Doug Short Advisor Perspectives

[unable to retrieve full-text content] We've updated our monthly workforce analysis to include last Friday's Employment Report for December. The unemployment rate remained at 6.7%, and the number of new nonfarm jobs (a relatively volatile number subject to extensive revisions) came in at -140K.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Let's do some analysis of the Consumer Price Index, the best-known measure of inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) divides all expenditures into eight categories and assigns a relative size to each. The pie chart illustrates the components of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers, the CPI-U.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Note: This commentary has been updated with the latest numbers from last Friday's Employment Report. Consider: Today nearly one in three of the 65-69 cohort and one in five of the 70-74 cohort are in the labor force.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the December Consumer Price Index data this morning. The year-over-year non-seasonally adjusted Headline CPI came in at 1.36%, up from 1.17% the previous month. Year-over-year Core CPI (ex Food and Energy) came in at 1.62%, down from 1.65% the previous month and below the Fed's 2% PCE target.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is a simple computation: You take the Civilian Labor Force (people age 16 and over employed or seeking employment) and divide it by the Civilian Noninstitutional Population (those 16 and over not in the military and or committed to an institution).

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The 20th century Baby Boom was one of the most powerful demographic events in the history of the United States. We've created a series of charts to show seven age cohorts of the employed population from 1948 to the present.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The latest monthly employment report showed a gain of 245K nonfarm jobs, which consists of a gain of 190K service-providing jobs and a gain of 55K goods-producing jobs.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] As of January 11, the price of Regular and Premium were up seven and six cents each, respectively, from the previous week. According to GasBuddy.com, California has the highest average price for Regular at $3.31 and Louisiana has the cheapest at $1.99. The WTIC end of day spot price closed at 52.25, up 9.7% from the last week and its highest since February 2020.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The latest JOLTS report (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary), with data through November, is now available.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The headline number for December came in at 95.9, down 5.5 from the previous month. The index is at the 28th percentile in this series.