Originally published August 18, 2019
As I noted this morning, a slew of important data was released. Let me deal with the "normal" weekly and monthly data in this post.
First, industrial production continues to languish, down significantly from the end of last year, whether measured in total or just as to manufacturing:
The saving grace here is that it has not declined as much as it did during the 2015-16 "shallow industrial recession" which was not sufficient to cause the economy as a whole to contract.
Second, initial jobless claims rose and are (slightly)