Year-end financial markets can be difficult, and winter economic data is difficult to read, … It makes more sense that December will be month they skip. You don’t want to be raising rates into what...

Beneath the surface, production and inventory, here and abroad, are moving up faster than the rate of demand growth,

It’s more of a victory lap. Literally a month ago people were arguing that prices would not stop going up. Now, data we would have killed for two years ago is seen as the end...

It comes down to a political choice, … whether this is the kind of thing where you happily wait and continue unemployment insurance in the hope that certain industries bounce back cyclically, or you accept...

[By his lights it didn’t make sense that stocks were unable to hold onto most of their gains Tuesday, finishing the day roughly flat after a jump early on.] The reaction to this data in...

There are several large drags, in a statistical sense. The underlying condition is that we’re probably losing jobs. But the February and March data are not indicative of how bad it really is.

Benchmark revisions could completely recast underlying data, in which case January forecasts won’t be useful.

There’s no reason for utter despair, but this looks like a big exaggeration.

If you look at labor demand, you should be getting a decent trend. It was only June data that fell below that trend.

That kind of decline is a perfect fit with what we’ve seen in the household survey’s measure of employment, … if not in February, then in future benchmark revisions.

This [gain in proprietors’ income] is small-business job creation, we think, and it’s more useful at this point in the business cycle than it would otherwise be.

Freeing up less productive resources by accomplishing more with less is the entire basis for rising living standards. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that stronger periods of economic growth have generally begun during periods...

I think energy affects us at every price. As we go marginally higher, growth forecasts get marginally weaker.

I think it comes down to the mechanics of how folks were counted.

Years from now, new benchmark revisions will come along and change the whole picture again — which begs the question of how important these monthly payroll changes are. I think it’s irresponsible to make too...

After periods of a large slump in employment, there may be advantages to canvassing homes,

Some of the conditions that have ripened the growth outlook at the start of 2006 are unlikely to last into spring. Abnormally warm weather boosted construction activity in December. … Judging by a 46,000 gain...

We saw a lot of healing going on in 2002, and nobody gives any credit to it.

We had unintentional inventory declines in the second and third quarters, which is what you would typically get in a recession. I think companies will need to build $50 billion per quarter in inventories, even...

The Labor Department gave guidance that workers held on payrolls would be counted as employed, even if they couldn’t be on the job. Just assuming that everyone in New Orleans was out of a job...

The fact that we can lower living costs at a time when output and income are recovering should be considered fantastic news.

This is a fairly big negative, correlated to other unfortunate news, like weak financial markets, which have their own impact, … So far it still looks like the economy is growing, but below trend.

If gas prices are just holding steady and not increasing, and if incomes are rising, your gas bill is the same, and [consumer] demand can rebound. That’s the most likely scenario here.

Friday’s number is not going to make much of a difference for the outlook for the economy.

There’s a lot of month-to-month volatility in these numbers, … You had a tremendous amount of widening in February and then a snap back in March.

Exports were flat for a second month running and that has been what is most broken in the trade picture.

I think we can do better,

This kind of sequential recovery, this coming up from the base, has been as good as we’ve seen in any economic recovery at this stage, but again this is multiyear process,

We’re getting higher and higher oil prices each day and you’ll continue to see a larger drag on the economy through the summer months.

This notion that there’s just too much tech everywhere contrasts with the fact that there’s actually been a spending improvement,

The soft patch was highly overrated,

Many of the understandable sources of recovery have been expended in the first half of 2002, leaving growth drivers into 2003 a mystery.

We’re not at gas prices that pose some kind of a tipping point.

The consumer’s role in this upturn is going to be the opposite of [his] role in the downturn.

Estimates have to come down, … We’re in for an ugly preannouncement season.

While we don’t take monthly changes in employment too seriously, today’s data were slightly stronger than expected on hiring, but slightly weaker on hours and utilization, thus providing a ‘growth positive’ outlook.

Iraq will be the story until it isn’t any more.

There is no change in course, and markets have already priced in more action.

However, a much larger drag seemed possible after the October surge, and a good portion of the rise will be offset by a gain in inventories in the quarter.

While the U.S. economy is still transitioning, and will for some time, data that should be supporting confidence in the recovery have not worked to ease investor concerns, … We have to wonder if markets...

Business conditions are really slack. The latest rally in stocks doesn’t change that.

Estimates have to come down. We’re in for an ugly preannouncement season.

Seeing a two-year low in confidence in the wake of Hurricane Katrina isn’t that surprising. The news in the month of September has been terrible. The television coverage and the emotional impact of the story...

We’re not expecting an entirely clean read for the durable goods report. The business confidence data began to bottom at the end of June and that’s encouraging. We probably will see modest gains in consumer...

I don’t’ think we’ve seen any sign here that there is an urgency to risk damaging the pace of the upturn. Why rush, why panic?

If demand stays strong and productivity growth slows considerably, this could be a year that could be seen as heading towards traditional overheating of the labor market, with big employment gains,

Even if energy hangs out at these historically high levels, headline inflation should slow down in the coming year.

What’s most important is that we’ve got demand and supply moving ahead fast enough that we’re absorbing and creating jobs month in and month out — that’s not something to lament.

Today’s data included well-known as well as surprise areas of weakness.

We haven’t had a single year of falling consumer spending since 1938. There’s no boom or bust in consumer spending.