CTH has said repeatedly the road to serfdom is cemented with the catch-phrase “a service driven economy.” The June jobs report from the Bureau of Labor statistics [BLS LINK] highlights the JoeBama economic policy exactly that way.
Approximately 850,000 jobs were gained in June; however, simultaneously the number of long-term unemployed increased by 233,000 to the current state of four million.
While we should expect to see the leisure and hospitality industries as well as education rebounding from the various COVID-19 shutdowns, and indeed they did ( +343,000 and +155,000 respectively), manufacturing was flat (+11,000), and construction was down -7,000. The details inside the data are not as great as the top-line would presume.
CTH looks at alternative data connected to the overall economy; empirical data and sector specific trends inside industry. The biggest domestic issue is inflation, stunningly large increases in prices for fast-turn consumer goods like food and fuel. Inflation is one of the primary reasons we have stated home values and home sales have peaked on a MACRO level despite the massive amount of real estate investment purchasing underway by financial institutions.
When we look at durable good production, we focus on the primary drivers of higher cost middle-class or working class products. Seeing construction jobs decline by 7,000 at the same time real-estate values are increasing only points to the problem of working class not being able to afford new home purchases. In the real estate sector this is unsustainable; it is simply a matter of math, income stability and wages.

There are numerous laser guided measuring devices located in and around the remaining structure of the collapsed condominiums in Surfside, Florida. Overnight those devices detected significant movement in the remaining building as well as large cracks developing in the underground garage area.
