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2022’s Ten Most ‘Conspiratorial’ Events

2022’s Ten Most ‘Conspiratorial’ Events

Via 21st Century Wire,

It’s New Year’s Eve again, and with that our time-honoured tradition of…

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2022's Ten Most 'Conspiratorial' Events

Via 21st Century Wire,

It’s New Year’s Eve again, and with that our time-honoured tradition of looking back at the most conspiratorial events of the past year. 

It goes without saying that 2022 has seemed like an extended nightmare for many, but it has also served as a reoccurring revelation too. Still, many are glad to see the back of it, while cautiously optimistic that this next year ‘couldn’t get any worse.’ That remains to be seen, and more insights on that front are available in our other annual opus, Trends and Predictions for 2023.

Another important truism: the tin foil hat conspiracy theorists continue to be vindicated as significant events unfold. So much so, that we can now lay the common trope, “Oh, it’s just a coincidence” – safely to rest. Henceforth, those who still insist on referring to bona fide conspiracies as mere coincidences, shall be dubbed as coincidence theorists.

Before we get to the top ten list, here are some of the honourable mentions from the past year…

Here are some of this past year’s standout stories which didn’t make the top tier. We should first mention that the ongoing fallout from the experimental mRNA ‘vaccine’ roll-out and the vaccine passport/digital ID could easily be at the top of any list of conspiracies and scandals, and will unfortunately remain as a looming threat to the lives of billions of people for many years, if not decades to come. That said, some other controversial events of note from this past year include the incredible Canadian Truckers Protest against a vaccine-obsessed Trudeau regime and its unprecedented draconian attack on Canadian citizens demanding a restoration of their basic human rights. We also saw the mysterious demolition of the infamous Georgia Guide Stones monument to Malthusian eugenics, the precarious trial of Jeffrey Epstein’s partner in crime Ghislane Maxwell which somehow netted no VIP client names (and amazingly, she’s still alive in one piece), and also the bizarre political tale of Nancy Pelosi’s husband Pauli P. supposedly getting mauled with a hammer by a known local personality in their San Francisco mansion – a story promptly buried my the MSM right before the election. On the tech front, we should point to the ominous unleashing by Google’s OpenAI of their new ChatGPT artificial intelligence bot. It was a moderate year for false flags and mass shootings, with a few heavily politicized high-profile anomalous events like the Uvalde School Shooting in Texas and the Club Q Shooting in Colorado Springs. In Europe, the Dutch Farmers Revolt exposing a pernicious anti-farming and GMO food agenda by the World Economic Forum and Bill Gates networks, along with meat shortages and continued supply chain disruptions – all converging to form the perfect financial storm which now threatens to ravage an already weak and unstable global economy. Later in the year came a real blast from the past, reports of an imminent document release which contains some evidence of the CIA’s role in the JFK Assassination. Granted, these are just a few in a long list of major events which didn’t make our final cut.

So without further ado, here are the top ten conspiracies of 2022...

10. US Midterm Election Fraud

Considering all that is going on in the US and internationally at this time, most Americans would agree that the 2022 Midterm Election was one of the most important and consequential elections of their lifetime. Both the House of Representatives and US Senate were up for grabs, and there was a real opportunity to correct a serious imbalance of power in Washington. However, before Nov. 8th there was a real air of trepidation, as the shadow of the controversial 2020 Election still loomed large, with accusations of widespread and systemic election fraud still unresolved. The sum of all fears became real again in the key swing state of Arizona: on election morning most of the voting machines in the state’s largest population center, Maricopa County, just happened to malfunction. Officials claimed it was just an unfortunate coincidence. That was only the beginning, as boxes with thousands of ballots continued to mysteriously turn up after election day. In short, the Arizona election became a national and international embarrassment. As it goes, the state’s election and processes were being controlled by Democratic Party operatives – who then slow-walked the vote counting for two weeks after the election was meant to be over. Not surprisingly, the favorite in the governor’s race, Republican, Kari Lake (image, above) barely lost to an unremarkable Democrat candidate Katie Hobbs (if you believe the final contested result), and to add insult to injury, the person in charge of the state’s election debacle… was Katie Hobbs, who happened to also be serving as Arizona’s Secretary of State. Kari Lake sued the state to demand a recount and a run-off, but political and media pressure on the courts prompted the judge to dismiss her challenge – despite having truckloads of evidence proving foul play. Lake has appealed the decision. What’s important is that this time the world saw what happened, and the state and Democratic Party machine was widely exposed – effectively vindicating millions of Americans who still hold well-founded suspicions about the infamous 2020 Election which managed to install the corrupt, deep state candidate Joe Biden into power. Similar anomalies were observed in 2022 – in states like Nevada and Pennsylvania. In the end, the Republicans still managed to flip the House of Representatives by a slim margin, while losing the US Senate by an even slimmer margin. In a country where half the population still do not trust the democratic process, civility and stability are now teetering on borrowed time.

