3/7/20: Labor Market COVID19ed

I have been running a regular update on my 'America's Scariest Charts' covering labor markets developments (see most recent one here: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2020/07/2720-americas-scariest-charts-updated.html). These charts rely heavily on two data sets: Non-Farm Payrolls data (monthly frequency), and initial unemployment claims (weekly frequency). I ignored for now two other data series:

1. Average duration of unemployment: this is, of course, rising, but from low levels, as the COVID19 crisis is still relatively young; and
2. Continued unemployment insurance claims: these data have been also proximate to the initial unemployment claims through the period of February-May.

Now, with two months of some jobs recovery, it is worth looking at (2) above. So here they are: continued unemployment claims charts:

Let us start with history:

There is no scaling in the above chart, just the numbers of people claiming unemployment insurance on continued basis. Which is telling: in recessions, these rise; in recoveries they fall. You can see that the lowest unemployment claims tend to happen some months before the onset of the subsequent recession. And recoveries take long. Of course, in the 1970s, there were fewer people in the labour force and, therefore, the absolute numbers of the unemployed were also lower.

Which means, it is worth rescaling each episode of rising and falling unemployment claims to the pre-recession levels ('norm') and to the recession peaks, taking into the account how long does it take unemployment claims accumulated during the recession to drop back to the levels of pre-recession claims.

So, methodology. I define 'normal' unemployment claims level as being the lowest level attained in the 12 weeks preceding each recession. This is set as an index of 100 for every recession. We look at the period of 6 weeks prior to the onset of the recession to identify the starting level of recession in terms of unemployment levels (these are weeks -6 through 1 on the X-axis). We then look at subsequent weeks (non-negative values on the X-axis) and plot index of unemployment claims (current unemployment claims normalized to the 'normal' level) through the recession and into the recovery, mapping these until one of the two events occurs:

1. Either the index returns back to 100 - meaning unemployment claims finally are restored to the level of the pre-recession levels or the 'normal'; or
2. In cases where this does not happen, until the onset of the next recession.

First, let us do this for all recessions since 1967 (when the data starts) through the end of 2019 - ignoring for now the COVID19 period.

Lots of interesting stuff in the above.

• 2008-2009 Great Recession was long - longer than any other recession - in terms of labor markets recovery to 'normal' levels of unemployment claims. It was also sharp - second sharpest on record - in terms of the mass of unemployment claims at the peak of the recession. 
• Legacy of the 1990-1991 recession was also painfully long, but shallower on the impact side (peak levels of unemployment claims). 
• Epic 1973-1975 recession was horrific: it had a long lasting impact on unemployment claims and, in fact, it never got the point of returning unemployment claims levels back to the pre-recession 'normal'. 
• We normally think of the 2001 recession as being 'technical' - caused just by the gyrations in the stock markets, aka the dot.com bubble burst. But in reality it too was pretty long in terms of its impact on the unemployed and it was pretty sharp as well.

And so on... but now, time to bring in the COVID19 pandemic. Let us start by just plotting it with the rest of the data. Boom!

The COVID19 pandemic made so many people claim unemployment insurance - on continued basis, not just one-off first time claims that anyone can file - that you can no longer meaningfully consider the rest of the recessions in comparison. In data analysis, we say that COVID19 pandemic is an influential outlier - it distorts our analysis of all other recessions. In this case, it is useful to use logarithmic scale to visualize the data. So here it is:

 

Even with log-transform, as above, the COVID19 crisis is off-the charts! No one has ever seen anything like this. Which we know.

