Deptofnumbers.com Website Review

the low inflation environment we're currently experiencing is actually the product of two fairly strong trends nearly canceling each other out. Below is the chart of headline inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index. Over the past year headline inflation by this But this tame measure hides the fact that we've had a something approaching a price shock in oil. The energy component of the CPI Compensating for this strong decline in inflation pressure is consistently rising shelter (predominantely rent) costs. Shelter is a What do you do with these strong opposing signals? The Fed has correctly stated that even stabilizing oil prices will raise headline inflation and have at least in part moved to raise interest rates with that expectation. But let's not forget that, all else being equal, a low inflation environment yields rising real income. The chart below shows headline CPI since the end of the recession along with nominal For now, and for the first time in any meaningful way since the recession, we're seeing wage growth in excess of inflation. This is persists and I'd love to see monetary policy normalize sooner rather than later, but will we sacrifice real wage growth for normalization? I'm gathering national and regional GDP data for a new section I'm working on to highlight local measures of economic activity, and I experienced by the average resident of a region. The average resident's personal economy is probably pretty well captured by their plus the change in the number of households. So what does aggregate household income growth look like compared to GDP growth then? The chart below shows real US GDP growth since 2000 (blue) compared to total aggregate household income (green) and a statistic I made up which I'll call median aggregate income (red). If total aggregate household income can be thought of as average household income multiplied by the total number of households, median aggregate income is just median household income Measures of aggregate household income growth have not done nearly as well as GDP since 2000. They've grown, but not as fast the overall