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"...further confirmation that the building boom is continuing, even though the housing market appears to be slowing."
Pretty terrifying if you're in construction, as I am. The bigger the overshoot, the harder the crash when it comes.
Its not just in RE either...
Econbrowser: Autos continue to tank
Ouch.
so far most of the slowing of the job growth has been huricane related. I don't think it "counts"
df - I'm not sure that is true at all. Kat had little or no effect on mfg plants or a large impact on consumers of mfg output... same withe consumption of services... but debt sure effect demand of these products & srvices.
Secondly if I read the reports correctly they were saying there was far less job loss effect then people expected from these storms... I find that hard to imagine but I guess the majority of folks working in the Gulf who were worst hit either didn't have jobs before storm (so no net loss of jobs they didn't have) or if they did have jobs are back at work somewhere else (like Baton Rouge).
Anyway they revised the numbers for September up quite a lot... not above zero but 'up'... Though October's numbers were worse than expected. Overall not good but not terrible.
So if not the storm then what? Increasing interest rates with hig debt load & expensive energy (which if you recall started well before the storm season)... have a much greater effect.
Then throw in flat income increases for those at or below median... and you have what we see now... a stalling economy with flat job growth... but we haven't fallen off a cliff... yet. As long as Americans can go deeper into debt the system limps along.
Actually manufacturing increased and some attributed this activity to the rebuilding of New Orleans. Blogger spencer (for whom I have great respect) sees even more to this increase (joined by additional capital investment?) than I'm willing to venture at this point.
The damage ~$200B, is hidden in these latest reports to minimize the impact. It reminds me of Fannie's restatements --the news was/is/will be parcelled out in digestable increments. Expect the GDP and productivity numbers to be revised next month/quarter.
dryfly reads the importance of housing appreciation and cashouts with this:
"As long as Americans can go deeper into debt the system limps along."
Sing along: "And the beat goes on..."
dryfly's response to the report:
"Overall not good but not terrible."
is the overall desired result, I imagine of the report.
Because of the extraordinary circumstances (Katrina, Rita)[the devastation, people], a digestible result (56K) is desirable when the actual result is doubtful (possibly misleadingly bad) [a loss of 200K].
I can imagine any other report might make an ex-Katrina special edition with a proviso that next month's report would include that overall report (not ex-Katrina) that we have come to expect.
We are already massaged with these reports by the revisions a month or two later that get little attention.
We just can't wait for timely information.