Price check (December Edition)

Daily Data: Inflation and unemployment printed again. What's it all mean?

We are who we thought we were, and other mysteries of jobs and inflation data, revealed.

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Daily Data

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Price check

Inflation and jobs data came in last week, and here’s the gist of it:

• There is more evidence that hiring is slowing, but as per always, the labor market is secularly tight. Pretty much everyone who can be working is working, even if it’s somewhat harder to get a new job.

  

  Prime age participation is super-high, but rolled over slightly

• Along the same lines, while every other part of inflation cools as expected, it’s wages that remain higher than they should (and actually reversed some progress ever-so-slightly).

  

  Weekly earnings increased slightly

  

  Services (excluding gas, food, and shelter) wiggling up

Directionally, everything is pretty much where it was expected to be.

What’s the prognosis, Doc?

So what does it all mean?