June 3, 2022
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly report on the Employment Situation for May today. The report shows that the labor market is now in a steady pattern of slow growth, with little change from previous months. The headline numbers of the report show that the economy added 390,000 new jobs, slightly higher […]
May 6, 2022
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released two reports this week showing that the labor market continues to be extremely strong. First, on Tuesday, they released data from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from March 2022. The survey showed that job openings in the economy are at an all-time high of 11.5 […]
March 4, 2022
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their monthly report on the employment situation in February today. The report highlighted a substantial increase in payroll employment of 678,000 new jobs and a reduction of the unemployment rate to 3.8 percent. These numbers highlight a continued strengthening of the labor market in February. This followed strong […]
February 22, 2022
The employment page of the Clemson Economic Trends website has an updated link to graphs of unemployment in each county in South Carolina compared with the state unemployment rate. The plots are useful to understand how the strength of the labor market varies across the state. Among the largest three counties in the state, Greenville […]
February 13, 2022
On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the January Consumer Price Index Summary. The reported inflation numbers were within market expectations. Overall inflation showed that year-over-year prices have increased at 7.5 percent. As has been widely reported, this is the highest inflation has been since 1982. In our last post on inflation, we highlighted […]
January 16, 2022
Why have prices been rising lately? Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that consumer prices have increased by 7 percent over the last year. The last time inflation was this high was 39 years ago. What are the causes for the increase in consumer prices? There are several factors that might be behind […]
January 7, 2022
This week the BLS released the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for November and the Employment Situation for December this week. Together, these reports provide an updated look at the status of the labor market. Given that the reports reflect data from the end of November and the week containing December 12th, respectively, […]
December 10, 2021
Here are a few notes from the economic news this week: The BLS reported that consumer prices continued to rise at a rapid pace in November. The inflation rate rose to 6.8 percent over the previous 12 month period, the highest rate since 1982. Energy and new automobiles are the categories with the largest increases, […]
December 3, 2021
Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the employment situation report for November. The data showed that the US economy added 210,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate declined to 4.2 percent from 4.6 percent in October. While the number of new jobs was below expectations of another month of over 500,000, the report shows […]
November 11, 2021
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for October, reporting that inflation reached a 6.2 percent annual rate. This is the highest rate of price increases seen in the United States since 1990. The report showed a large one-month percent change in the CPI of 0.9 percent after lower increases of […]
