0:00 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 Wednesday at 10: a.m. Pacific time to talk about job hunting building a business and Building Wealth um all of the financial aspects of life so today is our monthly
0:38 economic Echoes where we break down the uh the economic data um from the preceding month and um see how um it it's actually going to affect us as individuals um I I always mention on the show we we don't live the national economy um we live local economies and we live our own you know individual or family economies and so when you know the government announces that inflation is 3% that is a pretty meaningless
1:16 statistic in isolation it really only means something uh in the sense that we break it down see how inflation has affected Us in terms of what we actually buy and then offset that with have we made any wage gains wage increases and you know what are our job prospects going forward all of these things have an impact on how we experience the economy so we're going to jump right in as we uh do with um
1:51 talking about the uh Consumer Price Index and here we go okay so uh the Consumer Price Index for January uh went up uh half a percent okay that's that's a pretty uh High rate um if if we were to annualize that that would translate to a 6% uh annual increase um now seasonally adjusted um
2:27 over the last 12 months inflation was three % or the CPI went up 3% now that's still significantly higher than the Federal reserv target of 2% it's 50% higher right uh it's not you know enormous um compared to where inflation was a few years ago um but it's still higher than um you know than is is you know considered good for the economy so uh the 3% is on all items okay and as we look at this you can see the energy all
3:03 items okay okay so food went up 2 and a half% energy went up only 1% and all other items went up 3.3% so what you can see is um the the What's called the core inflation everything but food and energy went up by 3.3% whereas food and energy you know lower and significantly lower than that so let's look at Food first so food at home went up by just under 2% whereas food away from home went up by 3.4% okay so if you're eating out a lot
3:38 you're experiencing inflation at a higher rate most likely okay what what actually went up well this seems to be the trend um proteins Meats poultry fish and eggs went up over six% so if you eat a very protein heavy diet um you you may have uh experienced inflation at a higher rate uh the flip side is cereals and bakery products just went up 4% and uh food um I'm sorry Dairy and related Foods 1.2% fruits and vegetables. 3% that that's good news for
4:15 me non-alcoholic beverages went up 2.2% and then other food at home went up 0.8% so you know and and I I would bet you that this uh 6.1% rise in proteins is driven a lot by eggs if you've been find following the news right the cost of eggs has skyrocketed um I know when I go to my local Trader Joe's they're trying to keep the price down and one of the things they have is a sign that says please only buy you know one dozen eggs each you know each time you come here so
4:51 uh you know that's likely to be where you know the major increase in in proteins were um okay in energy so energy Commodities went down a half perc whereas Energy Services went up 2 and a half% okay so let's drill down so fuel oil dropped by 5.3% gasoline was minus .2% essentially unchanged okay and then looking at Energy Services so electricity went up 2% natural gas went up 4.9% almost 5% so
5:28 I know for for me in California my house is heated by gas and um um and and my cook top is gas although my oven is is electric so um you know again I'm I'm likely experiencing higher energy prices um at the same time because my diet is heavy in fruits and vegetables you know my my food costs didn't go up nearly as much okay so now looking at all items less food and energy so Commodities less food and energy essentially unchanged
6:05 down 0.1% uh Services less Energy Services up 4.3% let's look at this okay so what Commodities went up well tobacco products went up almost 7% alcoholic beverages went up 1.4% that's been moderating because um alcohol sales um have been uh dropping uh for a number of reason reasons uh one is compared to during during the covid time when people were were drinking more and drinking higher quality um that's that's there's
6:40 been a pullback from that and then there's been competition especially among younger people with cannabis and cannabis products so all of that is um is is in essence forcing um distillers and and and and wine makers to you know hold the line price increases uh okay let's see what is this this is okay this is Medical Care Commodities went up 2.3% uh used cars and trucks went up 1% it looks um new vehicles went
7:17 down. 3% and apparel went up 04 per. so you know the big issues are Medical Care uh Commodities went up almost two and a half percent and tobacco products almost seven okay and then let's look at Services okay uh shelter went up 4.4% Medical Services 2.7% and transportation services up 8% okay so you know it's it's for most of us it's hard to escape these kinds of costs so um you know unless unless you
7:52 experience something that dropped your costs like for example you have fuel oil to heat your home um the reality is you may have experienced inflation at even a higher than 05% rate for uh for for last month January um and and a higher rate and it feels like a higher rate than 3% on an annualized basis okay so let's look at the next and that is let's look at
8:29 uh let's look at local inflation now I I use uh my local city Los Angeles um but all you need to do is is is search uh CPI for wherever you live um uh you know Omaha Nebraska Miami Florida um kurtalan Idaho where wherever it is that that that you live okay and so here in Los Ang Angeles area prices were up 9% over the past month almost an entire
