Friday Fact Pack!UFO Debate is Lit
By Hightower Las Vegas and RCG Economics on February 17, 2023
The flying objects recently spotted across the U.S. and Canada were initially unidentified and then declared Chinese spy balloons by the White House — which only added to the hot debate over the existence of alien-operated ships in our skies.
A Gallup poll from July 2021 found that 41 percent of Americans believed at least some UFOs were alien spacecraft, up 8 points from the poll two years before.
In 2019, Gallup found that three-fourths of Americans thought there was some form of life on other planets, and 68 percent thought the government was withholding information about UFOs.
Source: Quickmeme
Deflation vs. Disinflation
This week’s inflation report came in slightly hotter than expected: Consumer prices in the U.S. have risen by 6.4 percent over the past 12 months, though that’s still the lowest annual increase since October 2021.
As the following Statista chart shows, the rate of inflation (yellow line) has come down quite a bit from its June 2022 peak. Consumer prices (blue line) continue to climb, however.
As of Jan. 2023
The Fed is aiming for a 2 percent inflation rate — not for deflation, which would align with a 0 percent or lower rate and create a whole new set of economic problems.
Inflation Nations
Visual Capitalist has a graph showing which countries have the lowest inflation:
As of Feb. 2023
Table:
As of Nov. or Dec. 2023
New Stat Pack Graphs
New data has been analyzed, graphed and shared at Stat Pack central.
Plastic Nation
Many Americans are drowning in credit card debt as high inflation has driven up the cost of everyday necessities. In the last three months of 2022, credit card balances increased by $61 billion to $986 billion, per the New York Federal Reserve Bank’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit published Thursday.
That smashed the previous high of $927 billion, recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Total U.S. household debt rose to a record $16.9 trillion during Q4 2022, an increase of 2.4 percent from the prior three-month period.
The data marks a reversal from just two years ago when households were rapidly paying off credit card debt with the stimulus payments that they received during the pandemic, while spending on big-ticket items including vacations because of virus-induced lockdowns.
As of Q3 2022
At the end of 2022, some 18.3 million borrowers were behind on a credit card, according to the New York Fed analysis. There were about 15.8 million behind on a card in that same period two years ago.
Wage Gaps
Since 1979, while the economy continued to grow and become more productive, the average worker did not see a proportional increase in their compensation. The typical nonsupervisory worker’s compensation grew a modest 17.3 percent (after adjusting for inflation), while economic productivity grew 64.6 percent.
As of Jan. 2021
Professions with less of a gap:
As of Jan. 2021
State infomap:
As of Jan. 2021
Full-time employees in Nevada earn a median annual wage of $40,000, or 46.7 percent less than the median annual wage of $75,000 for full-time managers. Out of all U.S. states, Nevada has the 3rd largest employee-manager wage gap.
(For more information, a detailed methodology, and complete results, you can find the original report on Smartest Dollar’s website.)
Retail
Retail sales in January beat the forecasts:
As of Jan. 2023
Mortgage Delinquencies
The delinquency rate for mortgage loans on one-to-four-unit residential properties increased to a seasonally adjusted rate of 3.96 percent of all loans outstanding at the end of Q4 2022, per the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Delinquency Survey. The delinquency rate was up 51 basis points from Q3.
Trend graph from Calculated Risk:
As of Jan. 2023
Homebuilder Sentiment
America’s homebuilders are optimistic as buyer demand picks up, driven in part by slightly lower mortgage rates. Homebuilder confidence for newly built single-family homes in February rose 7 points to 42, per the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. That’s the highest reading since September and the largest monthly gain since June 2013.
Mom & Pop Shops
Nearly four-in-ten American children born to parents in the top fifth of income earners remain in the top fifth as adults. HighTower wealth management advisor and Fact Pack co-publisher Mike PeQueen explains why:
Elevated earnings tend to carry forward to the next generation because high-income parents tend to pass along work ethic-related attributes to their children via genes and/or coaching. They also tend to invest more in their children’s education, boosting earnings potential.
Additionally, a white paper by Matthew Staiger, an economist with a research group at Harvard University, suggests that people who land a job through a parent—whether a small family-run business or a Fortune 500 company—enjoy a boost in earnings.
Using Census Bureau data, Staiger analyzed the job histories of 32 million people who graduated from high school between 2000 and 2013. He found that while just 5 percent worked for a parent’s company for their first job, by the age of 30, 29 percent had worked with their father or mother at one time or another.
Staiger estimated that those who worked at a parent’s employer for their first job earned 19 percent more than those who didn’t—because they had access to higher-paying industries and positions.
As you can see from the above graph from Staiger’s report, Hispanic children end up working for their parents at much higher rate than other groups.
Airfares
Average outbound and inbound flight costs have both risen substantially year-over-year:
As of Jan. 2023
As of Jan. 2023
Hot Housing Markets
When it comes to housing markets, the cities that are hot — or not — have been shifting, as the top 10 metros in the U.S. News Housing Market Index shows:
The job market in top-ranked Raleigh is among the strongest in the country, gaining 35,600 jobs year-over-year through December 2022 (a rate of just over 5 percent) with a headline unemployment rate of 3.2 percent.
Median prices in Raleigh have risen but not so much that it’s affecting sales:
As of December 2022
U.S. NEWS
The median price in Raleigh rose 8.3 percent year-over-year to $428,000 compared with a national figure of $388,000.
And although up from 1.1 months a year ago, the supply timeline of housing for sale in Raleigh at 2.2 months nearly matches the national level of 2.3 months. A healthy supply timeline for home sales is closer to six months, it’s unlikely prices will fall substantially unless more supply is released for sale.
As of December 2022
Going Vegan
An analysis of Google searches for vegan type things shows which states have the most residents interested in the topic. Nevada is among the top vegan-loving states:
As of December 2022
Metamoney
Statista’s Advertising & Media Markets Insights team conservatively estimates that metaverse — defined as a virtual world or a collection of virtual worlds that exist in a common digital space accessed via the internet — revenue will reach $490 billion in 2030, while other analysts are assuming a market volume of between approximately $750 and $1,700 billion U.S. dollars.
On the Horizon
Mike PeQueen: Next Tuesday brings existing home sales data. Housing is one of the hardest hit areas in our new higher interest rate environment. I have very modest expectations.
Next week’s MarketWatch calendar:
