The WAY to WOW Shows
Economic Echoes
May 21, 2025
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[0:00] [Music] Who are you? And where are you going? What do you [Music] want? Hello and welcome to People Making Money. I'm your host Kevin Bemel and we're here every uh Wednesday. I think about what day. I'm thinking Tuesday. No, that's not right. Thursday. Uh we're here every Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time to talk about job hunting,

[0:35] starting and running a business, and building wealth and all of the financial aspects of life. So today is our monthly economic echoes where we take a look at the economic data for the past month and see what that means about the decisions we make for our families and ourselves. So, I'm going to This is always a, you know, a busy presentation. So, I'm going to uh jump right into things and with uh where we always start, which is with a look at the consumer price

[1:10] index. Let's maximize this window so you can see it. There we go. And okay so um as we look at this we can see that um all major categories the consumer price index for all urban consumers this is for the entire country it went up.2% in April um and 2.3% uh year-over-year. So, we're edging closer to the Federal Reserve's target of 2%. Uh, but we're not quite there

[1:45] yet. Uh, okay. And then if we look at uh um all items less food and energy, which are the two most volatile, we see that's actually at 2.8%. Okay. Year-over-year. Uh, al also a 2% increase. Now, why is it not, you know, if it was a 2% increase in April, why is it not, you know, 2.4% year-over-year? And that's because, you know, it varies month by month. And so, there were evidently some months um on average that were higher than 0.2%. So,

[2:20] it's running between 0.2 and 0.25% uh each uh each month over the last year. So again a little bit higher than the 2% uh average. However, what's more important is ma food which is a category that everybody uh you know buys is up 2.8% year-over-year whereas energy is down 3.7%. And so although not everybody literally uses energy in the sense of drives a car and buys gasoline, energy

[2:58] is a component of everything we buy. And so what's really going on here is continuing drop in the uh price of energy is holding down the overall inflation rate. So if energy part uh if energy prices taper off or start to increase then we would see inflation uh I think start rising again. I think this is one of the reasons why the Federal Reserve decided to leave the uh decided to leave interest rates unchanged because there's

[3:34] a lot of uncertainty in the market and it's it's it's difficult to predict whether inflation is going to continue to drop down to the 2% target, whether energy prices are going to continue to decline. Now I will say that the bias is for energy prices to continue declining. Uh production in there have been uh some production increases uh out out of OPEC. At the same time uh as uh uh Vladimir Putin rema Putin remains intrigent in negotiating or agreeing to

[4:12] a ceasefire uh in the war in Ukraine. uh there is um a substantial movement in Congress to sanction Russia and that would that would the part of that would be an attempt to pull Russian oil off of the market. So if if Russian oil exports decline, that would shrink the supply of energy, if the supply of oil, which again could cause uh oil prices and energy prices in general to taper off

[4:48] instead of decline andor even increase. And so because of all of these various uh uncertainties, this is why uh I think that we're we're you know interest rates have been held were held steady last month and you know we're in kind of a wait and see uh pattern here. Okay. So now let's look at uh you know let's look at how these these categories break down. Okay. So food food at home was up about 2%. Uh food away from home up almost 4% 3.9%.

[5:23] Okay, food at home once again we see the big increases among proteins, meat, poultry, fish and eggs up 7%. And non-alcoholic beverages were up 3.2%. Those were the big gainers. Uh um cereals and bakery products unchanged. Uh dairy was up 1.6% 6% whereas fruits and vegetables were down almost a percent and uh food at other food at home was up.7%. So uh you know if if you're like me and you eat a diet heavy in fruits and vegetables the picture is looking a little bit brighter um but if

[5:59] you eat a heavy uh protein diet uh so then your costs have continued to increase. Okay, energy. So, as has been the trend for months now, energy commodities decreased 11.5%. Right? So, if you notice, I'm going to go back to the top level. Overall, energy went down 3.7%. But this is because um energy commodities went down 11.5% but energy services went up 6.2%. So, services continue to increase while

[6:36] commodity prices drop. What are commodities? Well, fuel oil for heating went up uh I'm sorry, went down uh almost 10%. Gasoline went down almost 12%. Okay, so if you're driving, presumably you should be seeing prices at the pump drop. Unless you're here in California, California has a specially formulated gasoline that is supposed to reduce air pollution. We can't import gasoline from other states and our refining capacity has continued to decline over the years and

[7:12] so gasoline prices are much stickier in California. But in the rest of the country, I would imagine you're seeing some pretty good drops in gasoline prices. Okay. Uh energy services, so electricity went up 3.6%, a pretty significant increase. Natural gas went up 15.7%. Right? So, if you don't drive, but you do heat your home with natural gas, or maybe you have a gas stove, a gas dryer, a gas cooktop, you saw energy, you experienced energy price

