Archives: August 2006

Young College Grads in Free Fall

Posted by: Michael Mandel on August 29, Categories: Labor Market

Today's income release from Census was filled with all sorts of interesting numbers. Real median household income rose for the first time since 1999. But it turns out that all...

Greg Mankiw takes a (late) shot at me

Posted by: Michael Mandel on August 19, Categories: Macro

Greg Mankiw, eminent Harvard economist and textbook author, just took a shot at an article I wrote two years ago: Back in 2004, Michael Mandel of Businessweek gave me grief...

Still catching up..one for you, Brad

Posted by: Michael Mandel on August 17, Categories: Trade

Back in March, I used Wal-mart as a good example of a non-manufacturing company creating dark matter. At the time, I wrote that Wal-mart was buying up stores overseas and...

Real wages still falling

Posted by: Michael Mandel on August 16, Categories: Labor Market

Despite today's cheerier inflation number, real wages are still falling. The BLS reports that real hourly earnings are down by about a half percentage point since February. This is not...

Tech spending, a bit belated.

Posted by: Michael Mandel on August 15, Categories: Tech

I apologize...I've only now gotten around to analyzing the tech spending numbers in the latest GDP report. Here's the bottom line--in the second quarter, business and consumer spending on info...

Will the Global Economy Save the U.S.?

Posted by: Michael Mandel on August 14, Categories: Growth

Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley writes: Strong global growth, paced by improving overseas domestic demand, will sustainably boost US net exports for the first time in two decades, in my...

Bad News and Good News on Productivity

Posted by: Michael Mandel on August 08, Categories: Growth

The bad news, of course, is the large downward revisions in the productivity growth for 2003, 2004, and 2005. Nonfarm productivity was revised down by about what I said yesterday....

Downward productivity revision coming

Posted by: Michael Mandel on August 07, Categories: Growth

Tomorrow's numbers from the BLS are likely to show a sharp downward revision in productivity growth for 2004 and 2005. Instead of an average productivity gain of 3.0% for those...

New Knees for Old

Posted by: Michael Mandel on August 01, Categories: Health

First, an apology to my readers (if any are left by now). It's been almost a month since my last post, as my spare time and attention has been absorbed...