Rather than leading with the unemployment numbers, I think that we need to look at the news about home sales, where the soft pedal the the obvious conclusion.
The short version is that sales are falling largely in relatively inexpensive properties, so sales fall, and the average, and the median, home prices rise, because the bottom half has shut down.
It's arithmetic 101, and it mirrors what happened in 2008-9
U.S. existing home sales unexpectedly fell in June as tight inventory boosted house prices to a record high and the Middle East conflict kept mortgage rates elevated, pushing potential buyers to the sidelines.
The report from the National Association of Realtors on Thursday underscored the growing affordability hurdle faced by many young people pursuing the so-called American dream of homeownership. Still, economists expected the housing market to make a small contribution to economic growth in the second quarter for the first time in more than a year.
………
Home sales dropped 2.4% last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.09 million units. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast home resales would climb to a rate of 4.20 million units. Home sales have been bouncing around a 4 million unit pace for years now, with NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun noting a similar trend happened during the 2008 Great Recession.
That being said, this week's unemployment report was not great either, with initial claims being basically flat, and continuing claims rose 8K to 1.814M.
Initial claims decreased by 2,000 to 215,000 in the week ended July 4, a period that included the Independence Day holiday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 217,000 applications.
Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, edged up to 1.81 million in the previous week, according to Labor Department Data released Thursday.
With oil prices spiking again and little prospect for rate cuts from the Federal Reserve, this ain't good.
0 comments :
Post a Comment