[7:49] increases much steeper. Um, and so you're feeling inflation more than uh than than people who don't uh have the same kind of appliances. Okay. And then in uh all items less food and energy we commodity prices basically unchanged up a tenth of a percent. Services less uh energy services went up 3.6%. Okay. So let's look at look drill down to commodities. What really went up? Well tobacco went up 7.1%. Alcoholic beverages just under two. Uh medical commodities 1%. used

[8:28] cars and trucks one and a half percent uh new vehicles essentially unchanged.3% and apparel again went down I think it went down last uh last month as well almost a percent okay so you can see the big increases in commodities less not including uh food and energy commodities are tobacco and uh I mean alcoholic beverages less than 2% so really tobacco is is the big gainer there okay in terms of services less energy services. So shelter went up 4% medical care over 3%

[9:07] transportation services 2 and a.5%. Okay. So everybody needs shelter. Um and you know most of us need medical care although you know thank goodness I've been I know I've been pretty I've been healthy so far this year as opposed to the previous uh two years. And so, you know, haven't had to bear any medical care services. So, uh but but shelter was up um as was uh you know, the cost of of gas uh and and you know, food is also up. So, if you're not

[9:44] smoking and you're not I mean, if if you're not smoking, okay, that would tend to lower inflation a little bit, but if you're not driving, if you don't drive a car, you're almost for sure experiencing inflation higher than what what we're seeing in the national average. Okay. So, now let's let's look at a at a local uh consumer price. Okay, we're going to look at Los Angeles. Okay, we're going to look at the local area here. Okay, and you can see that.

[10:21] So, Los Angeles, okay, uh once again, consumer prices were up uh 3%. Um which is higher than the national average, okay, for the 12 months ending April. and uh items less food and energy were up 3.3%. So we're experiencing inflation higher than the country as a whole. Now here's the important thing. Um the consumer price index all urban consumers for Los Angeles, Long Beach, Anaheim went up.6% in April. So inflation is definitely hotter in the Los Angeles

[10:58] area than it is in the than it is in the nation as a whole. Okay. And uh what's what's driving this? Well, let's see. Um and and here you go. Gasoline prices in LA were up 3.2% even though they were down what? 11 and a half% nationally. Uh oh, I'm sorry. Wait. Yeah. 1.6 month overmonth, right? Um they they 1.6% month um uh over the month. Um and

[11:33] uh oh sorry the energy prices overall were up 1.6 gasoline prices increased 3.2% for over last month overall for the year energy prices declined 3% and gasoline prices declined 9.2%. So you can see even though gas prices year-over-year declined in Los Angeles, they declined less than other places in the country. And they are on the rise. And we see this, it seems like we see this as we head into every summer, uh, refineries have to go offline for maintenance, etc. And just as we hit the

[12:08] peak driving season of the summer, gasoline prices in California in general start to increase. Okay. Um now interestingly enough uh the food index in April went up uh 610 of a percent again uh higher than the national average. Um but food at home declined.3% um led by lower prices for proteins which went down 2.7%. Food away from home went up a percent and a half. Okay. So food the food in Los Angeles went up almost 4% year-over-year. Food at home

[12:45] went up 2.4% with higher prices in five of six categories. Food away from home went up over 5%. Okay, so you can see California, Los Angeles in particular, a more expensive place to live uh and and a more and a higher inflationary environment. Okay, now let's look at let's look at wages, right? So, inflation is all good and well, uh, but how we're experiencing it also depends

[13:21] on, you know, are we making more money? And here we go. So, you see, real average hourly earnings were flat from March to April. So, they did not change at all. And in fact on a weekly basis earnings actually went down. So that has to do with rounding errors and that sort of thing. Uh but but prices are going up and wages are essentially flat. Okay. So and and that's um uh so you can see that

[13:56] average hourly earnings um which are are uh not adjusted for inflation went up you know 6 cents um you know so that's that's what just you know uh let's see that would be 10 so let's see 1% would be 36 cents so it went up a sixth of a percent okay which which is you know essentially you know, nothing. Uh, and um, hours worked have also stayed flat. That's another reason why we're not seeing wage increases on a on a weekly basis. So,

[14:33] um, you know, they've been pretty flat or just at slightly over 34 hours a week. Okay. And and here you can see real average hourly earnings um unchanged weekly a real average weekly earnings down a tenth of a percent. Uh and average hourly earnings went up okay 2% that's it's actually.16 but rounded off to 2% but average weekly earnings really were or I'm sorry average hours weekly unchanged average weekly earnings again went up about 0.2%. So, um, you know, we're at

[15:11] best keeping pace with inflation. Uh, however, you know, and and unfortunately, I don't have this on a these numbers on a local basis, but for an area, I would be willing to bet that wages are not keeping place keeping pace with the higher inflation rate. Okay. So again those those two all inflation or or the consumer price index and earnings need to be looked at concurrently because look if if inflation goes up you know 5% but our