9. Monkeypox

As the Covid gravy train began to break down, the globalists’ Government-Media-Pharma Complex grew desperate for a new ‘pandemic’ to maintain the structures of control and human surveillance which they erected during the contrived Covid-19 ‘state of emergency’. Enter a relatively unknown and exotically-titled alleged pathogenMonkeypox. Attempts were made to portray this mythical epidemic as some sort of universal threat, and when that failed, the Establishment then pivoted to try and promote it as a new “gay disease” in an attempt to emulate a familiar template used to reproduce the perennial (and highly questionable) HIV crisis. In the end, their fear campaign never really took off, but not before a brand-new vaccine was created to “protect the public from another potentially deadly epidemic.” And after all that failed, efforts were then made to use it in order to harvest some political capital – by sacrificing this brand at the altar of political correctness, as social justice clerics demanded the mythical virus be rebranded due to fears that name “Monkeypox” was somehow racist…? But how? Against primates? No one was quite sure what they meant. Oh well. Introducing “MPOX”. Rinse, and repeat. Welcome to the world of Modern Virology (aka Big Pharma’s main meal ticket). Meanwhile, we’re all waiting with bated breath for Bill Gates’ self-confessed “next pandemic.”

8. China Lockdown Redux 

Just when the Chinese were beginning to get a taste of freedom again, the Central Party decide to fire-up the pandemic control grid again. In February 2022, an alleged COVID-19 ‘outbreak’ was announced in the city of Shanghai. Central Party claimed that the alleged ‘outbreak’ was caused by the Omicron variant. The state then proceeded to decree a new “Zero Covid” policy, before locking-down more cities, and dragging the country back into the authoritarian hell of February 2020. As it turned out, the real reason this new ‘Covid wave’ materialized was because of nondiagnostic PCR testing ‘case’ data generated through more meaningless mass COVID-19 testing. Finally, after 8 months of Covid madness, foreign investment began drying up, and China’s already fragile economy was destabilizing. The state’s overzealousness then triggered mass protests against Orwellian government restrictions, with millions of Chinese taking to the streets across the country to demand their basic freedom. This prompted Central Party to quickly abandon its failing social control program, and not surprisingly their economy began to rebound as people and business got back to work. Rather interestingly, the US government seemed unhappy that China was taking its foot off the authoritarian pedal, and so Biden then levied an administrative punishment against China by slapping a new mandatory Covid test travel restriction on any Chinese travelers arriving in the USA. It really seems that as the world’s most populous nation, without China’s total compliance the globalists’ New Normal agenda will quickly fall apart. This incident should tell us all we need to know about the so-called ‘global pandemic.’

7. The Trans Agenda

On March 17, 2022, Lia Thomas (formerly named William Thomas), 22, became the first openly transgender athlete to win America’s top college sports title – following a cringe worthy  victory in the women’s 500 yard freestyle. Let us explain: because Thomas believes he is now a woman, some institutions like the NCAA – who have come under political pressure from the radical leftist wing of the political machine – now feel obligated to allow a biological male like Thomas to compete against physically inferior biological females (aka real women). The victory was short-lived though, as the woke bombast of the Thomas debacle quickly became a lightning rod in the debate about so-called “trans women” in sports – triggering a massive backlash against this extreme ideological invasion of womens’ competitive sports. Not long after, international sporting organizations ruled that biological male athletes like Thomas can no longer compete in top races. FINA, the world swimming’s governing body, also announced plans to create a new “open” category of competition to include “transgender women” (aka men who believe they are female). Now that the debate has been blown wide open, expect further course corrections as people gradually return to their senses on the issue. But do not expect radical leftists to surrender just yet, as the culture wars will continue to rage on.