The recovery from the pandemic has been sharp as well (steeper slope than in other recessions), but both charts above highlight the fact that whilst the U.S. economy is restoring some jobs during May-June re-opening period, the process of restoring these jobs is slow. Unlike what you hear from the White House and the Republican Party and its media, we are not in a 'tremendous recovery' and there is no 'roaring growth'. There is a mountain of pain that is being chipped away. At a current rate of 'chipping away', it can take the jobs markets some 10 months to come back to the pre-COVID19 'normal'. But that assumes that there will be no permanent or long-term jobs losses from the pandemic and the aftermath of the pandemic. It also assumes that the second wave of COVID19 infections that the U.S. is currently experiencing is not going to lead to such losses of jobs, and will not result in return to April-May levels of restrictions, and will not trigger a third wave of pandemic in Autumn. All three 'ands' must hold to get to that 10 months recovery. 

Stay tuned, I will be updating this chart as we go.

3/7/20: Services & Composite PMIs Q2 2020: BRIC

Note: charts below are not updated for full 2Q 2020 data on Global Services and Composite PMIs, which are yet to be reported for June and thus cover April-May period only. I will update these later.

Starting with Services sector activity:

BRIC Services index fell from a deeply recessionary 44.9 reading for 1Q 2020 to 40.9 in 2Q 2020, signalling accelerated rate of contraction in the sector across the four emerging markets economies. 1Q 2020 is now the second lowest quarter of index performance on the record, with 2Q 2020 coming in as the worst quarter on the record.

China was the strongest performer, with 2Q 2020 index at 52.6, four quarters high, and statistically in a relatively robust growth territory. Historically, this reading is consistent with GDP growth of 4-4.5 percent.

Russia recorded the second strongest reading, albeit at sharply recessionary 32.0 in 2Q 2020, down from the already recessionary 47.7 in 1Q 2020. 2Q 2020 is the lowest reading on record for Russian Services sectors. So being second wins no prizes.

Brazil Services PMI fell from a sharply recessionary 45.9 in 1Q 2020 to an even more depressing 30.3 in 2Q 2020. Needless to say, 2Q 2020 is the worst reading in Brazil Services PMI history.

India Services PMI has been signalling an outright collapse of economic activity in 2Q 2020, having fallen to 17.2 against 1Q 2020 reading of 54.1. The economy is literally paralysed.

In the entire history of BRICs PMIs, there has been only one other instance of two consecutive sub-50 readings - in 4Q 2008 and 1Q 2009, when the two-quarters average of the index was 47.7. Current index reading has !Q-2Q 2020 average of 42.6.

Given the above and the Manufacturing PMIs (covered here: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2020/07/1720-manufacturing-pmis-q2-2020-bric.html), BRICs Composite Indices (note: I am using Markit data and relative GDP weights for each economy) have been woeful as well.

Brazil Composite average for 1Q 2020 was at 46.9. This fell to 31.8 in 2Q 2020. A recession in 1Q 2020 has accelerated dramatically into 2Q 2020 across all sectors of the economy.

Russia Composite average in 2Q 2020 was at 32.6, marginally better than that of Brazil, and well below already-recessionary reading of 47.7 in 1Q 2020. This, too, signals accelerating collapse of the economy.

India Composite index was in the expansionary territory at 54.8 in 1Q 2020 and it fell to an abysmally low 19.9 in 2Q 2020, indicating that the country economy came to a standstill in April-June. This is the lowest Composite index reading on record for any BRIC economy.

China Composite index fell from 52.6 in 4Q 2019 to a contractionary 42.0 in 1Q 2020, before recovering back to 52.6 in 2Q 2020. If treated symmetrically, this means that the Chinese economy did not fully recover to pre-crisis growth rates in 2Q 2020, but has made some progress on the path to recovery. There are multiple caveats that apply to this analysis, however, so treat it as purely directionally-indicative, as opposed to a measure of actual magnitudes.

As noted earlier, I will update these charts in subsequent posts, once we have Global PMIs reproted.

3/7/20: ECB Jumping the Proverbial Shark?

