It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And initial and continuing claims are both down, while the trade deficit rose to a 16 month high and inflation remained in, "The Fed Hikes Rates," territory.

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits for the first time fell for a second week while the overall number of people on jobless relief rolls slid to the ​lowest level in a month, signaling a stable labor market that should give the Federal Reserve leeway to focus on containing inflation.

Meanwhile, the U.S. trade deficit in goods, which President Donald ‌Trump is trying to reduce through his aggressive use of tariffs on imported goods, was the widest in 16 months in July as exports fell for a third straight month and capital goods imports surged on the back of the artificial intelligence build-out. The wider goods trade gap last month puts trade on track to be a net drag on U.S. gross domestic product growth for a fourth straight quarter.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 203,000 for the week ended August ​22, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 208,000 claims for the latest week.

Claims are hovering in the lower end of their 189,000-230,000 range for this year, indicating ​that layoffs remain low even if hiring is soft. Despite a surprise drop in employment in July, the U.S. jobless rate ticked down again to 4.1%, a historically low ⁠level.

The number of people receiving unemployment benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, fell 18,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.778 million during the week ended August 15, the claims report showed. The ​continued claims data covered the survey week for the monthly nonfarm payrolls report for August.

………

Labor market stability, ​if sustained, gives the Fed headroom to keep its focus on containing inflation that has run above its 2% target for 65 straight months.

Thursday's data came as Fed policymakers and other global economic officials were gathering in ​Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the Kansas City Fed's annual economic symposium, where U.S. central bank Chairman Kevin Warsh will deliver a keynote address on Friday morning. Warsh, who so far in his young term has shied away from commenting specifically ‌on the state ⁠of the economy and direction of Fed policy, is under pressure to address a central issue: Is current inflation a problem or not, and what should be done about it?

A growing minority of his Fed colleagues are increasingly anxious about inflation, and three voting members of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee dissented last month with the decision to leave interest rates unchanged at 3.50% to 3.75%. The inflation measure the Fed uses to set its target held steady unexpectedly last month at 3.7%.

Not a clue as to what this all means.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I am not sure what to make of the most recent unemployment figures.

Initial claims fell by 6,000 to 206,000 and continuing claims rose by 18,000 to 1,8 million.

Applications for US unemployment benefits edged lower last week, staying near historically low levels and suggesting few layoffs across the labor market.

Initial claims decreased by 6,000 to 206,000 in the week ended Aug. 15, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 210,000.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, rose to 1.80 million in the previous week.

Not a clue what this all means.

Another Economic Data Point

US consumers are are cutting back on retail purchases in anticipation of increasing interest rates.

Given that consumer spending is over ⅔ of our economy, this ain't good.

American consumers have powered the economy forward this year. In July, they took a breather.

Why it matters: While the underlying trend in consumer demand appears solid, retail sales hit an air pocket last month, suggesting a bumpier path ahead for overall growth.

• Combined with a weak jobs report last week and two subdued inflation readings this week, it points to the Federal Reserve having room to be patient on potential interest rate increases this fall.

Driving the news: Retail sales fell 0.6% in July, the weakest performance in more than a year and well below the 0.1% gain analysts expected.

• Excluding gas stations and auto dealers, there was still a 0.3% decline in sales, meaning that the weakness was evident even apart from those volatile categories.
• Auto dealers' sales were down 2%, gasoline stations' sales fell 0.9%, and electronic and appliance store sales declined 0.5%.

This is not looking good. 

 

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The short version is that initial claims rose and continuing claims fell.

There is some additional context, as last week's numbers were revised up. 

Filings for US unemployment benefits rose last week after hovering near historic lows.

Initial claims increased by 9,000 to 209,000 in the week ended Aug. 8, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 202,000.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, fell to 1.78 million in the previous week.

The increase in filings could reflect typical summertime volatility in a period when seasonal employment patterns and the timing of holidays often affect the data. Economists will look for more than one week’s worth of data before reassessing the recent stability of the labor market.

