The Labor Department will be out tomorrow with one measure of inflation: the consumer price index. You can bet a lot of people are going be paying special attention to that number, because investors have made it clear they’re worried about rising prices. Meanwhile, although it turns out we can measure inflation, it is really […]

The plunge in the stock market this week has been widely ascribed to fears that inflation is coming. But for large parts of the American economy — namely, business — inflation is already here. From car companies to restaurant groups, American companies are paying higher prices for raw materials and ingredients. The Labor Department’s Producer Price Index […]

The pace of job creation has declined every year since a post-recession peak of 250,000 per month in 2014. Last year, job creation was down to about 170,000 per month. And it could slow even more over the next couple of years. That’s because with unemployment so low, employers are having a harder time finding […]

The December jobs report, in the grand sweep of things — not month to month, but year to year and even decade to decade — shows the economy’s come a long way. Unemployment, at 4.1 percent, is now several points lower than it was before the Great Recession hit. We’ve had more than seven years […]

Our jobs report headline generator can show all the ways to interpret the numbers.

Productivity is up amongst American workers, but how much longer can we expect to squeeze blood from that stone?

Temporary holiday hires might be padding December’s big jobs numbers.