ECB's money-printing press has been running overtime these weeks. So let's put the Euro area central banks' monetary policy shenanigans into perspective, comparing them to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) related measures, the Euro area sovereign debt crisis and the subsequent painful recovery:

Good thing: ECB has deployed COVID19 response at scale and fast. Bad thing: it is highly uncertain how much growth all of this activism is going to sustain. From 2000 through 1Q 2020, there is zero (statistically) relationship between current GDP growth (nominal) and ECB assets accumulation in the same year and in prior year:

Even ignoring statistical significance, the relationship itself is not positive, especially in the lagged data. In other words, there is absolutely no evidence of causality from ECB asset purchases to higher economic growth. While reasons for this results are complex (and not really a matter for this post), there are some serious questions to be asked as to how much tangible growth is being sustained by the Central Bank's activism. On the other side of the same argument, if we assume that the ECB purchases of assets are effective at sustaining growth in the Euro area economy, then we must have some serious questions as to what the Euro area economy is capable of producing in terms of GDP growth without such interventions.

In simple terms: we are damned if we do, and damned if we do not:

• Either monetary activism is not effective at sustaining growth, or
• If monetary activism is effective, then the state of the economic institutions overall is so dire, it remains comatose even with extraordinary supports from Frankfurt.

Neither is a pleasant conclusion. And there is not a third alternative.

Just in case you need a reality check on how poor Euro area's growth has been, here is a summary:

2/7/20: COVID19 Update: US vs EU27

A quick update of key charts for USA vs EU27 comparatives for COVID19:

First up: deaths per 1 million. U.S. continues to tear away from the EU27 already unenviable record:

The basket case of American 'public health' system is shining across the board: in numbers roaring above the past records:

And in deaths counts staying well above those in Europe:

At this stage, it is plain evident that the U.S. healthcare system is not fit for purpose.

Unless its purpose is to bankrupt those getting ill, in which it excels. U.S. delinquencies on all consumer credit and leases were up in 1Q 2020 some 11.28 percent year-on-year even before COVID19 pandemic hit. As the bills mount, and healthcare bills come poring for the unfortunate households caught up in the pandemic, things are going to get much worse.

No matter how you spin the data above, the problem is clearly not restricted to the lack of White House leadership alone. The U.S. has mismanaged response to the pandemic at

• The Federal level (lack of coherent policies and guidelines, delayed responses, delayed interventions and completely backward messaging/signalling by the President), but 
• Also at the states' level. Even in the states that stepped up to the plate earlier in the pandemic (e.g. California), a rush to relax restrictions, coupled with the lack of political will to impose stricter requirements on use of masks and the speed of opening up have resulted in a renewed surge in COVID19 cases.

As the result, the U.S. is now fully comparable to the less advanced, less wealthy countries, such as Brazil, than to the more advanced healthcare systems and economies of the EU27. As Noah Smith put it in his Bloomberg column last week, titled "Coronavirus Brings American Decline Out in the Open", if, on foot of collapsing U.S. institutions, exposed by the COVID19 crisis, international "capital begins to abandon the U.S. and the dollar in large amounts, the currency

will crash, ... large-scale unrest would undoubtedly result and -- in the worst-case scenario -- the U.S. could collapse like Venezuela. This is an outcome to be avoided at all costs. But it’s an outcome that is no longer out of the realm of possibility, thanks to the complacency, arrogance and misplaced priorities of U.S. leaders and the deep and bitter divisions among U.S. voters. If the U.S. goes from rich, world-straddling colossus to floundering dysfunctional developing nation in just a few decades, it will be one of the most spectacular instances of civilizational decline in world history."

Steep price to pay for decades of incompetence. 

2/7/20: America's Scariest Charts Updated

Some updates from the US Labour Markets to our America's Scariest Charts series today.

