Fact Pack!
By Hightower Las Vegas and RCG Economics on October 9, 2023
“U.S. employers are hiring, workers are working and the economy appears to be powering through high interest rates, elevated inflation and labor unrest.” So said the opening paragraph of the Wall Street Journal’s newsletter Real Time Economics this morning.
Nonfarm payrolls rose by 336,000 in September, the biggest gain since January, and the headline (U-3) unemployment rate held steady at 3.8 percent. Additionally, job gains were widespread across numerous industries, and the labor force grew (hires exceeded quits and layoffs). WSJ graph based on Labor Department data:
As of September 2023
Economist and Fact Pack co-publisher John Restrepo:
“The U.S. job market has been complicated for some time and may or may not be as strong as the payroll figures seem to imply. The Labor Department’s September survey of households showed employment only grew by a net of 86,000, a fraction of the payroll survey’s 336,000. Sometimes these differences happen in the data because the surveys define jobs differently — including a situation where a person who has two jobs is counted twice by the payroll survey but just once by the household survey.
In September, household employment, when adjusted to fit the same definition as the payroll survey, was actually down 7,000.”
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 1.2 million in September. The long-term unemployed accounted for 19.1 percent of all unemployed persons.
Let’s Eat
Employment at restaurants and bars rose by 61,000 over the month, returning to its pre-pandemic level for the first time. Most industries in September had already surpassed their pre-pandemic peak (with the exception of public education):
As of 2023
Interest Rates
The hiring increase in September could make Federal Reserve officials less confident that inflation’s decline this summer will be sustained. Will the Fed raise rates again? It may be too soon to say. Officials will no doubt pay close attention to the consumer inflation report to be released next Thursday.
Annual Pay
Nevada’s year-over-year change in annual pay was 6.4 percent in September, with a median annual salary of $48,900 for workers who stayed in their role for the past 12 months, according to new data released in ADP National Employment Report’s Pay Insights for September 2023.
Nationally, the year-over-year median change in annual pay was 5.9 percent and the median annual pay was $57,700 for those job stayers.
Nevada’s growth ranks it #16 nationally. The top 5 states for growth were:
1. Wyoming: 8.2 percent
2. Montana: 8.1
3. Idaho: 7.9
4. New Mexico: 7.6
5. Oregon: 7.4
(ADP’s Pay Insights metric is a new measure that uniquely captures the salaries of the same cohort of almost 10 million individual employees over a 12-month period and can be found here.)
Manufacturing
National Manufacturing Day, celebrated on the first Friday in October, recognizes the importance of the manufacturing industry in the United States. More than 12.7 million U.S. workers were employed in manufacturing in 2022, per the Labor Department. Though transportation equipment manufacturing was the largest manufacturing industry in the nation and in 16 states, food manufacturing topped the list in 19 states and the District of Columbia.
Indiana had the highest concentration of manufacturing employment, at 2.04 times the U.S. average. Wisconsin (1.95), Iowa (1.71), and Michigan (1.65) also had high manufacturing employment location quotients in 2022.
As of 2022
More manufacturing stats from recent years (per this write-up at Katana, which also contains interactive/scroll-over maps showing which manufacturing industries are the largest in each state and which manufacturing businesses in each state employ the most workers):
- In/around 2017, miscellaneous manufacturing industries in Nevada generated $2 billion in GDP and accounted for 17 percent of employment in Nevada, including:
- Scientific Games Corporation — a global supplier of technology and services for government-sponsored lotteries and sports betting programs — employed 1,500 people in Las Vegas (almost half of its staff) in 2017. In 2017, miscellaneous manufacturing in Nevada brought in just over $2 billion.
- Fabricated metal products (11 percent of state employment)
- Printing and publishing (9 percent)
In 2020, the number of manufacturing employees in the U.S. reached 12,182,000.
Las Vegas Home and Condo Prices
A report released Friday by Las Vegas REALTORS® (LVR) shows prices for local homes and condos holding steady, matching prices from one year ago. The median price of existing single-family homes sold in Southern Nevada through the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) during September was $450,000, matching the median price in September of 2022.
Local home prices are still below the all-time record of $482,000 set in May of 2022. The median price of local condos and townhomes sold in September was $270,000, also the same price as September of 2022. That’s down 5.9 percent from the all-time high of $287,000 set in August.
By the end of September, LVR reported 4,066 single-family homes listed for sale without any sort of offer. That’s down 49.9 percent from the same time last year. Similarly, the 1,035 condos and townhomes listed without offers in September represent a 44.0 percent decline from one year earlier.
LVR reported a total of 2,374 existing local homes, condos and townhomes sold in September. Compared to September 2022, sales were down 10.3 percent for homes, but up 5.5 percent for condos and townhomes.
