Here I offer some thoughts on last week's numbers for employment, auto sales, and commodity prices.

On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 20,000 fewer Americans were working in January compared with December on a seasonally adjusted basis but that the unemployment rate nevertheless fell from 10.0% in December to 9.7% in January. The discrepancy comes from the fact that the BLS gets employment counts in two different ways. The first is by asking establishments how many people they employed last month, and this establishment survey provides the basis for the reported 20,000 decline in nonfarm payrolls. But a second method is to go to individual residential addresses and ask the occupants how many people living there were working last month. According to the BLS household survey, the number of Americans working increased by a seasonally adjusted 541,000 workers in January over December, though

WSJ’s Phil Izzo parses the latest findings from The Wall Street Journal’s monthly survey of leading economists, discussing what it says about the recovery and the growth outlook for 2010.

Source: Phil Izzo, Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2010.

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The U.S. economy continues to recover at a painfully slow pace.

December auto sales looked reasonably good, at least when you compare them with the numbers we've been seeing over the last 15 months. Apart from the cash-for-clunkers August 2009 outlier, seasonally unadjusted U.S. car sales in December were higher than any month since the Lehman failure in September 2008. Even so, that still leaves December 2009 30% below the average December over 2004-2007. The worst may be behind us, but we're still a long way from normal.

But without question Friday's report that seasonally adjusted U.S. payrolls declined by another 85,000 workers in December was a disappointment. I recall that when President Obama was asked on February 9, "how can the American people gauge whether or not your programs are working?", he responded:

I think my

This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Justin Lahart and Jon Hilsenrath (The Wall Street Journal): “Titan of Economics”, December 14, 2009. Paul A. Samuelson, whose analytical work laid the foundation for modern economics, died Sunday. He was 94. Actively publishing into the 2000s, Mr. Samuelson’s career in economics spanned eight decades. In 1970, he was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in economics, the second year the prize was offered.

• Anthony Faiola (The Washington Post): Nations’ mounting debts worry global investors, December 12, 2009. With big banks returning to health, the financial woes of entire nations have emerged as the biggest threat to the global economy.

• Jonathan Burton (MarketWatch): Grit and bear it, December 11, 2009. Stocks are

This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Palash Ghosh (The Wall Street Journal): US, overseas stock correlation too strong to last, November 24, 2009. The correlation between US and foreign stock markets, even the emerging markets, has become so strong as to render almost meaningless the concept of geographic investment diversification and asset allocation.

• Craig Torres (Bloomberg): Fed officials watch asset prices for signs of “excessive risk“, November 25 2009. Federal Reserve policy makers said for the first time that their decision to cut interest rates to zero may be fueling undue financial-market speculation even as they called the dollar’s decline “orderly”.

• The Economist: Should America worry about its deficit? November 24, 2009. The easy answer is yes, America should

This post provides links to a number of thought-provoking articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find of interest.

• Doug Kass (TheStreet.com): Market has likely topped, August 26, 2009. Markets top during times of enthusiasm. I believe that the markets are now overshooting to the upside and that the US stock market has likely peaked for the year.

• Phil Izzo (The Wall Street Journal): Economists react: Bernanke reappointment is “good news“, August 25, 2009. Economists, lawmakers, bloggers and others weigh inPresident Obama’s decision to reappoint Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

• Mohamed El-Erian (FT Alphaville): Bernanke’s four point ‘to-do’ list, August 25, 2009. Pimco’s chief executive comments on Ben Bernanke’s reappointment for a second term at Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

• Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Telegraph): The troubling side of