6. FTX and SBF Ponzi Scheme

Like the S&L scandal of the 1980’s, and the Eron and Bernie Madoff financial scams – this latest iteration of the classic Ponzi Scheme managed to destabilize markets and rob countless investors of their life savings. Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), a 30-year-old crypto celebrity icon and celebrated savant, founded what he claimed were two separate companies: a hedge fund called Alameda Research and FTX cryptocurrency exchange, before going the whole hog by hyping his own fiat crypto token and then used it as collateral to create hundreds of millions of loans for himself, before robbing his depositors to embezzle and gamble away untold fortunes on the markets. And that’s just the beginning. It turns out that SBF was the number two political donor to the Democratic Party, and used his laundered proceeds to bankroll a sizeable portion of the Democrats’ 2020 Midterm Election campaigns, not to mention his mother just happening to be a chief organizer for the Democratic Party as well. Not surprisingly, the Biden Administration waited until after the Midterm Election to begin an investigation into the floppy haired SBF and his FTX ponzi empire. SBF was eventually arrested in the Bahamas and awaits federal trial in the Southern District of New York. The trial is sure to be both shocking and entertaining in equal measure. But the real question remains: how will this drama effect the government’s role in the world of cryptocurrency? More crucially: is the FTX takedown really a controlled demolition of crypto designed to pave the way for an oppressive Central Bank Digital Currency global ‘cashless’ takeover? We shall see…

5. CBDC

2022 was the year the CBDC has made landfall, and is currently waiting in the wings of the halls of power. For the last few years, elites have been gathering at globalist confabs like Bilderberg and the World Economic Forum in Davos to wax lyrical about the need to abolish the ‘old money’, or ‘dirty cash’ – and to make way for the central bankers’ new Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) – turning the planet into a full-blown cashless society. In the US, this technocratic overhaul is being hatched under the guise of “Project Hamilton” as a joint effort between the Boston Federal Reserve Bank and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to design and plan the release of a “digital dollar” – which will destroy the value of old dollar in order to force people onto the new monetary matrix. As cash disappears from the economy, so does privacy.  Essentially, CBDCs are meant to be an electronic form of fiat money in a particular country or region, but unlike Bitcoin, this digital coin is centralized and regulated by the governments and their central banks. Without ever putting this matter to a public vote, elites and technocrats have simply been moving ahead to implement this authoritarian monetary system. While the mainstream media and globalist think tanks claim that the CBDC is designed to reign in crypto currencies, and supposedly tackle crimes like money laundering, and tax avoidance (something which elites partake in daily), the reality of the CBDC is something altogether different. They plan to issue a programmable currency whereby the bank can control where and what you are allowed to spend your CBDC’s on. They can also shut your money off. Imagine this digital money system combined with a Chinese-style social credit score, or a vaccine passport/digital ID. This dystopian digital control grid will transform commerce and human society in ways we can possibly imagine. For these reasons, many rightly believe that this is the road to digital slavery. The window of opportunity to push back against this massive authoritarian assault is now closing.