First, headline official Non-Farm Payrolls data for the month of June 2020 is out today. Here is the visual:

Total Non-Farm Payrolls dropped during the COVID19 pandemic to the crisis-period low of 130,303,000 in April 2020. This marks a drop of 22,160,000 on pre-crisis high - a decline of 14.53%, the sharpest drop on record for any recession. Since then, the payrolls improved in May and again in June. Payrolls rose 2,699,000 in May and by 4,800,000 in June, prompting the White House (and the army of its trolls) to herald an 'unprecedented' 'tremendous' recovery. However:

• Despite these gains, current employment levels remain 14,661,000 below pre-COVID19 highs.  
• Relative to the pre-COVID19 trend, current payrolls are 15,398,000 below where they would have been were the pre-crisis trends to remain place. 

Hardly 'tremendous' success so far.

Summary of comparatives of the current recession to prior recessions:

Now, next in the set of our America's Scariest Charts: initial unemployment claims 9also released today). The table above already shows the latest print for these series - for the week ending June 27, 2020, at 1,445,481 new claims filed. This was virtually unchanged on the revised final estimate for the week ending June 20, 2020 that came in at 1,460,056. New claims have basically stabilized from the week of May 30th through latest. 

The six-months moving sum of all initial unemployment claims filings is now at a massive 47.477,907. This number, of course, are reflective of claims filed. And it does not reflect expired claims or people moving from unemployment to employment. Hence, it is useful in only highlighting the relative magnitude of the current jobs crisis controlling for duration.

Prior to the COVID19 pandemic, there has been only one instance of initial unemployment claims exceeding 1 million count in any given week - during the week of January 9, 1982, when there were 1,073,500 new claims filed. Which means that last week's print - although well below peak COVID19 filings - still stands almost 35% above the worst weekly unemployment claims filing in pre-COVID19 history. 

So here is the overall 'recovery' to-date:

You can call it 'magnificent' or 'tremendous' or you can call it 'ugly'. I guess your perspective will depend on your party affiliations and the membership in the 1% vs 99% clubs.

2/7/20: COVID19 Update: World Cases and Deaths

Updating charts for data through today's ECDC release:

Global cases (above) are at an all-time high, global deaths are trending up (below).

Rates of growth, smoothed, confirm the above:

1/7/20: COVID19 Update: Three Charts on COVID19 Developments in Major Emerging Markets

Via Danske Bank Research, three really neat sets of visualizations for abating COVID19 crisis dynamics in major emerging markets:

Note: the number of tests per capita in Russia is in part explaining the lower death rates from COVID19 there. Russia runs earlier testing and interventions, leading to longer stays in hospitals, higher hospitalization rates with lower ICU use rates, allowing for earlier interventions. However, Russia also produces death statistics for COVID19 that are different in methodology to the EU27 standards. Specifically, Russia claims to carry out more autopsies in cases of all deaths, allowing it to attribute deaths to primary causes, e.g. cardiac failures, that may have COVID19 as underlying trigger.

1/7/20: Manufacturing PMIs Q2 2020: BRIC

BRIC economies reported their June manufacturing PMIs, so we can update Q2 2020 data. Here is the chart:

Despite improving PMIs in all BRIC economies through June 2020, quarterly readings remains deeply recessionary in all BRICs except for China.

• Brazil Manufacturing PMI averaged 40.6 in 2Q 2020 down from 1Q reading of 50.6. Brazil Manufacturing sector growth was slowing down from the start of 4Q 2019 and was showing anaemic growth (statistically, zero growth) in 1Q 2020 before COVID19 restrictions kicked in. June 2020 monthly reading rose, however, to 51.6 - signalling pretty robust growth on a monthly basis for the first time since the end of February. Some good news, but not enough to lift 2Q 2020 average above 50.0 mark.
• Russia Manufacturing PMI remains below 50.0 in June, as it did consecutively since the end of April 2019. This marks 14 months of continued contraction, only accelerated by COVID19. Quarterly PMI for 2Q 2020 is deep under water at 39.0 - the worst reading in history, matching that of the lows of the 2009 recession in 1Q 2009. June monthly uptick to 49.4 is still leaving Russian Manufacturing index below zero growth mark of 50.0. 
• India Manufacturing PMI rose from 30.8 in May to 47.2 in June 2020, but remains well below zero growth line. Quarterly index is now at 35.1 for 2Q 2020, which is an all-time low. 
• China Manufacturing PMI was the only BRIC index to reach into positive growth territory in 2Q 2020, at 50.4. Statistically, this reading is indifferent from zero growth conditions in the sector, however. 