[15:47] earnings go up 10% so it doesn't seem like inflation is is affecting us and it's and it's really not because our the increase in our earnings is double the inflation rate. So always we always need to look those together. Okay, now let's look at the civilian labor force uh participation rate. Oh, wait a minute. Wait, where's the unemployment rate? For some reason, did I skip that one? Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, before we look at Let's look at the unemployment rate uh

[16:22] first. Okay. Sorry about that. For some reason, I didn't bring that one up. Okay. Civilian unemployment rate. Here we go. Okay. Sorry about that. And I just want to make sure this is posting right for you. Yes, it is. Okay. All right. So, the unemployment rate uh was up slightly in April to 4.2% from uh oh no, I'm sorry. It was flat with March at 4.2 4.2% for both months. uh February was 4.1, December 4.1. So, it's

[16:59] been slightly above 4%. You can see unemployment has been pretty stable since uh August of 2024. Okay. Goes down a ten of a percent up and down. That's that's what it's been doing. Okay. Now, if um if we go back to May of 2024, it was at 4%. So we can see for the last year nationwide unemployment has been pretty steady at about 4 to 4.2%. Um so that that's that's that's been very stable. Okay. For men 20 years

[17:34] and over uh unemployment rate is was four is 4% in April up from 3.8% and since May of last year it was at 3.8%. So, and it's been hovering between kind of four 3.8 and 4 4.1%. So, again, it's been pretty stable for for men over 20 in the last year. Uh, for women, let's get rid of this one. So, I Okay, there we go. So, for women, unemployment rate in uh in April, 3.7%

[18:10] unchanged from March. And going back to uh May was 3.4. 4% and April's 3.5%. So you know again for women the unemployment rate has has been pretty stable between about 3.5 and 3.89 3.9%. Okay so for you know again stable. Now let's look at 16 to 19 year olds. So unemployment has been more volatile. In April it was 12.9% and that's uh down from 13.6. 7%

[18:47] in March. Uh February was 12.9 on par with what it is now. In and then let's go back to April of last year was about 11.8%. April of this year it's at 12.9%. So you can see a much larger fluctuation. Unemployment has been as high as 14.2% in August of last year and as low as 11.8% in January. So and that that's unusual. Unemployment among teenagers tends to to vary more widely. Um teenagers go to school. They they're

[19:24] on summer vacation. They may get a job for a while and then they may, you know, just take time off to do nothing. So, and they're mostly, you know, se a seasonal workforce and so their unemployment rate is is more volatile. Okay. Looking at the demographics then, so for white Americans, the unemployment rate in April was 3.8%. On par with February and uh March, I think it was 3.7. Yeah, but pretty pretty similar. And then going back to April of last year was at

[19:59] 3.5. So it's been in the range of 3.5 to 3.8% for white Americans. Um, compare that with black Americans. So, uh, it's in April was 6.3, up slightly from 6.2 last month, and it was 5.6% in April of last year. So, you can see it's it's up 7/10en of a percent uh, year-over-year. So, black Americans as a group are experiencing higher unemployment uh than than, for example, white

[20:34] Americans. Okay. Now, let's look at Asians. Okay. So, uh, Asian-Americans current unemployment rate is 3% for April. That's down from 3 and a.5%. So, a big decline for Asians. Okay. And looking year-over-year, it was at 2.9% for April. So, it's interesting. 2.9% April of 2024, 3% April of 2025. Uh, the highest it got was 4.1%. So again, seeing more

[21:09] volatility in the unemployment uh rate for Asian-Americans. Um but still at a pretty low level, four between three and 4%. Still very very low. Okay. And then finally for uh uh Hispanic Americans, so the unemployment rate in April 5.2% up a tenth of a percent from March and going back to April was at 4.8. 8%. So again, we're seeing a range of about five 4.8 to 5.2. What was this right

[21:45] here? Trying to get it. Yeah, 4.85. So a fairly narrow range for uh Hispanic Americans as well. So overall though, um employment is unemployment is low uh across the board. Um, with the exception of teenagers where it's almost 13%, that's not unusual. And you can see, by the way, teenage unemployment rarely drops below 10%. Here's 9.8% back in March of 2023, but typically it it

[22:21] over the last uh, you know, eight years, it's ranged between 10 and 15%. Ignoring the spike during COVID, right? So, so that's that's pretty typical for teen unemployment as opposed to uh men um 20 years and older. You can see again since uh for the last eight actually almost the last 10 years it's hovered in the low to high uh 4% um sometimes getting slightly below 4%. And for women, again, over the last 10

[22:57] years, it's been pretty much under 5% that whole time, except for the COVID period. So, the last 10 years have have definitely been a period of low unemployment overall. Now um like with the CPI and wages um as as I always u mention unemployment needs to be viewed along with labor force participation. Okay. So one reason that uh unemployment can go down is that

