Skip to main content

Some New Statistics Which Reflect How Well The USA Economy Is Doing.

Just a short post, but reading the papers today, I came across two pieces which I feel are important to read.

The first article appeared in the Wall Street Journal and is entitled "Manufacturer's Good Problems." It suggests that while manufacturers are indeed having supply chain issues and recruiting dilemmas, business is expanding in a big way.  Currently The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) based on surveys they do which currently indicate the ISM "index of manufacturing activity" is currently at 60.6, and anything over 50 signals expansion.  The consumer is buying!!

The second article appeared in both the New York Times and the NPR blog.  This article comes from the Times newspaper today.  Both report that U.S. employers added 850,000 workers in June.  This suggests strongly that labor is being rehired at a fast pace.  That reflects in the hiring issue mentioned above in the first article.  But businesses need to keep an eye on the high quit rate I mentioned in a previous post as well as the pay rate they are offering.  Currently it appears to be an employee market.  The NPR article appears here,

Have a great weekend.

Bob  July 2, 2021



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Flaw Of Averages

Yes, this post will be primarily a copy of a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article.  The article is the point of this blog. Over my decades in consulting, one of the major requirements in our niche was to insure that our clients received the savings we had forecast that they would achieve in a mutually agreeable manner.  In the very beginning, when I started back in 1974, computers were not easily available or accessible as they had to be huge room-size machines and many clients did not even have them.  So we used adding machines with paper tape to the shortly thereafter personal hand held-calculators.  Personal computers starting with the very first Apple or Radio Shack model proved far superior but had minimal calculating capacity.  None were perfect and because of this limitation, a straight line average over a years period was typically used to compare history to current and prove savings had been achieved. ...

ARE WE TEACHING THE RIGHT THINGS IN GRAMMAR SCHOOL?

It was decades ago that I was in grammar school.  Things were significantly different then than they are now.  Of course computers and smart phones were not even in our line of sight as they are today.  I am not questioning the digital revolution one whit, as I believe it is integral to our growth as people, our growth as an economy as well as our growth globally. But I am dismayed by our departure from grammar school years of some of the basics that we used to go through.  I remember one class in particular in 7th grade (about age 12) called Home Economics, in which both the boys and girls had to take.  It was a school year long class and included cooking, sewing, electricity and plumbing.  We all had to learn how to cook some basic foods and as part of the class had to cook a hot lunch for ourselves.  And I am not talking about just opening a can or defrosting someth...

Listening to the Great Ideas of your Employees!!

On Tuesday, February 7, 2012, the Wall Street Journal wsj.com had a great article entitled, "Boeing Teams Speed Up 737 Output."  The link for this article is: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577155204034907744.html?KEYWORDS=David+Kesmodel Boeing Teams Speed Up 737 Output Jet Maker's Innovation Crews Search for Ways to Streamline Production as Aircraft Demand Soars By DAVID KESMODEL RENTON, Wash.—As Boeing Co. strives to lift production of its best-selling 737 jetliner to meet surging airline demand, it is turning to workers like Jay Dohrmann to streamline work. Mr. Dohrmann, a brawny, 46-year-old engineer at the 737 plant here, is part of an extensive effort the company has underway to rally employees for ways to make its jets more efficiently and avoid expanding its factories and its costs. These innovation teams are growing as Boeing seeks to increase output of the narrow-body, workhorse plane by as much as 71%. ...