Meanwhile,  Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation is holding steady, which makes it less likely that the Fed will raise rates at their next meeting.

U.S. producer prices were unchanged in July as goods prices fell and the cost of services increased marginally, bolstering financial market expectations that the Federal Reserve could keep interest rates unchanged next month.

The report from the Labor Department on Thursday followed news on ​Wednesday of mild consumer inflation last month. The data led most economists to also expect moderate readings in the Personal Consumption Expenditures price indexes in July.

Damned if I know what the hell is going on right now.

 

Headline of the Day

Memo to Those Who Fear Socialism: Why Don’t You Try Fix Capitalism? 

— The New Republic, on the current socialism panic.

I can answer this question:  Because the Free Market Mousketeers believe that capitalism cannot ever fail, it can only be failed. 

Everywhere I look, I see people expressing alarm about the popularity of socialism. It polls in the mid-to-high 30s, and considerably higher among younger people. Older people, who have a living memory of the various socialist regimes that once dotted the planet, which at best didn’t deliver prosperity to their people and at worst threw them in jail by the thousands, can’t understand how this could be and seem to want to talk endlessly about it.

I, however, marvel at the other consistent result of all these polls, which these people don’t seem nearly as interested in talking about. I refer to the ratings Americans give to capitalism. They’re terrible. A big Gallup poll from last fall is representative. Socialism won the approval of 39 percent, while capitalism’s positive number was 54 percent.

That is pathetic—barely half the country! In the country that invented modern capitalism and where it is worshipped by the elite class! And you know what? It’s entirely deserved. In fact, it deserves to be a little worse (as it is among Democrats). The kind of capitalism we’ve been practicing in this country over the last 40-plus years is cruel, corrupt, and a perversion of what humane capitalism ought to be. The people who are so freaked out about socialism ought to realize that the only way they’re going to arrest its rise is to change capitalism for the better.

 

First Friday

So, we have the July jobs report, and notwithstanding a stable unemployment rate,  with non-farm payrolls fell by 23.000, while the numbers for May and June were revised down by  66,000 and and 17,000 respectively.

So job numbers are falling, but the unemployment rate has remained steady because people have given up on looking for work.

US employers unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July and gains for the previous two months were revised down sharply by a combined 103,000 jobs, painting a weaker picture of the labor market than past data indicated.

The unemployment rate, however, held steady at 4.1%. Economists had projected an unchanged unemployment rate and 83,000 new jobs for the month.

The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics illustrates the continued summer slump in job growth amid ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Pressure has been mounting within the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to combat persistently high inflation, but July’s job report and its latest revisions may cool those expectations at the central bank’s next meeting.

July’s job losses were concentrated in local government education, with 50,000 jobs lost, and retail, which lost 19,000. The private sector, however, gained 30,000 jobs, with growth focused once again in healthcare.

Hourly earnings of all employees changed little over the past year, increasing by 3.2% compared to last year. Next week’s consumer pricing data will reveal whether these gains have kept pace with inflation.

Figures for May were revised to 63,000 jobs added, down from an initially reported 129,000 jobs, while figures for June dropped 37,000, to 20,000 jobs added. In total, job figures for May and June were revised down 103,000 jobs.

In June, the US added 57,000 jobs, about half of what economists had predicted, with most of the growth concentrated in healthcare and social assistance. The unemployment rate had also dropped to 4.2% in June, down from 4.3% in May, driven by 720,000 people leaving the workforce.

Even more concerning, to me at least is the fact that worker wages have fallen to an all time low as a percentage of GDP, meaning that any gains are not seen by the ordinary American.

U.S. workers again saw their slice of the U.S. economy slide to a record ‌low in the second quarter amid an ongoing ‌productivity boom that is producing output gains which are outpacing wage growth, ​the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Thursday.