[23:32] people drop out of the job searching market. Okay. because the unemployment rate only s only takes into account people who are unemployed but looking for a job. So, and there's a a technical definition for that that we won't get into. So, it there's two there's two things that can change the unemployment rate. One is the number of jobs available and the and the people getting those jobs and the other is the number of people looking for jobs. Right? So the for labor force participation rate is examining the second of the two. So

[24:08] the labor force participation rate in April last month was 62.6% up from 62.5. And if we go back to April of last year it was 62.7. So the labor force participation rate has changed very little. 62.5. Yeah 62.4 between 62.4 4 and 62.7. It's changed 3/10en of a percent. Not a big change over the last year. However, let's go back 10 years. Okay, it was at that range

[24:43] 62.4. Uh but there were times, well actually over the last 10 years except for during COVID, the labor force participation rate has been around 63% for the last 10 years. But you see there's been a longterm decline in labor force participation rate starting 20 years ago when it was at 66% and it was at that rate until the recession in 2008 2009 and from there it's steadily declined to now the the the sort of more

[25:19] normal rate is 63%. So 3% of the civilian labor force between uh 20 2005 and 2015 essentially permanently left the labor force. So overall we have a smaller labor force today than we did 20 years ago. Since then it stayed pretty pretty stable around 63% sometimes getting you know 62 and a half percent. Okay. So um as we think about unemployment over the last

[25:55] uh 10 years, labor force participation really hasn't been a big factor in changes in employment. On the other hand, unemployment has been pretty steady as well. Okay. So, um that's somewhat good news for the economy, but it also is probably saying that so there's there are persistent uh open jobs that that employers are not able to fill. Okay? And that's not good for the economy because that means there's there's production capacity for

[26:31] example that can't be met. There's demand for services that can't be met. How was what's going to happen with respect to that? Well, and I'm gonna I'm gonna go out of the sharing for just a moment. So, what's going to happen when we see we see uh you know from 2005 to 2015, we saw a 3% permanent decrease in labor force participation. And then over the last 10 years, we've seen pretty steady labor force participation at around 63%. unemployment uh pretty steady between four and 5% and yet we

[27:07] persistently see open jobs. What's going to happen? Employers, businesses are going to fill those jobs most likely with technology, right? That's that's the only choice they have. There aren't people to fill the jobs. Um and if the work needs to be done, they're going to look for technological solutions. So AI may fill some of those some of those jobs. Now they won't literally fill the jobs, right? What they'll do is AI will increase the productivity of existing employees in such a way that

[27:42] they can get more done in the same time. Okay? And so then the need for those jobs will go away. All right? So it a lot depends on where the shortages of workers are. And now it does appear that they're in things like uh construction trades, plumbing, electrical, h uh heating, vent heating, ventilating, and air conditioning, right? There's persistent shortages. So, is AI going to replace those people? No, it's it's not. You you know, there's no way to like set

[28:17] a computer in front of a broken pipe and say fix it. However, what AI can do is it can make it can help a plumber be more efficient in um perhaps detecting where leaks are or in uh how long it takes to fix a particular leak or to set up a a plumbing system. A because of the information that AI can produce and how quickly it can produce it. So the time the plumber spent may doing research to be able to do a job is decreased.

[28:53] Meaning the plumber can spend more time in the field actually doing the work. Plus if he has his cell phone, which he almost for sure does, if something comes up and he needs to figure it out, he can go on an AI on his cell phone and get that information much more rapidly than he could looking into a manual or having to, you know, call up colleagues, maybe a more experienced colleague. how do I handle this particular situation etc. So, uh, you know, this trend we've seen over the last 10 years in a pretty consistent range of labor force participation and

[29:29] unemployment and and still insufficient workers leads me to think that we are going to see those those jobs, those persistent unfilled jobs go away as businesses, as employers figure out ways to make their existing workforce more productive. Okay. So, um, and and by the way, to the extent that you're in a a more information job, okay, so you know, whether you're like a parallegal or some kind of researcher or

[30:05] you're doing some kind of writing, okay, those jobs are the most at risk for uh for for uh uh AI because AI does those things extremely Well, okay. I I I was commenting to a friend of mine on Monday how amazingly productive chat GPT makes me using a spreadsheet. Okay. So, what in what what I used to do when I first started in the real estate business back in

[30:40] 1986 or thereabouts, my boss would not need me in that job today. Not at all. He could do it what what would what sometimes would take me all day to do a a spreadsheet with a 10-year spread of income and expenses on a property he could probably do with an AI in 20 minutes, you know, maybe less, especially if he already had the basic spreadsheet laid out. Okay. So, the idea that, you know, I would have had to be

[31:15] paid I would have to be paid today eight hours to do that spreadsheet. Not a chance. Not a chance. Okay. So that's the kind of work that's likely to go away and and and so you know as you look at what your employment prospects are going forward you know if you are not if you are not experimenting with AI in your area of expertise how to use it excuse me if you are not experimenting with how to use AI in

