Economics

New weekly unemployment insurance claims have come down slightly from last week's record-setting levels. Looking at the unemployment insurance data and data on confirmed COVID-19 cases, Louisiana is being severely impacted from both a health and economic perspective.  read more »

A January 5, 2020 Wall Street Journal editorial examines Oregon’s housing affordability crisis. The editorial, “The Housing Shortage in Profile: Construction in Oregon dropped to the lowest level since World War II” not only describes the immediate consequences of Oregon’s recently enacted land use regulations but also provides the four decade context that has done so much damage to its middle-class.  read more »

The Memphis Commercial Appeal has reported that Google will open its first US operations center in the northeast Mississippi. This area includes the suburbs and exurbs of the Memphis, TN-MS-AR metropolitan area.  read more »

Choose Energy tracks energy rates by state. Find your state on the interactive map below to see the latest average rate, its rank among other states and the percentage change from the previous month. Learn more at ChooseEnergy.com.  read more »

Yesterday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released its dwelling approvals data for November, which revealed that dwelling approvals nationally have crashed by 35% in trend terms from the March 2015 peak, driven by a mammoth 52% decline in unit and apartment approvals.  read more »

Chapman University President Emeritus and Professor of Economics Jim Doti gave more than the red meat of prognostication at the recent mid-year update on the economic forecast from the A. Gary Anderson Center at the Argyros School of Business and Economics.  read more »

For the first time, oil has been exported from the United States to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The UAE has been one of the world’s leading producers of oil, which has financed the urban centers of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, with their spectacular architecture. This is an indication of the rise over the past decade of the United States as a fossil fuel producer.  read more »

When Amazon’s list of 20 cites that will move forward was announced, I noted that cities like Indianapolis and Columbus win just from making the cut. You could also add Nashville and Raleigh to that list.

I’m just following up with some brief evidence of how this played out. First, the New York Times coverage of the Amazon cut list selection led with an image of downtown Indianapolis and also featured a large picture of Columbus, Ohio.  read more »

Amazon released its first cut of 20 cities in the bakeoff for its new 50,000 job HQ2, down from 238 initial bids submitted.

It’s hard to know exactly how to interpret this, but one takeaway is that Amazon wants to keep us guessing about where they are heading. There are bigger cities and smaller cities, high cost cities and low cost cities, red state cities and blue state cities, cities in every area of the country, etc.  read more »

The Wall Street Journal reports good news for Detroit, with a somewhat rare expansion of production in Detroit (specifically in Warren, suburban Macomb County). Fiat Chrysler will be moving some of its truck production to Warren from a plant in Saltillo, Mexico, creating 2,500 new jobs. The Detroit move is to be contrasted with the near monopoly that Southern states have enjoyed in attracting vehicle manufacturing by foreign suppliers.  read more »