4. The Twitter Files

This is the biggest tech scandal in modern history – and it’s gone mostly unreported by 90% of the mainstream media because of the partisan nature of its revelations. The Twitter Files have provided an unprecedented look behind the dirty inner workings of the firm’s opaque censorship regime, and exposes an openly fascist merger of Silicon Valley’s ‘Big Tech’ companies and the bloated National Security State. In early December, under new management of owner and CEO Elon Musk, Twitter HQ began disseminating a massive trove of internal documents revealing the direct collusion between former CEO Jack Dorsey’s corporate regime and the US Federal Government – to censor and cancel users from the platform for speech or political views which went against globalist or government policies. This included copious evidence of election interference. It seems that in their desperation to conjure up proof of alleged “foreign influence” on Twitter, FBI and other federal government officials doubled-down to try and save their sinking Russiagate narrative, and creating a monster in the process. New revelations also exposed the FBI’s role in leaning on Twitter to expedite illegal censorship operations, and how so-called ‘public health’ officials strong-armed Twitter into sanitizing all speech relating to COVID-19 and the experimental mRNA ‘vaccine’ injections. The FBI were also drawing-up shadowbanning and censorship blacklists in an attempt to cleanse the platform of effective opposition to the Biden campaign in 2020 and later into his first term. Under Dorsey, the platform became an open cesspool for spooks and government operatives – many of whom appeared to be allowed to spy on users’ DMs, and to dictate terms of censorship on the platform. Watch this space. This is only the beginning.

3. Sabotage of the Nordstream Pipelines

Back in late September, the world woke up to truly horrific news – both the Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines were reported to be leaking gas into the Baltic Sea and into the atmosphere – after what looked like a deliberate act of sabotage. While the media played dumb, pretending not to know who carried out this attack, sane onlookers were well aware of the only entity who had the motives, means and opportunity to carry out this state-sponsored act of terror – namely the United States and its NATO partners. Incredibly, the entire western media quickly began blaming Russia for blowing up its most important energy infrastructure project. The result of this attack was a further devastation of Europe’s energy supplies and hyperinflationary EU and UK consumer prices for the fall and winter – not to mention the millions of cubic meters of methane which were released into the Earth’s atmosphere. Despite all the vacant US denials, the facts are clear as day: Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland were both on record beforehand promising they would “end the Nordstream pipeline.” Of course, this is a hugely dangerous red line which the US and its allies have crosses: by declaring a no-holds-barred geopolitical energy war, the gates are now open for further escalations – which may lead to WWIII. History has shown this can happen. Consider the Anglo-American energy embargo and strong-arming of Japan which led up to the Attack on Pearl Harbor which opened the door for the US to enter WWII. Think of the Nordstream attack as just that, but worse – as it was also direct attack on the day-to-day energy and finances of people living in the EU and the collective West. Indeed, the West is playing an extremely dangerous game, which is really the Great Game 2.0.

2. The Energy Shock

In the future, we will look back at 2022 as one of the most consequential years of young 21st century history. If you live in the collective West or the EU, you know that the energy crisis is now a reality. The real question is: is all of this by simply by happenstance, or is it being done by design? And can it be traced back to a much older global agenda, and forward through to the WEF’s Great Reset? The answer to all those questions is course, yes. But this is only the surface of this issue. For Brussels and Berlin, this ‘green’ road to energy scarcity pure economic suicide. Rather than change this policy course and work to stabilise global energy and agricultural markets – the gallant virtue-signalling West has opted instead to double-down on their precarious stance by further tightening anti-Russian sanctions, as well as pursue even deeper commitments towards de-nulearisation and the not-so-green ‘Net Zero’ carbon reduction agenda. The cancelation of Russia, coupled with the disastrous ‘green’ energy policies are only accelerating inflationary cycles globally. All of this is a recipe for disaster – all due to policies directly created by western governments. By blocking inbound energy supplies from the Nordstream and other Russian pipelines which supplied them with affordable and reliable gas and oil into the EU, Europe has painted itself into a very perilous corner. Behind the energy wars and even beyond Klaus Schwab’s globalist facade – you will find hardcore geopolitics at play. The main Anglo-American objective: the deindustrialization of Germany and EU, the separation of Russian resources and political leadership from western markets. We live in truly perilous times.