[31:52] particular large language anguage models like chat GPT or claude in your work, you are falling behind and you are putting yourself in danger of becoming obsolete. Okay. Next, we're going to look at okay uh employment by industry. Okay. As has been Oops. Let me make sure I get this enlarged for you. There we go. Okay. As has been the case for a long time, the two of the largest increases in

[32:29] employment are uh private education and health services. Okay, an increase in 70,000 jobs in April. And government, okay, an increase of 10,000 jobs. Now transportation and warehousing saw a big bump 29,000 jobs probably due to the surge in imports that took place uh in antic in anticipation of the tariffs uh you know hitting uh in in in this month and then 11,000 job uh increases in construction. Okay. Now, interesting

[33:05] enough, leisure and hospitality 24,000 jobs, professional and business services up 17,000 jobs, and financial services up 14,000 jobs. So, there was a lot of job growth in in April, which is good. Others, you see that a slight drop in other services, a no increase in information, slight drop in utilities, a little bit of a drop in retail and manufacturing and mining and logging, a slight increase. Right? So all all all the major changes were gains which is good. All right. So let's

[33:40] look at uh let's look at private educational health services. So private educational services 11.5 11,500 jobs. Health care 50,600 new jobs and social assistance 7,600 new jobs. Okay. So healthc care job increases are largely driven by government spending. Okay. So uh this has been the trend now for for a you know pretty much the last four years where the biggest gains in jobs are

[34:16] coming through sectors that benefit from government spending. Okay. And let's look at government itself now. Again you saw federal workforce dropped 9,000 jobs. However, uh and by the way, but that still means there's uh almost three million people working for the f federal government. Okay? But state governments hired 6,000 people and they're they're employing 5 million 500,000 and local governments hired 13,000 people. Their total employment is 15,000 people. So 15

[34:53] and 5.5 is 20.5 and three 23.5 million people basically work for uh the government. Okay. So that's roughly I think 15% or so of of the workforce. Okay. So local government uh both education and uh other uh local government services about the same in each one. Okay. Uh what dropped in the federal government? Well, uh everything but the postal service. Okay, the postal service actually increased 200 jobs but

[35:28] everything else dropped. Okay, that is part of what President Trump is seeking to do. And then in state government, so state government education about 1,400 jobs. It was the other category non-education got jobs in state government that went up. Okay. All right. Now the other large gainers transportation and warehousing. So you see warehousing and storage almost 10,000 new jobs couriers and messengers over 8,000 air transportation 3,000. Um uh ground transportation 2,000 truck

[36:05] transportation 1,400. Right? So all of these support activities 2500. So you can see all the categories with with the exception of water transportation h saw increases even rail transport saw 100 jobs. Okay. So that's where transportation and warehousing. Okay. That that across all sectors that's why you saw such big gains there. All right. Now let's look at leisure and hospitality. So both arts and entertain entertainment and recreation went up but only by a small amount 3,000. Accommodation and food went up by almost 21,000 jobs. So, and this has been the

[36:42] the trend. So, amusement, gambling, and recreation. That's where the job increases came offset partly by museums and performing arts and spectator sports. Okay. And then looking at accommodation and food. So, accommodations did increase 4,000 jobs, but it's food. Um, 16,600 jobs. That's really where the big job growth was in terms of leisure and hospitality. Okay. professional and business services. So, this is interesting. All three categories increased um in in professional, scientific, and

[37:18] technical services. So, it's kind of a mixed bag. Architectural and engineering services increased. uh 5,000 jobs as legal services were up and computer services went up, but accounting and tax preparation, specialized design services, scientific research and development, uh management scientific and advertising and public relations all went down. So, it's a mixed bag among professional scientific and technical services. Uh the other part of that is administrative support and waste management. So, both of those went up. So administrative and support went up

[37:55] 7,700. Waste management and remediation went up 4,000. Okay. And now let's look at financial activities. Both finance and insurance and real estate increased. Okay. And uh so insurance carriers and related activities went down slightly but securities, commodity contracts, etc. went up. credit intermediation meaning people who arrange credit went up and banks uh were unchanged and then we'll we'll take a look at real estate. So all sectors well two out of three sectors of real estate went up real

[38:31] estate and rental and leasing services uh less or of non-financial intangible uh assets. Uh that's that's like um I'm not even sure what that is but it was unchanged anyway. So, uh, um, but basically, real estate was healthy last month. Okay. And I'm not going to look at any of the ones that that dropped. They're all too small. Now, let's look at the 12 month picture. Now, if you see, I'm going to I'm going to click it back so you can see what's see what's changed, right? So, what has changed from one month to three month? Well, manufacturing year-over-year declined

