Economy
August 16, 2025 — Bill Glahn
This statistic actually explains a lot. From KRON-TV, California unemployment rate worst in the nation. It’s not a new development, it was also true in June. The change this month is that it appears California has broken the tie with Nevada to hold first place all alone. KRON reports that the Golden State’s unemployment rate has edged up to 5.5 percent. In June, South Dakota had the nation’s lowest unemployment
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August 5, 2025 — John Hinderaker
When President Trump fired the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, most people considered it an instance of Trump’s petulance. This is how Trump himself explained it: In 2024, it was believed by many people–including me–that the BLS was trying to help first Joe Biden, then Kamala Harris, by releasing good jobs numbers, which would get a lot of publicity, and then quietly revising them downward when
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August 2, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Socialism has done more damage than anything else in human history. The Black Death is probably in second place. And yet, you can always find a few people who want to try it again. Why is that? Mostly, I think, because socialism offers to fulfill the dream of power over others. Socialism is a rigid, two-class system: you have an all-powerful elite at the top, and everyone else essentially in
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August 1, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Rita Panahi is an excellent television host on Sky News Australia. She has her own show as well as being one of the hosts on Outsiders. I was on her program Wednesday night; the video below starts with her wildly popular Lefties Losing It segment. I come on around three minutes into the segment and am on for the duration. We talked about failed predictions of economic doom, Trump’s tariff
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July 30, 2025 — Bill Glahn
We are so back. From the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), CNBC has the headline, U.S. economy grew at a 3% rate in Q2, a better-than-expected pace even as Trump’s tariffs hit. You will recall that in Q1, the economy appeared to shrink because of a surge of imports trying to beat the clock on new tariffs. Imports count as a negative in the GDP accounting. The U.S. economy grew
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July 25, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday the Democratic Party put out this graphic, seeking to blame high grocery prices on Donald Trump: The chart obviously documents the explosive increase in grocery prices that took place under the Biden regime. It was widely mocked on Twitter, and the Democrats deleted it. To my knowledge, no one has tried to explain the mysterious reference to “July 2024.” A friend comments: This is what happens when you hire
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July 17, 2025 — Bill Glahn
It has now been proven that I’m living in a completely different reality from most. But first, from CNBC, S&P 500 rises to new closing record, boosted by solid earnings and U.S. economic data. CNBC reports that today’s was the ninth record close of 2025. As for the Rasmussen Report’s reading on Trump’s approval ratings, he stands at exactly breakeven today, 49-49. That figure is up from some lower numbers
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July 10, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Andrew Stuttaford is the editor of National Review’s Capital Matters. This is from his review of John Cassidy’s Capitalism and Its Critics in the May 17-18 Review section of the Wall Street Journal, which appeared under the headline “Enemies of the Market Mindset.” Stuttaford writes toward the end of his review: * * * * * Mr. Cassidy observes that choosing his cast of critics “was greatly helped by the
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July 7, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Back in 1995, Scott and I wrote a paper for American Experiment titled “The Truth About Income Inequality.” It was somewhat famous in its time, and C-SPAN televised a debate between me and then-Congressman Martin Sabo on the issue. One of the many points we made in that paper was that the “shrinking middle class” was a myth. It was true, by arbitrary definition, that the number of people in
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July 3, 2025 — Bill Glahn
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued its much-anticipated monthly jobs report. CNBC reports, U.S. payrolls increased by 147,000 in June, more than expected. Not only did the jobs number beat expectations, but the BLS revised previous months higher. From the report itself, The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for April was revised up by 11,000, from +147,000 to +158,000, and the change for May was revised up
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June 30, 2025 — Bill Glahn
Another day, another record on Wall Street. The S&P 500 index closed above the 6200 mark for the first time ever. Panicans hardest hit. The significance of the date is that it concludes the 2nd quarter of 2025. So, if and when America’s millions of investors check out their quarterly statements, they will discover an equity market up over 10 percent in the past 90 days. I’d previously mentioned the
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June 28, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Everyone knows that California, New York and Illinois are circling the drain after years of failed liberal government. Fewer are aware that Minnesota, once hailed by Barack Obama as the exemplar of a successful blue state, is also on the rocks. Historically, Minnesota was a prosperous place. The most basic measure of economic well-being is per capita GDP. By this measure, Minnesota always enjoyed a “premium” over the U.S. as
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June 27, 2025 — Bill Glahn
From CNBC, S&P 500 closes at a record Friday, overcoming even more trade angst. The S&P 500 hit fresh records on Friday as traders managed to look past new comments from President Donald Trump tied to U.S.-Canada tariffs. The broad market index’s rise new highs marks a sharp turnaround from the lows seen in April during the height of trade policy tensions. The scoreboard for the S&P 500 index for
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June 9, 2025 — Bill Glahn
According to official U.S. Government statistics, in the two months from March 2025 to May 2025, the number of foreign-born workers in the U.S. workforce dropped by over one million. As you can see from the graph above, the data are volatile. We’ve seen intervals of similar declines (Aug. to Dec. 2024) and intervals of big jumps (Dec. 2024 to Jan. 2025). During the first few months of COVID, 2.5
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June 8, 2025 — Bill Glahn
A couple of golden nuggets are buried within the jobs report issued on Friday. You will recall the market’s warm embrace of the report, as indexes surged. From the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, Federal-government employment shrank by 22,000 jobs, the fourth consecutive month of such declines. The federal government has now shed 59,000 jobs in four months. In fact, as the graph on page A-2 shows, even
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June 6, 2025 — Bill Glahn
The stock market today, represented by the S&P 500 index, finished the day’s trading at 6,000.36. The market was up for the week and for the month of June (so far). The significance of the 6,000 level goes beyond the round number. We are now above the level on the day Pres. Trump took office for his second term back in January. The market had not been above 6,000 since
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May 30, 2025 — Bill Glahn
The stock market (S&P 500 index) ended the day’s trading with a 7 percent gain for the month of May. The market is also up for the year to date. Likewise, with Pres. Trump’s approval rating. According to Rasmussen, the final report for May has Trump’s approval rating at 53 percent, five points higher than the final report for April. In the end, he did spend every day in May
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