Ian Shepherdson Trend Quotations

Katrina and Rita effects still linger, though they are fading, ... Claims will likely rise next week as the full effects of Wilma hit, but the downward trend is very clear.

It is hard to make the case that the inflation threat from import prices is serious. The trend is clearly not as good as in the recent past, but it is not bad enough to cause any problems on its own.

We had hoped the flow of people filing for extended benefits would slow this week, pushing claims back towards their underlying trend -- about 350,000, but it didn't happen,

We think the trend in layoff is downwards, ... but we're not yet ready to argue that all the danger has passed.

Doubtless these numbers will be followed by a rash of commentary to the effect that rumors of the death of the housing market are greatly exaggerated. This would be the wrong conclusion to draw. It is not possible for sales to trend down and starts to trend up.

The revisions are not as big as we feared, ... The new April number shows sales at their lowest level since November, but the previous four months were exceptionally strong, in part due to favorable weather. Given the strong trend in mortgage applications, these data likely do not signal real housing weakness.

The trend in sales is probably not as weak as this seems to suggest, but there is no question that the condo/co-op market is slowing much more dramatically than the market for single-family homes. Even in the latter case, however, sales have fallen more than 10% from their summer peak.

The trend in claims has risen this year, in tandem with the clear drop in business confidence in the period before the war with Iraq. If claims are sustained at this level they will signal an acceleration in the rate of net job losses recorded in the payroll numbers.

November will be better, but the past year's flat trend in the core deficit seems to be breaking.

This is a welcome surprise; the trend in claims in recent weeks has been strongly upwards.

they strongly suggest that the trend in employment growth is slowing hard. A big drop in May payrolls may be in the cards.

There may be some adverse seasonal effects at work in the claims numbers, thanks to the late Easter, but the underlying trend is surely unfavorable, ... A reversal requires a quick and steep recovery in business confidence.

It now appears that the trend in jobless claims is stabilizing at about 400,000 per week, ... This is well above the trend level at this time last year, but it is no higher than in the spring. This means that layoffs are continuing at a rapid pace, but they are not accelerating.

In the short-term, these data will reinforce the impression that the housing market is proving resilient in the face of higher mortgage rates, ... it will not last, because the current trend in home sales is not high enough to support this rate of house building in the medium-term.

Claims have now been essentially static for three months, so even if the latest declines turn out to be unsustainable, the data will still show that the trend is no longer rising rapidly, and may not be rising at all, ... It looks like the worst of the worst is now over in the labor market.

The true underlying trend in claims is downwards, but it is slow.