[39:08] 82,000 jobs. Okay? and professional and business activities went down 31,000 jobs year-over-year. Okay. Those are the two uh biggest changes. Yeah. Uh and uh right. And so th those are the two uh otherwise the trends we're seeing in April of this year uh largely mirror the trends we've seen for the last year. Okay. Now let's look

[39:46] at okay let's look at housing prices now. Okay, so here's this is the California housing market and you can see the median sales price in California $856,000 uh as of April. Okay. And it's been in the 800 to 900,000 range for pretty much the the you know the last year. It dropped slightly below 800,000 back in January,

[40:22] but it's, you know, it's been in this range in the mid 8 to 900,000 range for, like I said, a year now. Okay. Uh, and um, the fastest growing California metropolitan areas, Sunnyvale and Cenus, Torrance, Berkeley, Loi. So, um, you know, Rancho Mirage, Mission, Viejo. So, it's pretty much across the state. Okay. And the supply. So, there's um almost 100,000 homes for sale. Uh there's a

[40:57] three month supply. Okay. And you can see the number of homes for sale has gone up. Um well, it took a big dip between October and December, but let's come back up to where it's, you know, closer to where it's been at for the last year. Okay. So, you know, that that's um you know, it's it's interesting that it dipped so much in uh the fall um and and now it's it's gone back up. Not Not really sure. Typically, you would see um Well, right. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I'm

[41:33] sorry. That's correct. You Yeah. Because as people have gone back to school, they take their houses off the market. Okay. We see the same thing here, October to December in 2023. and probably Yeah. So, here's same thing in 2022, right? That's correct. Yes. Sorry, I was had my thinking reversed. So, in the fall, typically you see the number of homes on the market decline and then it goes back up as we head into the summer selling season. Okay, so that's that's been a pretty typical trend. Um, homes sold above list price

[42:08] 41.8% down 7.4% from last year. So the market is cooling. Okay. Homes sold with price drops almost 30% up almost 9%. Okay. So sale to list price basically on average homes are selling for the price at which they're listed. Okay. Now I'm handling the sale of a home for an I'm not handling it, but I have an estate that I'm administrating where uh a home is being sold. Um the broker has the listing. you know, he gave me his input

[42:43] on what he thought the the house should list for or would sell for, I mean, and or what the market was indicating it would sell for. We listed at that price. Uh, we got an offer at the list price basically, and then over the succeeding two or three weeks, we got offers at um the highest one is almost uh almostund I think it's $180,000 over list price. Okay. So it it can be a difficult market to uh judge uh what's going on. Now what you

[43:18] do see here is um in general for the last well since yeah since September of last year um homes have been selling for around about 40% of homes have been selling uh uh over list price. Okay. Whereas um the number of homes selling with price drops has been increasing. Okay, it decreased for a while but it's steadily increased since December and now it's kind of above the normal trend line

[43:55] which is around 25%. Okay. and the um okay so the sale to list price has been pretty consistent around 100% until you get back into April of 2022 where it was you know maybe around 105 106 uh% of list price okay so those those are the long-term trends okay and um all right now uh by the way you can find this data for on Red Fin for any market not just California So, let's let's see if it'll give me uh for actually let's let's look

[44:32] at let's look at Miami. Hey, Miami, Florida. Okay, there you go. All right. So, in Miami, Florida, the median sales price is 675. Okay. Um median days on market about 90 92 days. You can see the unlike uh unlike California where it's been kind of within the range, you can see the long-term trend in in Miami, Florida is up. So back in back three years ago,

[45:07] the median home price was under 600,000. Looks like it was at about I would say about five 560, maybe 570. Now it's at six 675. So, it's gone up $100,000 in three years. That's a tremendous increase in median home price. Okay. And then looking at these, you can see sale uh sale to list price 94.4%. Um 6.1% sold above list price. Uh almost 20% sold with price drops. Okay.

[45:44] And I think I must have done that data backwards. Now, um, in general, people are moving to Miami still. Okay. Um, where are they moving from? Well, you can see here they're moving from New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago. Okay. Now, and if they're leaving Miami, where are they going? Well, they're staying primarily in Florida with this sort of weird thing where they're going to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Not sure why that's the case, but otherwise they're either staying in Florida or going to Texas or Oklahoma. Okay, so that's

[46:21] that's an interesting trend to note. Okay, let's look at one more uh market. I want to go down here. Okay. No, I Yeah, I did that right. Okay. All right. Let's look let's look at um Omaha, Nebraska, I think is the one I usually uh also look at. Kind of a a smaller mid Midwestern Omaha. There we go. Omaha, Nebraska. Okay. All right. Median sales

[46:56] price in Omaha, Nebraska, $280,000. And you can see that it's been between 260 and 280 for the last year. And in fact, um, really for the last two years, it's been in that that 260 to 280 range, although for a short time it dropped slightly below it to maybe like 250. So, it's been in the 250 to 280 range for, you know, a good solid two years. Um, and and um, and even back as far as July of 2022, it was at about

