Union Membership, Inflation, & Retail Sales

Week in Review: Jan. 16-20

This week gave us 14 review-worthy economic releases including retail sales, another measure of inflation, union membership data, and a few housing market indicators. If you have questions about any of these topics (or just in general), we’re still accepting questions for our January Q&A post.

Monday

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Because you probably saw lots of out-of-context quotes about MLK’s economic views, we’re sharing the same Axios piece that we shared last year: MLK on economics: A brief Primer.

Tuesday

Gas Prices

Gas prices increased for the third straight week, up to $3.416/gallon. That’s still about $1.70 cheaper than the peak back in June.

TSA Checkpoint Travel Numbers

Travel numbers are looking good through the first 17 days of 2023, up about 31% compared to 2022 and even up 0.1% compared to 2020.

Regional Fed Manufacturing Surveys

The regional Federal Reserve branches publish manufacturing surveys. We typically don’t cover them in this newsletter because we get plenty of nationwide manufacturing indicators, but this week’s Philadelphia and New York region manufacturing surveys seemed newsworthy.

Manufacturing activity in the Philadelphia region contracted for the fifth straight month in January, while manufacturing activity in the New York region fell to its lowest level since mid-2020 and its fifth lowest level ever.

Demand, and especially demand for goods, is weakening.

Wednesday

Retail Sales