Fact Pack!

By Hightower Las Vegas and RCG Economics on April 5, 2024

Nonfarm payrolls increased 303,000 in March, well above the Dow Jones estimate of 200,000. The headline unemployment rate dropped to 3.8 percent, as expected.

Health care led with 72,000 new jobs, followed by government (71,000), leisure and hospitality (49,000), and construction (39,000).

As of 4/5/24

Notably, as pointed out by CNBC, gains tilted heavily to part-time workers in the Census Bureau’s household survey. The number of full-time workers dropped by 6,000, while the number of part-timers rose by 691,000. The number of multiple job holders rose by 217,000 to 5.2 percent of the total employment level.

Construction

Construction industry employment grew by 270,000 jobs in March over the same month in 2023, an increase of 3.4 percent.

Nonresidential construction employment increased by 24,600 positions on net.
Nonresidential specialty trade added the most jobs, increasing by 16,300 positions.
Heavy and civil engineering and nonresidential building added 6,000 and 2,300 jobs, respectively.

Graph:

As of March 2024

Table:

As of March 2024

Unions

Union membership remains at a 40-year low, but one of the big economic stories of 2023 was the rise of union activity — and what happened next. Walkouts or threats of walkouts from Hollywood screenwriters, Detroit auto workers and Las Vegas hotel workers ended in wins for organized labor. That outcome caused some nonunion companies including Honda to raise wages to keep pace with GM and Ford, both of which are unionized.

A tight labor market no doubt helped unions achieve what they otherwise might not have. It would take a massive nationwide union organizing effort to reverse the trend:

As of 2023

Retirement

The price of retirement has never been higher: the average U.S. adult now expects to need $1.46 million to afford a comfortable one-way ticket out of the working world, according to a new survey of 4,588 adults commissioned by financial planning company Northwestern Mutual.

The results also revealed that the average respondent has $88,400 saved towards retirement.

GDP

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) for Q1 dipped to 2.5 percent on April 4, down from 2.8 percent on April 1, after data was released from the Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Consumption

The ISM Services Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) was short of expectations in March, indicating slower consumer spending and weaker economic growth:

Source: Pantheon Macroeconomics

Vegas Visitor Stats

LVCVA data for February shows a 3.8 percent jump in passenger traffic to more than 43 million people at Harry Reid International:

Exiting Nevada

An analysis of Census data shows that one in five people who moved in 2022 put down roots in a different state. Nevada stats:

8,890 people from Nevada moved to Arizona, representing 7.79 percent of Silver State residents who moved to another state. Nevada was the eighth most common state of origin for people moving to Arizona.

12,645 people from Nevada moved to Texas, representing 11.08 percent of Nevada residents who moved to another state. Nevada was the twentieth most common origin for people moving to Texas in 2022.

22,183 people from Nevada moved to California in 2022, making up 19.44 percent of residents that moved to another state. Nevada was the eighth most common state of origin for people moving to California

The TikTok Times

No, that’s not a thing (yet) — but TikTok is one of few social media platforms with an increase in the percentage of users saying they regularly get their news there:

As of 10/1/23

TikTok users are buying products, too. Thanks to 30,000 videos tagged with #gurunanda, GuruNanda Cocomint Pulling Oil — $7.49 minus a 30 percent discount for first-time buyers and free shipping — has sold 1.2 million units on the platform.

MarketPlace Pulse has an interesting article on how TikTok sales work differently than the big ecommerce sales platforms.

Amazon

The team at EMarketer estimates that in 2023, Amazon accounted for 40 percent of ecommerce sales and 4 percent of retail sales in the U.S.

As of 3/8/24

MarketPlace Pulse concurs with that analysis, recently noting that Walmart accounts for less than 10 percent of ecommerce sales — in 2023, the company finally reached $100 billion in ecommerce sales globally — but accounted for around 6 percent of total U.S. retail sales, ahead of Amazon’s 4 percent.

As of 2023

eBay remains the third-largest e-commerce channel in the U.S.

Big Beauty

Sales of store brand beauty products grew 10.5 percent in 2023, according to February 2024 data from the Private Label Manufacturers Association and Circana.

As of 2/27/23

Big Revenue

WalMart and Exxon are the only two companies who were in the top 10 for revenue in 2023 who also were top dogs 20 years ago (the merger of Exxon and Mobil, now known as ExxonMobil, helped the oil company hold strong):

Source: Visual Capitalist As of 2023

Before Big Tech, the Big Three automakers dominated the American business landscape (Chrysler ranked 11th in 1994, just behind Philip Morris).

Big Chocolate

Has the price of cocoa peaked? Probably not said Pascal Boll, an analyst at Stifel, to The Wall Street Journal at the end of March: “The direction is clearly upwards.”

Chocolate prices rose 11.6 percent in 2023, substantially more than the Consumer Price Index’s overall inflation figure of 3.4 percent.

As of 3/28/24

What’s the effect on innocent chocolate consumers, you ask?

Your favorite chocolate bar is smaller, and candymakers are pushing non-chocolate items. Makers including Mars have been shrinking the size of their chocolate products to cut costs, and some are removing chocolate from offerings entirely, and Hershey marketed Easter products that relied more heavily on caramel and other ingredients.

Bloomberg pointed out last month that both Mars and Hershey bought Super Bowl ad spots for peanut butter M&M’s and caramel Reese’s Pieces, respectively.

On the Horizon

Mike PeQueen: As we all lament the jump in chocolate prices, Wednesday’s CPI and Thursday’s PPI are the inflation numbers to watch.

Here’s this week’s MarketWatch calendar:

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