[47:33] 260. So Omaha is a much more stable market than for example uh Miami. Okay. Uh sale to list price 99.4% almost 30% of homes sold above list price but close to 40% sold with price drops. Okay. And then in terms of uh in migration and out migration. So, people um moving to um Omaha, where are they coming from? Kansas City. And again, you see Washington DC, LA,

[48:09] Denver, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, right? Um and if they're leaving Omaha, where are they going to? Well, Milwaukee, still in the Midwest. De Moine, Madison, still in the Midwest. Florida, Coral, Cape Coral, uh Cape Coral, Florida, sorry. Phoenix, Arizona, Sarasota. Here's that weird Minneapolis thing. Not sure why. So, if people are leaving Omaha, they're leaving for four Florida destinations or staying in the Midwest. Even in this case, even in Minneapolis is still in the Midwest, right? So, people from are not leaving

[48:44] Omaha to go to the coast, but people are leaving the coast to go to Omaha. Okay. This is a great thing to take a look at if you're considering relocating and giving you a sense of what's going on in the housing market. Okay, now let's look at rentals. Okay, so this is the Zillow rent comparison tool. And uh I'm I'm going to look at this one right here. You can see uh these are uh I I think they're median

[49:20] rents. These are median rents uh across the country. And you can see Miami, Florida, median rent is 3,000 above New York. Now, that's that's pretty interesting down there. Both New York and Miami are significantly above Los Angeles. San Diego is above Los Angeles. Okay. And then you've got lower price markets. Dallas, Phoenix, uh Houston, Chicago, Atlanta. Right. So, let's let's take a look at these. Los Angeles. Okay. And what you see in Los Angeles is a

[49:56] huge rental properties around the 13 to400 range. That's kind of strange. I'm not sure frankly what that's about. Uh um and the average rent price over time. So, uh, it took a drop, um, in May of this year from over 2700 to 2,300. It's got to be because of this surge in these 14-,500 apartments. There must have been some large complex that opened up with moderate priced housing that caused this

[50:33] decline because otherwise you see the the the rents in Los Angeles have been trending between 2700 and 2850 for the last year and a half. Okay, so that's that's an this this drop is is is kind of an aberration. Okay, market temperature is cool. Okay. And um Okay. And you can see some of the areas in Beverly Hills 4,000. Read Railway 4,500. View Park, Windsor Hills 2,300, Lera Heights, Culver City. So you can see some of the subm markets within Los Angeles. Okay. Now let's go back to

[51:09] Miami. Okay. So, uh Miami has seen a cool a drop in rents this year versus last year. Last year, rents ranged from from about 3,250 to as high as 3,300 for most of the year. And then around about October, they started dropping. And now they for the for this year, they've stayed in the range of 3,000 to 3,75. Okay. Um, and again, you see this this thing rental properties in the 14 to $1,500 uh range. There's been a there's been a

[51:44] big spike in them. I'm wondering if that's some sort of uh mistake in the website that's reporting these because you can see it's an outlier compared to the others, but there is a lot of luxury rentals in uh in Miami which is one of the reasons why their average rent is so high. Okay, market temperature is warm. Okay, and you can see Kendall, Florida down around 2,000. Glenn Ver Heights 2500. Westwood Lake 3500. Okay, let's look at one more

[52:20] market. Let's look at Omaha since that's the other Oops. Omaha, Nebraska. Okay. And there again, we've got Yeah, this has got to be I think this is something wrong in the in the software. For some reason, it's reporting them uh high. Now, the interesting thing is by having a lot a mis what appears to be a misreporting of 14- $1,500 apartments um in Omaha, it made the average rent higher than it has been historically. Uh well, I guess on par with what it was around since July of last year was around 1500 where it's

[52:57] it's staying now. Uh but you know, prior to July of last year, it was down in the range of 1275 to 1375. Okay, that's so or 1400 I guess. So, um you know it it that that's a weird aberration and the market temperature in Nebraska is cool. So, good time to rent an apartment. So, if you are thinking of relocating the that's a great tool to use to figure out where would it might make sense for me to go. Okay, the last thing we're going to look at real quickly is the survey of consumers done

[53:34] by the University of Michigan. And you can see month over month and year-over-year change are all down. Consumer sentiment is down. People are not um optimistic about the future. So um uh so and interesting enough you see this consumer sentiment was essentially unchanged this month. 50.8 to 52.2. It still went down almost 3%. Um inching down a scant 1.4. four points for four consecutive months of after four consecutive months of steep declines.