1. The Ukraine War

In late February 2022, the unthinkable happened: Russia launched its military intervention into neighboring Ukraine. War is hell, and while Russia seems intent on seeing its “Special Military Operation” through, the US and its allies are going to have to decide just how long they plan to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian. How many dead Ukrainian soldiers and lost territory will it take for the West to instruct Ukraine’s President Zelensky to finally sue for peace? Welcome to NATO’s ultimate proxy war of attrition in Ukraine, driven by the greatest western media propaganda campaign of all-time. Suffice to say that Russia, Ukraine, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance are now at war – with each party firmly in the belief that they are fighting an existential war, not over any particular political or territorial dispute, but for the future existence of their countries, or in the case of NATO, over their ability to maintain regional hegemony for the Atlanticist power bloc. Will this near frozen conflict escalate to a WWIII situation, or a thermo-nuclear exchange between the great powers? The US and British invasion of Iraq nearly two decades ago is a particularly pertinent and telling counterpoint to events in Ukraine. Then, as now, the ‘free and democratic Western World’ was supposedly faced with a dangerous, unhinged despot in Saddam Hussein, who, like Putin is said to be unwilling to compromise. It’s a well-worn script for the West, and will likely remain the justification of another endless war. Of course, Zelensky could end it all tomorrow if he declared his intentions to disavow any NATO aspirations, demilitarize the country, and declare Ukraine a neutral state. Such a declaration would certainly be welcome by Russia today, but the West are determined to keep this proxy war going, and cancel Russia from the global economic system. Besides, business is just too good for Ukraine who have managed scrape more than $100 billion from the US and EU treasuries so far, not to mention the billions in profits for shareholders in the US defense industry. Oh, and on the backend of this war, the WEF and BlackRock are eyeing Ukraine’s remaining assets, as private oligarchs hatch their plan to carve up and reshape the post-war landscape there. The future world order is at stake.

What an unbelievable year. Expect some seriously impactful moments in 2023.

HAPPY NEW YEAR.

*  *  *

SEE PREVIOUS TOP TEN CONSPIRACIES:

2021 Top Ten Conspiracies
2020 Top Ten Conspiracies
2019 Top Ten Conspiracies
2018 Top Ten Conspiracies
2017 Top Ten Conspiracies
2016 Top Ten Conspiracies
2015 Top Ten Conspiracies
2014 Top Ten Conspiracies

PLEASE HELP SUPPORT 21ST CENTURY WIRE'S WINTER FUNDRAISING DRIVE HERE

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Homes listed for sale in early June sell for $7,700 more

New Zillow research suggests the spring home shopping season may see a second wave this summer if mortgage rates fall
The post Homes listed for sale in…

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  • A Zillow analysis of 2023 home sales finds homes listed in the first two weeks of June sold for 2.3% more. 
  • The best time to list a home for sale is a month later than it was in 2019, likely driven by mortgage rates.
  • The best time to list can be as early as the second half of February in San Francisco, and as late as the first half of July in New York and Philadelphia. 

Spring home sellers looking to maximize their sale price may want to wait it out and list their home for sale in the first half of June. A new Zillow® analysis of 2023 sales found that homes listed in the first two weeks of June sold for 2.3% more, a $7,700 boost on a typical U.S. home.  

The best time to list consistently had been early May in the years leading up to the pandemic. The shift to June suggests mortgage rates are strongly influencing demand on top of the usual seasonality that brings buyers to the market in the spring. This home-shopping season is poised to follow a similar pattern as that in 2023, with the potential for a second wave if the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates midyear or later. 

The 2.3% sale price premium registered last June followed the first spring in more than 15 years with mortgage rates over 6% on a 30-year fixed-rate loan. The high rates put home buyers on the back foot, and as rates continued upward through May, they were still reassessing and less likely to bid boldly. In June, however, rates pulled back a little from 6.79% to 6.67%, which likely presented an opportunity for determined buyers heading into summer. More buyers understood their market position and could afford to transact, boosting competition and sale prices.

The old logic was that sellers could earn a premium by listing in late spring, when search activity hit its peak. Now, with persistently low inventory, mortgage rate fluctuations make their own seasonality. First-time home buyers who are on the edge of qualifying for a home loan may dip in and out of the market, depending on what’s happening with rates. It is almost certain the Federal Reserve will push back any interest-rate cuts to mid-2024 at the earliest. If mortgage rates follow, that could bring another surge of buyers later this year.

Mortgage rates have been impacting affordability and sale prices since they began rising rapidly two years ago. In 2022, sellers nationwide saw the highest sale premium when they listed their home in late March, right before rates barreled past 5% and continued climbing. 

Zillow’s research finds the best time to list can vary widely by metropolitan area. In 2023, it was as early as the second half of February in San Francisco, and as late as the first half of July in New York. Thirty of the top 35 largest metro areas saw for-sale listings command the highest sale prices between May and early July last year. 

Zillow also found a wide range in the sale price premiums associated with homes listed during those peak periods. At the hottest time of the year in San Jose, homes sold for 5.5% more, a $88,000 boost on a typical home. Meanwhile, homes in San Antonio sold for 1.9% more during that same time period.  

 

Metropolitan Area Best Time to List Price Premium Dollar Boost
United States First half of June 2.3% $7,700
New York, NY First half of July 2.4% $15,500
Los Angeles, CA First half of May 4.1% $39,300
Chicago, IL First half of June 2.8% $8,800
Dallas, TX First half of June 2.5% $9,200
Houston, TX Second half of April 2.0% $6,200
Washington, DC Second half of June 2.2% $12,700
Philadelphia, PA First half of July 2.4% $8,200
Miami, FL First half of June 2.3% $12,900
Atlanta, GA Second half of June 2.3% $8,700
Boston, MA Second half of May 3.5% $23,600
Phoenix, AZ First half of June 3.2% $14,700
San Francisco, CA Second half of February 4.2% $50,300
Riverside, CA First half of May 2.7% $15,600
Detroit, MI First half of July 3.3% $7,900
Seattle, WA First half of June 4.3% $31,500
Minneapolis, MN Second half of May 3.7% $13,400
San Diego, CA Second half of April 3.1% $29,600
Tampa, FL Second half of June 2.1% $8,000
Denver, CO Second half of May 2.9% $16,900
Baltimore, MD First half of July 2.2% $8,200
St. Louis, MO First half of June 2.9% $7,000
Orlando, FL First half of June 2.2% $8,700
Charlotte, NC Second half of May 3.0% $11,000
San Antonio, TX First half of June 1.9% $5,400
Portland, OR Second half of April 2.6% $14,300
Sacramento, CA First half of June 3.2% $17,900
Pittsburgh, PA Second half of June 2.3% $4,700
Cincinnati, OH Second half of April 2.7% $7,500
Austin, TX Second half of May 2.8% $12,600
Las Vegas, NV First half of June 3.4% $14,600
Kansas City, MO Second half of May 2.5% $7,300
Columbus, OH Second half of June 3.3% $10,400
Indianapolis, IN First half of July 3.0% $8,100
Cleveland, OH First half of July  3.4% $7,400
San Jose, CA First half of June 5.5% $88,400

 

The post Homes listed for sale in early June sell for $7,700 more appeared first on Zillow Research.

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February Employment Situation

By Paul Gomme and Peter Rupert The establishment data from the BLS showed a 275,000 increase in payroll employment for February, outpacing the 230,000…

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By Paul Gomme and Peter Rupert

The establishment data from the BLS showed a 275,000 increase in payroll employment for February, outpacing the 230,000 average over the previous 12 months. The payroll data for January and December were revised down by a total of 167,000. The private sector added 223,000 new jobs, the largest gain since May of last year.

Temporary help services employment continues a steep decline after a sharp post-pandemic rise.

Average hours of work increased from 34.2 to 34.3. The increase, along with the 223,000 private employment increase led to a hefty increase in total hours of 5.6% at an annualized rate, also the largest increase since May of last year.

The establishment report, once again, beat “expectations;” the WSJ survey of economists was 198,000. Other than the downward revisions, mentioned above, another bit of negative news was a smallish increase in wage growth, from $34.52 to $34.57.

The household survey shows that the labor force increased 150,000, a drop in employment of 184,000 and an increase in the number of unemployed persons of 334,000. The labor force participation rate held steady at 62.5, the employment to population ratio decreased from 60.2 to 60.1 and the unemployment rate increased from 3.66 to 3.86. Remember that the unemployment rate is the number of unemployed relative to the labor force (the number employed plus the number unemployed). Consequently, the unemployment rate can go up if the number of unemployed rises holding fixed the labor force, or if the labor force shrinks holding the number unemployed unchanged. An increase in the unemployment rate is not necessarily a bad thing: it may reflect a strong labor market drawing “marginally attached” individuals from outside the labor force. Indeed, there was a 96,000 decline in those workers.

Earlier in the week, the BLS announced JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) data for January. There isn’t much to report here as the job openings changed little at 8.9 million, the number of hires and total separations were little changed at 5.7 million and 5.3 million, respectively.

As has been the case for the last couple of years, the number of job openings remains higher than the number of unemployed persons.

Also earlier in the week the BLS announced that productivity increased 3.2% in the 4th quarter with output rising 3.5% and hours of work rising 0.3%.

The bottom line is that the labor market continues its surprisingly (to some) strong performance, once again proving stronger than many had expected. This strength makes it difficult to justify any interest rate cuts soon, particularly given the recent inflation spike.

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Mortgage rates fall as labor market normalizes

Jobless claims show an expanding economy. We will only be in a recession once jobless claims exceed 323,000 on a four-week moving average.

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Everyone was waiting to see if this week’s jobs report would send mortgage rates higher, which is what happened last month. Instead, the 10-year yield had a muted response after the headline number beat estimates, but we have negative job revisions from previous months. The Federal Reserve’s fear of wage growth spiraling out of control hasn’t materialized for over two years now and the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9%. For now, we can say the labor market isn’t tight anymore, but it’s also not breaking.

The key labor data line in this expansion is the weekly jobless claims report. Jobless claims show an expanding economy that has not lost jobs yet. We will only be in a recession once jobless claims exceed 323,000 on a four-week moving average.

From the Fed: In the week ended March 2, initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits were flat, at 217,000. The four-week moving average declined slightly by 750, to 212,250


Below is an explanation of how we got here with the labor market, which all started during COVID-19.

1. I wrote the COVID-19 recovery model on April 7, 2020, and retired it on Dec. 9, 2020. By that time, the upfront recovery phase was done, and I needed to model out when we would get the jobs lost back.

2. Early in the labor market recovery, when we saw weaker job reports, I doubled and tripled down on my assertion that job openings would get to 10 million in this recovery. Job openings rose as high as to 12 million and are currently over 9 million. Even with the massive miss on a job report in May 2021, I didn’t waver.

Currently, the jobs openings, quit percentage and hires data are below pre-COVID-19 levels, which means the labor market isn’t as tight as it once was, and this is why the employment cost index has been slowing data to move along the quits percentage.  

2-US_Job_Quits_Rate-1-2

3. I wrote that we should get back all the jobs lost to COVID-19 by September of 2022. At the time this would be a speedy labor market recovery, and it happened on schedule, too

Total employment data

4. This is the key one for right now: If COVID-19 hadn’t happened, we would have between 157 million and 159 million jobs today, which would have been in line with the job growth rate in February 2020. Today, we are at 157,808,000. This is important because job growth should be cooling down now. We are more in line with where the labor market should be when averaging 140K-165K monthly. So for now, the fact that we aren’t trending between 140K-165K means we still have a bit more recovery kick left before we get down to those levels. 




From BLS: Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 275,000 in February, and the unemployment rate increased to 3.9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in health care, in government, in food services and drinking places, in social assistance, and in transportation and warehousing.

Here are the jobs that were created and lost in the previous month:

IMG_5092

In this jobs report, the unemployment rate for education levels looks like this:

  • Less than a high school diploma: 6.1%
  • High school graduate and no college: 4.2%
  • Some college or associate degree: 3.1%
  • Bachelor’s degree or higher: 2.2%
IMG_5093_320f22

Today’s report has continued the trend of the labor data beating my expectations, only because I am looking for the jobs data to slow down to a level of 140K-165K, which hasn’t happened yet. I wouldn’t categorize the labor market as being tight anymore because of the quits ratio and the hires data in the job openings report. This also shows itself in the employment cost index as well. These are key data lines for the Fed and the reason we are going to see three rate cuts this year.

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