True Economics

Friday, May 22, 2020

21/5/20: How Pitchforks See the Greatest Economy in the World

Folks with pitchforks don't care for nuance of financial wizardry. Or for econophysics of data-rich markets. They like simple, somewhat stylized facts. So here is how the world of the last 12 years looks to them:

Nothing to add.

Thursday, May 21, 2020

21/5/20: Weekly Unemployment Claims: Updated

In the previous post, I have updated one of the charts relating to the U.S. labor market, namely the chart on employment https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2020/05/21520-horror-show-of-covid19.html. The data used is a mixture of monthly employment numbers and within-month weekly unemployment claims.

For consistency, here is the chart plotting weekly unemployment claims based on half-year cumulative numbers:

21/5/20: The Horror Show of COVID19 Unemployment

New initial claims data is out for last week, and so time to update one of my scary charts:

Here is a summary table:

At 2,174,329 new claims filed in the week ending May 16th, the lowest number in weekly new claims since the start of the COVID19 pandemic, it's quite tempting to say that things are improving in the labor markets. Alas, last week's print was greater than the entire recession period combined prints of four past recessions.

Cumulative first claims filed in the last 9 weeks now stand at 35,276,270, which amounts to 23.2 percent of the entire non-farm labor force in the U.S. at December 2019.

Wednesday, May 20, 2020

20/5/20: Post-Covid Workplace: More of the Old or Less of the New?

A couple of neat snapshots for the post-COVID world came out of the two recent surveys by the Irish CSO, as summarized in the following two charts:

Let me explain. We have been bombarded by 'the future will be vastly different' messages from all the consultancy firms striving to grab a piece of the post-COVID recovery action. One of the key messages in this chorus of cash hungry voices has been the idea that the future workforce will be employed in radically different ways to the pre-COVID status quo ante.

Now, what the above charts show is:

Businesses have indeed migrated to the remote work platforms with COVID19 shutdown measures. However, remarkably, only 30.5% of all Irish employers have moved majority of their staff to work remotely, and 23.4% of them did not alter working arrangements for the majority of their employees. The gap is just 7.1 percentage points. Significant, but not very large, given the strictness of Irish restrictions. Only 31.1% of all enterprises have adapted new methods of providing products and services (production capacity), while 52% have adapted new means of communications. In other words, there has been a sizeable, but not a dominant shift in actual business activity.
Employees, in contrast, have no desire to continue working remotely. only 6.6% of male employees and 6.9% of female employees would want to continue working from home. 60.9% of male and 43.9% of female employees would like to have a hybrid choice of sometimes working from home and sometimes being deployed in their place of work.

So the future does not seem to be dominated by employees willing to accept work from home arrangements. Meanwhile, there is no evidence that non-traditional or new methods of works are taking root in businesses, especially if one controls for the severity of Irish social distancing restrictions.

May be, we are not going to the status quo ante of the pre-COVID world when it comes to workplace arrangements. Yet, may be, the new normal won't be all that radically distinct from the status quo ante either. Middle of the road future?

20/5/20: BRIICS and G7: COVID19 Stats Summary

Given the amount of politicised vitriol surrounding the U.S., European, Russian, and now also Brazil data reporting, here is a snapshot of reported cases and deaths numbers for a range of countries:

Note: for G7, the '0.3' number reported in the last cell should read 258.7 instead.

20/5/20: US vs EU27 COVID19 Data: Update

Three charts on comparatives between the U.S. and the EU27 for COVID19 data:

Key takeaways:

U.S. now leads EU27 for 11 days and counting in terms of timing-adjusted death rates per capita of population;
Even without accounting for the 7 days lag in the deaths recorded, the U.S. overall death rate per capita is now higher than that of the EU27.
However, U.S. mortality rate, per recorded case is currently only 6.014% as opposed to 11.321% for the EU27.

20/5/20: Global COVID19 Counts and Deaths: Update

Global numbers of new cases of COVID19 reported continues to trend on the upward trend line, with no discernible peaking:

Today's new cases counts worldwide mark a new local peak at 95,197, ranking 4th highest rate of new cases reported. Since May 15th, we have recorded four days with above 7th ranked daily new cases counts. Since the start of May, we had 8 days ranked 9th and worse.

Death counts are yet to reflect this two-weeks long acceleration in the new cases arrivals. Since May 15th, worst case of death rates reported was 25th highest in the history of the series.

In simple terms, there is no evidence in amelioration in the global pandemic spread to-date. In fact, new cases arrivals are accelerating on the 7-day moving average trend line.

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

19/5/20: Hydroxychloroquine of Political Risks

That scary chart...

One, is the President in the middle of a fragile, but long-yarned for recovery. Another is the President amidst a massive economic collapse, mis-managed public health crisis, presiding over a dysfunctional administration and full of outright nastiness to anyone he dislikes, including migrants, Democrats, professionals, media, non-supporters of his agenda, etc. And they are both within 3 percentage points of each other...