[54:10] Okay, sentiment is down now almost 30% uh since January. Okay, um which is which is significant. Now, uh slight increases in sentiment this month for independents were offset by a 7% decline among Republicans. So, Republicans have been much more bullish about what the administration is doing economically and it looks like that is starting to waver. Okay. Tariffs were spontaneously mentioned by nearly three quarters of consumers up from almost 60%

[54:46] in April. Okay. So, uncertainty over trade policy is really what's roing the um you know consumer sentiment. Okay. So year- ahead inflation expectations um went up from from 6 and a half% last month to 7.3%. Other words, people are expecting an inflation rate more than double the current inflation rate. Okay. And the rise was among both Democrats and Republicans. Okay. Um long run inflation is expected to go from 4.4 to

[55:21] 4.6% in May. Okay. Um, and this was again mostly due to Republicans being less certain or less optimistic about the kinds of policies that the administration is uh is is is following. So what is this telling us? Well, inflation is definitely uncertain and it's being held down uh largely by drops in energy commodities. that that's that's clear in the inflation data. So if you are not buying gasoline, you are

[55:58] experiencing inflation at a higher rate than what's being reported nationally. That's number one. Number two, long-term uh labor force participation and unemployment are have been stable. Okay, we we're we we may not be literally at full employment, but we're pretty close. So overall, it seems like it's a pretty good time to be job hunting. Although probably not a good time to just give up your job and and and but it's a good time if you have a job to be looking for a better job. There are still lots of

[56:33] openings in many sectors and you can see that sectors like um professional services um um advanced this in in April whereas overall for the year they were down. So, we're starting to see a turnaround there. Okay. Construction still still seems to be uh growing. Uh well, it'll be interesting to see what happens with transportation and warehousing services um after the surge in in April. Um and if you are if you're working for a state or local government, it looks like you're in great shape. if

[57:08] you're working for the federal government, presumably we're going to see more shrinkage in or more declines, I should say, in federal government employment. So, uh you know, those those are the things to look at employment wise. Um in terms of housing trends, um it looks like across most sectors, uh they're they're not we're not seeing big increases or decreases. It's hard to tell with that aberration in rentals um in the in the Zillow data what's really going on there, but probably not like there probably wasn't the big drop in in Los Angeles um that that the the data

[57:44] was reflecting uh this month. Um probably that that those 14- $1,500 apartments that's probably a mistake in in in in the the website. Okay. And finally, overall, consumers are pessimistic about the future. Um, they're they're anticipating more turmoil as as the issue of tariffs get worked through and they're expecting higher inflation. Neither which of neither is uh particularly helpful uh for you know those of us who are uh raising families and and and have

[58:20] businesses etc. So what decisions do you make? Well, investments decisions are tough. There is still volatility in the market. Um, I would say don't act with panic. Um, you know, stay the course while the turmoil works itself through is probably a good a good policy. If you are dollar cost averaging your investments, probably continue to do that. um and and get through this time and and and the dollar cost averaging will largely work through uh the

[58:55] volatility. If you're unhappy in your work, it's probably a good time to be looking around. Not necessarily to quit your job, but to be looking around and reaching out and making contacts and talking to uh friends and and and colleagues in in your field or if you want to go into another field, developing new new contacts uh that that can help you understand what the opportunities may be. So, this is all by way of of taking the actual economic data and applying it to your situation so you can make the right decisions for your family and yourself. That's what

[59:30] economic echoes are all about. And I'm going to I'm going to continue to refine and add more sort of economic commentary as opposed to what I've done the last uh I think I've been doing this for now for close to a year where I just give you the data. I'm going to start digging into what the data means and and how it might affect the decisions that you make in in in coming months. So would love to hear your comments about this show in particular, how I can make it more relevant and useful for you. So uh social media uh links will be in the show notes and if you want to drop a

[60:07] comment in there that would be great and I would love to hear it. Uh positive of course is always welcome but but negative ones criticisms you know um constructive criticism most most welcome because I I want to make this as relevant for you as possible. So that's our show for today. Uh tomorrow at 5:00 pm Pacific time is my every other week show Jiggers's place. We're going to sit back and have a cocktail. We're going to have the Twain in honor of our subject which is Mark Twain. one of the, if not the greatest American writer of all

[60:42] time. Uh, Mark Twain, of course, wrote so many wonderful books. Uh, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Puddin Head Wilson, A Connecticut Yankee, King Arthur's Court, Innocence Abroad, and and and many others. One of the great humorists of all time, certainly. And uh as a as a way into understanding and realizing the benefits of great literature, Mark Twain is among, if not the most accessible. And so join me tomorrow at 5:00 p. p.m. Pacific time at Jiggers's place for a

[61:18] cocktail and a smoo and we'll talk about the wonderful Mark Twain. Next week, uh on Monday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time, it's Memorial Day. There'll be a special edition of the Way to Wow shows for Memorial Day. And then on Tuesday at 10 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time is my show business lessons from the military. And then a week from today, I'll be back for the next edition of People Making Money. So, as always, thank you for joining me, especially my live viewers. Wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and signing

[61:53] off as I always do. Marie darling, you are my bell. Courage at all times, my friends.