Friday Fact Pack! Still Tight
By Hightower Las Vegas and RCG Economics on March 3, 2023
Inflation is creeping in everywhere…
As of February 2023
Delta Dental conducts its Original Tooth Fairy Poll every year, asking 1,000 parents across the U.S. how much their children are getting for each tooth. 2023’s figure came in 87 cents higher than last year’s. (Note: The earliest reference to the “Tooth Fairy” in America has been traced to the pages of the Chicago Tribune in 1908 in the form of parental advice for helping children through the tooth-losing process.)
Jobs Market
As of February 2023
Global Unemployment Forecast
Visual Capitalist compiled IMF data to create this excellent infomap:
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority Report
Las Vegas is looking good, all in all:
As of February 2023
Mortgage Apps
Mortgage applications decreased 5.7 percent over the prior week, per data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending February 24. The MBA’s Refinance Index decreased 6 percent from the previous week and was 74 percent lower than the same week one year ago.
The MBA mortgage purchase index shows activity is down 44 percent year-over-year (unadjusted).
As of February 2023
What’s driving the drop off? The 30-year fixed interest rate increased to 6.71 percent last week, the highest since November 2022.
Big Tech
Many tech stocks have been in a tailspin for much of the last 12 months, including a not-small reduction of workforces. In November 2022 alone, more than 50,000 tech workers were laid off globally. Even tech giants Amazon, Meta and Twitter carried out mass layoffs, with Amazon topping the global ranking for the most laid-off employees (18,000). Microsoft announced in January that it would reduce its workforce by about 10,000. The next day, Google parent Alphabet announced it would cut 12,000 jobs.
Cybersecurity
The Biden administration rolled out its first national cybersecurity strategy on Thursday, providing a roadmap of laws and regulations intended to prepare the country’s cyber infrastructure for threats. The 40-page document was prepared by the Office of the National Cyber Director and outlines five pillars driving the policy:
- Defending critical infrastructure
- Disrupting and dismantling threat actors
- Shaping market forces to drive security and resilience
- Investing in a resilient future
- Forging international partnerships.
Office Space
Three years from the start of the pandemic, who is still working from home and who is back at the office? American workers are at roughly 50/50, per data on office turnstile entries from Kastle Systems.
Office occupancy in Europe and the Middle East is back to 70-90 percent, and occupancy in some Asian cities is approaching 100 percent. Why the difference? Workplace consultants have theorized that it’s about literal workspace: American homes tend to be larger relative to those in many European and Asian countries, with an average of 2.4 rooms per person in the U.S.
Another reason could be the particularly tight labor market in the US, which has given employees more bargaining power to push for flexible arrangements.
As of February 2023
Women’s History Month
The Census Bureau has compiled a slew of stats on American women:
As of 2021
NASA
SpaceX, which is on the verge of the first orbital test flight of its Starship system (in March), is on a path to transporting people and cargo between Earth and the moon. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has yet to issue a license for the flight. Meanwhile, in 2022, NASA awarded Elon Musk’s company about $2 billion in contract volume out of its budget of $24 billion, roughly 25 percent more than doled out in 2021 and overtaking Boeing as the agency’s second-most-awarded contractor.
Compared with NASA, its European counterpart, the European Space Agency (ESA), has to make do with significantly less funding. In 2022, the intranational agency had around 4.8 billion euros at its disposal, about 50 percent of which came from Germany, the United Kingdom and France alone.
$22M
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Circular Sun House in the Arizona desert remains for sale, but the legendary architect’s one-and-only oceanfront home, on Carmel Point near Carmel-by-the-Sea, just sold for its asking price of $22 million, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Source: Sotheby’s International Realty
It’s the most ever paid for a Wright-designed home, eclipsing the $18 million Ennis House in Los Angeles.
On the Horizon
Mike PeQueen: Next Friday’s employment number is the stat of the week. If job growth continues to be strong, President Biden will be happy — but the Fed will not share that sentiment. They will need to see a cooling job market before they stop raising rates.
Next week’s MarketWatch calendar:
