fall 98 at above 5%),

Per the NBER, the recession began March 2001.

I suspect likewise that nowadays the Fed is serious about the 2% target, but mindful of not crashing the banks. Core PCE is well over 4% on a rolling averages basis. https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143053501#post5

I'm frankly surprised that so many think the Fed is going to let inflation sit at more than twice their target rate, and that the 2% target is just for shits and giggles.

A 3.5% inflation rate (the peak plateau level shown in the above graph) may not be red-hot, but it's enough to cut the purchasing power of the dollar in half in about 20 years, and down to a quarter in 40 years.