Economy

With this Friday's update (actually posted Sunday 2/15), I've added to the calendar of reports (the "calendar" is a list of past economic reports with most results summarized as well as scheduled future ones)

# NFIB optimism index - small business confidence slipped

# US consumer delinquencies jump to highest in almost a decade

# Employment Cost index, Q4 - Considered the best statistic on wages/salaries and benefits

# Import price index

# Retail sales (seasonally adjusted) in December did not keep up with inflation, meaning consumers bought less stuff when adjusted for prices

# The big "First Friday" BLS jobs report that was ballyhoo'd as a big surge of jobs in January (a historically pale +130k, but since it was better than the horrible months before, the media decided it was a "surge" ). And 2024 and 2025 were revised down by a combined nearly million jobs in their annual revision, leaving only 181,000 net new jobs in all of 2025 which averages to only 15k/month.

# Unemployment insurance claims - fell by 5,000, but continuing claims up by 21,000

# Existing home prices -- Realtors report a ‘new housing crisis’ as January home sales tank more than 8%

# CPI Consumer price index - the media ballyhoo'd it as a softening of inflation, but the 3-month rolling average rose for the 2nd month in a row. The Chicago Federal Reserve's Goolsbee points out that worrisomely service inflation is persistent and little affected by what happens with tariffs either way (IOW if tariffs are softened and/or the impact of tariffs was a "one off" one-time event, inflation will still be a problem), and that inflation has been above the Fed's target for more than 4 1/2 years now..

(The summaries in the "Calendar" section of the OP are for the most part longer, than what I've shown above, and with links).

I've also added the coming week's reports, many with links to the source data

As usual, I provide a summary of each day's stock market / economic activity, including the "Scrolling down the page" (Yahoo Finance's "Stock Market Today" page) for articles of interest.

All this takes me at least 7 hours a week. This is bordering on unsustainable, but I find the "Calendar" collection of reports and source links and LBN and other DU threads' links a very useful reference.

Some of these are non-government reports, so they can be somewhat broadly compared to the picture that the federal reports are painting. E.g. the ADP private payrolls report (ADP is a private processor about 20% of the U.S. private payroll, and they estimate the other 80%), and the Challenger, Gray and Christmas reports. The consumer confidence and consumer sentiment reports (separate reports from separate non-government organizations) are also of interest, as are existing housing sales.