The so-called labor share of nominal gross domestic product, which BLS defines as the percentage of output that accrues to workers in the ‌form of compensation, fell ⁠to 52.9% in the second quarter from 53.7% in the first quarter.

That was the lowest ⁠since the series began in 1947, BLS said as it reported stronger-than-expected growth in second-quarter productivity.

Welcome to peonage, y'all.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's Thursday, and so time for the weekly unemployment report.  We have initial claims rising slightly and continuing claims falling slightly, along with a side dish of increased inflation and higher gas prices.

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week but layoffs remain in the historically healthy range of the past few years.

U.S. filings for jobless aid in the week ending July 25 rose by 9,000 to 197,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The previous week’s figure was revised up by 1,000 to 188,000 but remains the lowest in more than 50 years.

………

Following a 6.6% rise a day earlier, the price for a barrel of U.S. crude fell slightly more than 1% Thursday to $83.36 a barrel. Gas prices in the U.S. are also back up above $4 a gallon on average. Besides squeezing consumers’ budgets, it also hits businesses hard, especially those which are heavily dependent on fuel.

Also Thursday, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation metric, PCE, came in at 3.7%, still well above its 2% target. On top of that, the government reported Thursday that the U.S. economy grew at an unexpectedly sluggish 1.5% pace in the April-June quarter.

………

The Labor Department’s report Thursday also showed that the four-week moving average of weekly jobless claims, which softens some of the weekly volatility, fell by 5,000 to 202,750.

The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending July 18 was 1.78 million, a decline of 7,000 from the previous week.

Not a clue as to what the f%$# is going on here.

Headline of the Day

Study Shows Corporate Subsidies Only Create Jobs for Lobbyists

—Boondoggle on a study showing that massive subsidies to business generate jobs in only one industry.

Yeah, this is kind of a, "Well, duh!" moment.

The promise of corporate “economic development” subsidies is that they will create new jobs. Indeed, elected officials, government agencies, and the corporate executives that receive them all defend these public dollars flowing to private interests in the same way: As investments in local job creation and economic growth.

Research shows that this promise routinely isn’t kept. But a new study suggests that one industry does, in fact, see meaningful job creation from such subsidies: The lobbying industry.

Researchers Russell Sobel, Gary Wagner, and Peter Calcagno tracked data from more than 40,000 lobbying firms, covering all 50 states from 1997 to 2019. They examined what happened in a state before and after it handed out an “extraordinarily large” incentive — defined as a subsidy thousands of times bigger than that state had ever given before — and compared that to states that never awarded such an extraordinarily large incentive.

The study found that in the years after a state hands out its first extraordinarily large incentive, lobbyist employment in that state rises 3.6 percent on average. The effect is sharper in the state capital: In the five years following the incentive, lobbying firms in the capital county see employment gains of 4.5 percent relative to capital counties in comparison states. Additionally, lobbying’s share of the capital county’s private-sector workforce grew by 5.8 percent.

………

Separate research has found that firms that put more resources into the political process are more likely to land these incentives in the first place, suggesting the lobbying isn’t just a side effect of winning a deal, but a key part of obtaining it in the first place.

All of this sits on top of decades of research showing that these incentive programs generally fail to produce the job growth, income gains, or tax revenue they promise. Yet, that has not stopped states from handing out more of them: State governments now spend more than $40 billion a year on these incentives — three times what they spent in 1990.

Subsidies have always been a sucker bat.

Fed Stands Pat

The Federal Reserve held its benchmark interest steady today, but in a sign of growing concerns about inflation three members of the Board of Governors voted to hike rates, which is the most public split on the board in about a decade.

Also, the bond vigilantes were unimpressed:

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday kept interest rates unchanged despite growing divisions among policymakers to more directly tackle inflation after five years of overshooting the central bank’s 2 percent target.

The Fed voted 9-3 to maintain rates at 3.5 to 3.75 percent, a level that has been in place since January. Beth M. Hammack of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Neel Kashkari of the Minneapolis Fed and Lorie K. Logan of the Dallas Fed dissented, voting instead for a quarter-point increase.

The divisions underscore the tough spot the Fed and its chairman, Kevin M. Warsh find themselves in as they grapple with new sources of price pressures that are threatening to compound an already complicated and longstanding inflation problem.

………

As Mr. Warsh spoke, longer dated Treasury yields rose sharply, with the 30-year bond closing in on its May peak of 5.2 percent. That was the highest level since 2007. The rise in the 30-year Treasury yield suggests some worry about Mr. Warsh’s ability to tackle inflation in the long run.

This Applies to the US as Well

One possible reason for the EU underperforming is that the European Union and its member nations have structured their economies and societies to favor rent seeking over productive activity.

In addition to increasing inequality, rent seeking uses the power of the state to favor the already wealthy, it also crowds out productive activity, because the former is more lucrative.

To be fair, there is also the energy increases resulting from the cut off of cheap Russian natural gas as well.

Why is Europe falling behind in investment and growth compared with the US, let alone China and India?  In a new report, Labour Squeezed, Investment Stalled – the renowned economist Mariana Mazzucato and a team at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, financed by the European Trade Union Federation (SETU), reckon that the EU’s declining competitiveness is not the result of too much regulation or the lack of cheap credit as mainstream economists and Mario Draghi is his report for the EU Commission argued. 

Instead it is due to “falling investment and productivity caused by the hoarding of profits and higher payments to shareholders and CEOs rather than reinvested in production, innovation and good jobs”. The decline is the result of an emergence of a “capitalism of rent” in Europe, where income is increasingly captured not by producing anything, but by owning assets, financial positions and market power, and charging for access to them. Mazzucato concludes that Europe must switch from “an economy based on value extraction to one based on value creation”.

Mazzucato and and the IIPP show that headline profits have stayed healthy even as profitability in production have declined since 2000.  They claim that’s because profits have been captured through ‘financialisation’ ie non-financial corporations are increasingly make more money through financial investment rather than in production. In study of over 300 EU corporations, they find that around one in six firms surveyed now draw more than 10 percent of earnings from financial rather than productive activity. 

I think that the framing in the last paragraph is particularly important.

Stating that financial activity is not a productive activity is true, even if financial activity can aid in productive activity by allocating capital to business that need it.

Finance, as well as IP driven activity are profitable because they are fundamentally parasitic in nature when taken to extremes. 

It's why they are so hard to fight, they have excess profits that can be redirected to bribery in various forms to support their businesses. 

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And initial and continuing claims fell, but there are some other indicators of trouble ahead.

Applications for US unemployment benefits fell last week, suggesting the labor market remains stable.

Initial claims decreased by 8,000 to 208,000 in the week ended July 11, according to Labor Department Data released Thursday. 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, dropped to 1.81 million in the previous week, also lower than expected.

New filings have fallen back to historically subdued levels after spiking in May and early June. Meanwhile the jobless rate declined last month, adding to evidence that employers are generally holding onto their workers even though some sectors such as technology are shedding jobs

Meanwhile long term unemployment has become increasingly problematic.

By most key metrics, the U.S. labor market is in fine shape: the economy has added jobs for four straight months, much improved from late last year, and the unemployment rate has drifted down to 4.2%.

Yet nearly two million Americans have been locked out of the job market for at least half a year.

The long-term unemployed—people without work for 27 weeks or more, the longest period the Labor Department reports in each monthly jobs report—accounted for 27.3% of all unemployed people in June, up 4 percentage points from a year earlier.

That is hovering near the highest level since late 2021, when the labor market was recovering from the Covid-19 shock. This can be perilous, since the six-month mark is when many job seekers lose severance or unemployment benefits.

Also, we are seeing increasing signs of trouble in the housing market.

Pending home sales plunged by 5.4% in June from May, seasonally adjusted, to the lowest level for any June on record, down 0.3% from the abysmally low levels in June last year, down 36% from June 2021, 37% from June 2020, 34% from June 2019, 32% from June 2018, and down 20% from June 2011, during the Housing Bust, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. Its data only goes back to mid-2010.

This is now the fourth year that demand has been in the deep-freeze, amid the highest supply of existing single-family homes in 10 years and of existing condos in 14 years.

Pending home sales fell in all regions, with the index plunging by the most in the Midwest, plunging to record lows in the West, and plunging in the South to the lowest level for any June and the sixth-lowest for any month in the data’s history going back to mid-2010 (historic data via YCharts):

 I think that we are in for a world of hurt.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 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.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Because tomorrow is when the July 4 holiday is observed, in addition to the unemployment claims report, we also have the monthly jobs report a day early.

The short version if all of this, initial unemployment claims fell from slightly to 215K with continuing claims rose slightly to 1.814M.

More significantly was the monthly jobs report, where only 57K jobs were created, well under what is needed to account for workforce growth.

Additionally, while the unemployment rate fell from 4.3% to 4.2% this was because workforce participation fell to a 5 year low. 

Neither of these are good economic news. 

The Term for this is Inflation

So, the Wall Street Journal is lauding the end of the 4 year trucking slump, trumpeting the increasing freight rates in recent weeks.

This is inflation marker, not an essential turn around in industry. 

Truckers who held on through almost four years of slumping freight rates finally have something to celebrate. 

“It feels like a breath of air for an industry that maybe felt like they were running out of air,” said Webb Estes, president and chief operating officer of Estes Express Lines, a Richmond, Va.-based carrier with revenue of about $6 billion. 

Trucking executives are calling an end to one of the longest freight downturns in carriers’ memory. They say rates have risen to more sustainable levels after a period of low earnings coupled with Trump administration crackdowns on immigrant drivers pushed many carriers out of the market. 

The Logistics Managers’ Index, a monthly survey of supply-chain managers, showed transportation prices increased in May at the fastest rate for any metric in the report’s 10-year history.

This is not a good thing

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, initial claims fell, continuing claims rose, and PCE inflation hit a 3 year high.

Notwithstanding the increasingly precarious deal between Iran and the United States to end hostilities, ships are still only trickling through the Strait of Hormuz.

The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, consistent with labor market resilience.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits ​dropped 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 215,000 for the week ended June ‌20, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 225,000 claims for the latest week.

The data included last Friday's Juneteenth public holiday, which could have contributed to ​part of the larger-than-expected decline. Claims are typically more complicated from the ​end of May through June when the school year ends, as ⁠some states allow non-teaching staff to file for unemployment benefits during the long ​school holidays. Seasonal factors, the model used by the government to strip out ​seasonal fluctuations from the data, do not always capture these moves.

………

The number of people receiving unemployment benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, increased 21,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.821 million during the week ended June 13, the claims ​report showed. The so-called ​continuing claims data ⁠covered the period during which the government surveyed households for June's unemployment rate.

Meanwhile in inflation land:

US consumer spending accelerated in May even as prices rose at the fastest pace in more than three years, suggesting Americans are powering through the fallout from the Iran war.

The personal consumption expenditures price index rose 4.1% from a year earlier, the most since April 2023, Bureau of Economic Analysis data out Thursday showed. Excluding food and energy, prices were up 3.4% from a year earlier.

Inflation-adjusted consumer spending rose 0.3% last month after stalling in April.

 

First He Fucked Ayn Rand, and Then He Fucked the Country.

Alan Greenspan has died at the age of 100.

Here's hoping that he's being fed shit sandwiches in Hell right next to Henry Kissinger. 

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We have the new weekly unemployment numbers out, and initial claims are down marginally, continuing claims are up marginally, and tepid hiring.

For me, the most important part of the unemployment statistics is that I am no longer a part of them.  I finished my first full week at my new job. (it's a 9/80 schedule, and tomorrow is the off Friday)

The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, but remained at slightly higher levels, suggesting some moderation in the pace of job growth in June.

 Economists largely shrugged off the report from the Labor Department ​on Thursday, with some pointing out that the recent elevation in claims was likely due to seasonal distortions related to the end of the school year. They viewed the labor market ‌as remaining stable enough for the Federal Reserve to focus on stamping out inflation, stoked by the Iran war.

The U.S. central bank on Wednesday kept its benchmark overnight interest rate in the 3.50%-3.75% range, but updated quarterly projections showed policymakers expected to raise borrowing costs this year amid growing concerns about inflation.

………

Initial claims ​for state unemployment benefits dropped 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 226,000 for the week ended June 13, the Labor Department said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast ⁠225,000 claims for the latest week. Claims had increased for three straight weeks, pushing to the upper end of their 190,000-230,000 range for this year.

………

Though the survey's measure of factory jobs swung to positive territory this month, "most firms continued to report no changes in employment overall." The lack of hiring was evident in the weekly claims report. The number of people receiving unemployment benefits after an initial week of aid, ⁠a proxy for ​hiring, increased 24,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.81 million during the week ended June 6, the claims report showed. 

Damned if I know what the f%$# is going on here.

Well, I Got This One Wrong

I was certain that the Federal Reserve would raise rates today.  They did not.

Once again, the Saroff powers of prognostication maintain their sterling record of failure. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Still, it looks like there will be a rate hike later in the year, so the bond markets were spooked.

Federal Reserve officials Wednesday signaled they might soon need to raise interest rates instead of cutting them, a sharp shift in thinking amid a rapid rise in inflation.

The Fed kept interest rates steady Wednesday at Kevin Warsh’s first meeting as Fed chair, as the new central bank chief inherited an economy hit by energy-driven inflation that is squeezing consumers’ wallets and a White House pushing for lower borrowing costs.

Nine of the 19 officials who participate in Fed policy meetings penciled in at least one rate increase by the end of the year, up from zero in March, when most Fed officials still anticipated cutting rates.

Financial markets fell on the signals of higher interest rates. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down about 1 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 1.3 percent. Yields on U.S. Treasury bonds jumped, as investors demanded higher returns to compensate for the prospect of potentially rising interest rates.

It is what it is, and I have no clue as to what it is.

 

Fasten Your Seatbelts. It’s Going to Be a Bumpy Ride

The Producer Price Index (PPI) rose by 1.1% in May.

I don't mean that it rose by a 1.2% annualized rate, I mean that the price numbers went up by 1.1% in a single month.  The same thing happened in April, so this is not a 1 month blip, and the 12 month PPI is up 6.5%. 

Prices charged by American producers continued to charge higher in May, the Labor Department said Thursday, marking another month of elevated wholesale inflation.

The producer-price index rose by 1.1% last month, following an equal increase in April. Analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal were expecting a 0.7% increase.

Over the past 12 months, the PPI is up by 6.5%, the fastest wholesale inflation since 2022.
Energy prices explained a good deal of the elevated trend, rising by more than 10% in May alone. But even excluding food, energy and trade-services categories, wholesale prices were up by 0.8%, a rapid one-month increase.

 The Fed is going to raise rates this week.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Both initial and continuing unemployment claims rose last week, initial claims from 225,000 to 229,000, (highest since February) and continuing claims rose from 1.780 million to 1.795 million claims.

Not awful, but not good either. 

US initial jobless claims unexpectedly rose to the highest since February, potentially reflecting the usual volatility around school summer breaks and holidays.

Initial claims increased by 4,000 to 229,000 in the week ended June 6, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 220,000 applications.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, also rose, to 1.8 million in the previous week.

This is not enough for the Federal Reserve not to raise interest rates next week.