Fewer homes have been selling this year than during 2022, when LVR reported 35,584 total sales. That followed a record year for existing local home sales in 2021, when LVR reported 50,010 homes, condos, townhomes and other residential properties were sold.
States with Declines in Homeownership
Data analyzed by RubyHome Luxury Real Estate reveals the homeownership percentages of all states since the turn of the millennium (2000).
- Virginia was the state with the largest decline in homeownership. In 2000, the homeownership rate sat at 73.9 percent, but it declined over the following decade to 68.7 percent and in 2022 sat at 67.4 percent. This makes for a percentage change of 8.8 percent since 2000.
- North Dakota (minus 7.5 percent), and Ohio and Connecticut (both minus 7.4 percent) came in second and tied for third for the largest declines.
- Other states with notable declines include North Carolina and Georgia (minus 7.3 percent), along with Nevada (minus 5.8 percent).
Stats for the “top” 10:
As of 2022
Senator Ages by State
Yes, there’s a Visual Capitalist infographic for that:
As of 10/5/2023
The passing of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein at the age of 90 is throwing a spotlight on the ages of America’s political establishment. Oldest living 10:
Source: Visual Capitalist as of 2023
Per Visual Capitalist, there are nine senators under the age of 50, including Democrat Jon Ossoff of Georgia, at 36, and Republican senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, at 39. Laphonza Butler, 44, the newly appointed senator to replace Feinstein, also falls within this camp.
Dangerous Rural Roads
No, fellow Nevadans, this is one not-good top 5 list we are NOT on…
- North Carolina is the state with the most dangerous rural roads, with 70.45 accidents for every billion miles driven.
- Coming in second is Connecticut, with an average of 68.74 accidents per billion miles driven on its rural roads. Notably and inexplicably, Connecticut roads with a 25-mph speed limit accounted for the highest number of incidents in the Constitution State at around 21 percent. Put another way, one in five rural road accidents in CT happen on a 25-mph road.
- Other states in the top five were West Virginia, South Carolina, and Mississippi.
- Over the past decade, Maryland experienced a 75 percent decrease in rural road accidents, whereas Nevada saw an 82 percent increase.
- Nearly one in three rural road accidents in the U.S. happen on roads with a 55-mph speed limit.
The study providing this data was undertaken by Florida Personal Injury Lawyers Anidjar & Levine based on 2012-2021 data from agencies including NCDOT, FARS, the U.S. Census Bureau, and FHWA. .
New Study Shows Autonomous Vehicles Significantly Reduce BI/PD Claims
A new study has revealed that autonomous-vehicle technology reduced bodily injury claims frequency by 100 percent and property damage claims frequency by 76 percent.
The two compared Waymo’s third-party liability claims data with mileage and ZIP code-calibrated, human-driven private passenger vehicle baselines established by the insurer for the period of 2016-2021, from over 600,000 claims and over 125 billion miles of exposure.
(Methodology note: The study indicates the use of liability insurance claims provides a more comprehensive assessment than collision databases from police reports because claims data has more consistent standards for reporting along with a higher frequency of reporting, as well as information relating to crash and injury causation. In addition, police reports don’t always capture non-collision related injuries.)
The study found that the Waymo Driver significantly improved road safety over 3.8 million fully autonomous miles driven in San Francisco and Metro Phoenix.
Exports by Country
In 2022, the total export value of global goods reached nearly $25 trillion. With the evolution of international trade, the effects of globalization, and progress in technology, global trade has increased by around 300 percent over the last 20 years.
This visualization by Truman Du uses data from the World Trade Organization (WTO) to chart the world’s top exporters by country:
As of 7/8/23
Per this Visual Capitalist analysis, the planet’s largest 11 exporters shipped $12.8 trillion in goods in 2022, more than the rest of the world combined ($12.1 trillion).
The list is headed by China, with $3.6 trillion or 14 percent of total exports. China has been the largest exporter of goods in the world since 2009.
As of 2022
Notably, Mexico has overtaken China as the largest seller to the United States:
As of December 2023
The U.S. itself the world’s second largest goods exporter, with over $2 trillion annually.
Canada was the largest purchaser of U.S. exports in 2022, accounting for 17 percent of total exports, followed by Mexico, China, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
The top exports of the U.S. are refined petroleum, petroleum gas, crude petroleum, cars, and integrated circuits.
Regionally across the globe, Asia dominates:
As of 2022
On the Horizon
Mike PeQueen: In a normal world, the consumer price index report on Thursday would be the economic story of the week — but it’s probably going to be the psychotic fever dream that is the U.S. Congress until a new Speaker of the House is elected.
Next week’s MarketWatch calendar:
