Monday, September 3, 2012

Happy Construction Labor Day


Click to enlarge.

Those waiting for a return to normal should get out the party hats. We are there. Sigh.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Construction Employees per Capita

9 comments:

Soviet of Washington said...

I believe it. Up here on the northern fringe of Pugetopolis, we've seen 2x decimation of the mills/lumberyards other than the Home Depot's/Lowes' in the past 18 months. Not just the boom newbies either, but ones that have been here since I mover here 30 years ago.

Troy said...

Construction creates ~very~ durable goods -- every house a builder makes puts them out of a job for 20-30 years, LOL.

Man the bubble was nutty. I visited one epicenter of the bubble in late 2005 -- Corona, CA -- and just wondered at how all this very apparent "prosperity" was being supported.

My general thesis back then was that wage inflation was going to catch up with the housing price appreciation, but that was a year before I understood the outright fraud aspect and how suicide lending and cash-out refis were supporting valuations.

Casey Serin making his appearance ca. Sept 2006 was the signal event -- the first cockroach -- that indicated that something was indeed rotten in Denmark.

Construction is where we really need a finely-crafted simulation of the economy. It should be possible to have a model of the condition of every fixed improvement in the country.

Back in the 1990s, when I was doing 3D work in Japan the idea of modelling Tokyo came to me, but we couldn't really find a business case for it.

The Mori Corporation in Tokyo has more money than sense, so that didn't stop them . . .

MaxedOutMama said...

It seems like the obvious solution is to start planting tulips and selling the bulbs to each other.

I'm sure that would work very well.

Troy said...

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=a83 another chart for DeLong . . . real GDP vs. real gummint debt . . .

Stagflationary Mark said...

Soviet of Washington,

I enjoyed the North Bend end of Pugetopolis today.

It was a place called Little Si. No joke.

Oh, the irony. It's a peak with a sigh, just like the one in this post. D'oh!

Stagflationary Mark said...

Troy,

Wage inflation was last seen with the spotted owl.

Northern Spotted Owl

One study at the University of Wisconsin–Madison by environmental scientists argued that logging jobs had been in a long decline and that environmental protection was not a significant factor in job loss. From 1947 to 1964, the number of logging jobs declined 90%.

Stagflationary Mark said...

MaxedOutMama,

It seems like the obvious solution is to start planting tulips and selling the bulbs to each other.

I'm sure that would work very well.


Could we plant the bulbs in China and then borrow the money to pay for them? I'm just trying to enhance the prosperity using what has seemingly worked for us in the past.

JFlee said...

Gary Johnson will win the election http://ow.ly/dt36G

Stagflationary Mark said...

JFlee,

Well, it would certainly break the trend.

August 28, 2012
Why Is Gary Johnson Being Ignored?

Yet no Libertarian nominee for president has ever gotten more than 1.06 percent of the vote.