Oops, my bad. I read my spreadsheet rather than the OMB schedule of release dates to say on Monday we had five reports left in January. Unfortunately, today’s excellent GDP report was the last bit of news we’ll be getting. Even that welcome news left the good news index (GNI) at 55.9, down a great deal from December. A slow, but not entirely negative, start.
I’ve finally caught up with the calculations on our proprietary index of labor market conditions; no big prize for having guessed that it went down a bit in January as well. Discouraging as that is, the index edged a bit closer to its 6-month average, signaling further deceleration in the labor market’s slide.
On balance, I can stick with my call from December 4, 2009, that the recession sputtered into recovery in April of that year. Based solely on the average relationship between business-cycle troughs and labor-market toughs in recent recessions, it may be the last quarter of this year before the labor market begins a sustained upswing.
Sales of new one-family houses in December 2009 were at a rate 7.6 percent below November‘s. More bad news for this troubled sector.
New orders for manufactured durable goods in December increased 0.3 percent. Good news, especially with shipments up and inventories nudging down.
Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009. Good and had more than just inventory accumulation behind it.
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