Overall, GDP-shares weighted BRIC Manufacturing index is at 45.0 in 2Q 2020, down from 49.1 in 1Q 2020. Not as bad as 4Q 2008 - 1Q 2009 readings of 43.1 and 43.7, respectively, but bad. Still, BRICs as a group managed to sustain less manufacturing decline than the Global Manufacturing index which collapsed to 43.6 in 2Q 2020 from 48.4 in 1Q 2020.

30/6/20: COVID19 Update: Russia

Russia is going to the voting booths and the country is - by a mile - nowhere near being ready to relax COVID19 restrictions. This is risking tragic consequences in the near future.

Cases and deaths are still high. For deaths, this holds even if we do not correct for Russian reported death rates, influenced by hell knows what - different methodology (yes), shoddy local reporting (may be), lags in reporting (probably), Kremlin conspiracy (probably not, but who knows) and so on.

Correcting Russian data on reported deaths is hard, primarily (in my opinion, due to different methodologies in reporting - link below). At the upper tail end of the arguments for adjustment (https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/06/10/moscow-sees-58-mortality-spike-in-may-as-russias-low-virus-deaths-questioned-a70532 and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/04/st-petersburg-death-tally-casts-doubt-on-russian-coronavirus-figures) we have Moscow and St Petersburg cases in May (peak contagion and deaths growth month in the most severely impacted region in Russia with massive population density). So ca 60% estimate for understatement in Moscow most likely runs at around 45 percent for Russia as a whole. Which would roughly be in line with my model.

Notice, even with adjustment (which yields mortality to-date 44% higher than reported), Russia death rate from COVID19 remains relatively low (see comparatives to BRIICS below).

Key takeaway: Russia is not ready to relax COVID19 restrictions beyond modest local restrictions easing. The country is most certainly not ready for allowing in-person voting.

30/6/20: COVID19 Update: US vs EU27

World counts update for today can be found here: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2020/07/30620-covid19-update-world-cases-and.html.

Now, updating charts for the U.S. and the EU27. Note: normalized charts show cases and deaths adjusted for population differences. 7-days lagged data reflects differences between the two data sets in terms of arrival of first deaths.

As always, all comments in the charts (click on the chart to enlarge).

Total counts unadjusted for population size differences. Key: this shows the U.S. catching up with (larger in population) EU27 in total numbers of deaths, having vastly outstripped the EU27 in the number of cases already:

Adjusting for population differences:

Illustrating the distance between the U.S. and the EU27 in the number of deaths, adjusted for population differences and a time lag in the U.S. onset of deaths, relative to the EU27:

Actual cases, daily arrivals:

Actual deaths, daily additions:

The U.S. cases dynamics behave distinctly from every other advanced economy, and not in a good way. U.S. death counts also significantly exceed those in the EU27, as well as every other large advanced economy. Again, not in a good way.

30/6/20: COVID19 Update: World Cases and Deaths

New cases and deaths updated. All commentary in the charts (click to enlarge).

Adding a new graph to collection: this looks at smoothed-trends in both deaths and counts of new cases:

30/6/20: COVID19 Impact on SMEs and Employment

Some really good mapping in terms of financial exposures/risk and COVID19 vulnerabilities within the U.S. small and medium enterprises sectors, via McKinsey & Co:

Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/americas/which-small-businesses-are-most-vulnerable-to-covid-19-and-when. Interactive graphs: https://covid-tracker.mckinsey.com/small-business-vulnerability.

Additional: vulnerabilities across jobs https://covid-tracker.mckinsey.com/vulnerable-jobs/industry-occupation.