9:07 here in the LA area Okay so almost double the national rate okay it's expensive to live in California um now how did that translate annually up 3.3% from a year ago meaning uh year over yeah year-over-year uh Los Angeles is is experiencing 10% higher inflation than the nation as a whole okay so let's look at some of the details then so you can see um the um all items as I mentioned
9:42 was 3.3% all items food and energy was higher at about 3 point looks like about 3.7% let's see where is that figure okay yeah 3.7% okay now uh food prices were up 6% in January uh food at home up 7 um with higher prices in four of six major grocery store groups okay food away from home went up 6% uh so you know pretty much no matter where you ate um you experienced higher
10:18 food prices in in Los Angeles okay now on a on um annual basis food prices went increased 3.3% on online with in line with just the overall inflation rate for Los Angeles food at home prices were up 2.2% in and they were higher prices in five of six major grocery store groups food from home or food away from home I mean went up 4.4% so on an annual basis eating out is is the cost of eating out is still Rising faster than the cost of
10:53 eating at home which uh partly explains why I rarely eat out and you know comes I come by a cultur really when someone else is paying so all right energy okay Energy prices increased 1.7% in January and that's gasoline prices were up uh up 1.7% that that seems right gas what seems a little higher um you know seemed higher last month than than December okay um but Energy prices um year-over-year actually declined in La
11:30 by almost 2% and gasoline prices declined 3.4% so that that that seems to match with with my experience okay and finally then all items less food and energy so um they Rose uh not 0.9% in January okay and uh Recreation was up 2.3% this is just for January shelter was up 3% um in in contrast prices were lower for uh goods and services they dropped uh 8/10 of a percent and new and used
12:06 cars dropped by 3% okay now again this is something I frequently mention if you did not buy a car either new or used the fact that that car prices dropped doesn't impact you and so you experienced a higher rate of inflation here in Los Angeles okay now um for uh for um annually um the index for all items less food and energy as I mentioned a moment ago increased 3.7% in La that included Medical Care going up
12:42 7.4% shelter going up 4.5% and we'll see that when we look at median home prices okay those went up um and in contrast Vehicles dropped by 3% household furnishings and operations Dro by almost 3% as well again if you did not buy a car and if you did not buy furniture so the impact of higher Medical Care and shelter costs were felt um you felt them more because they weren't offset by Price drops in other categories okay so this is why I urge
13:18 you to look at your local inflation data because that is even um more relevant to you than the National Data okay next we're going to look at uh earnings y there we go oops what did I do okay there we go sorry about that okay so uh earnings were our okay real average hour earnings were flat going from December to January to $124 cents
13:53 an hour uh and average weekly earnings actually dro dropped by uh let's see a dollar eight C why was that well because um hours average weekly hours dropped by a tenth of percent. okay and so that's why um you're you're seeing you you know you're seeing although the um hour the um hourly wage rate was flat the weekly earnings rate dropped because people worked a little bit less
14:28 okay okay uh now um here you go so you know 0% average hour average weekly earnings Dro by 310 of a percent by the way that followed a 410 of a percent drop in December so and and and that's you know hours worked has dropped three T of a percent for two months in a row so what's happening is uh essentially um we're losing ground so if if if our
15:05 wages are flat and if weekly rate wages are actually dropping slightly okay so we're making less money while prices go up so especially if you're you know weekly uh uh wage earner I mean sorry an hourly wage earner right where where these things uh you know fluctuate where you're hours work fluctuate like per perhaps you're a a waiter in a restaurant or something like that right you're experiencing inflation uh strong more strongly than
15:41 uh someone who's in a salaried position okay that's that's why that's why I said at the beginning looking at just the inflation numbers does not tell the whole picture if if you can imagine if if if hourly wages were $11.24 in December and in January they had gone up to let's say uh $12 that's roughly a 75 cent per hour increase but that's a about a 6% increase so while prices may have gone up by 3% your wages went up
16:16 six% and and so I'm I'm sorry why while uh while inflation went up a half a percent in January your wages went up six% so you're feeling you know wealthier or or more comfortable most likely because your wage gains so you know outstripped inflation by a factor of 12 okay here it's it's really the the opposite uh prices went up a half a percent which may not seem like that much but since your wages stayed flat so you're really losing ground in terms of
16:52 purchasing power okay next we're going to look at uh the civilian unemployment rate yeah okay just double checking to make sure you're seeing it okay so the uh the the total unemployment rate dropped from 4.1% in December to 4% in January okay now again we can't look at the unemployment rate all by itself either there are
17:28 reasons there are generally speaking two reasons why the employment rate drops one is more people have gotten jobs the other is people have left have have have stopped looking for a job and so are no longer counted as jobless both of those can cause the unemployment rate to decline so now let's look at let's look at the unemployment rate for men okay so for men uh the unemployment rate was flat at 3.7% in December and January for women okay it went uh it was okay it was
18:07 also flat for no oops hang on let me get the one up man out of there okay so for women the unemployment rate dropped a tenth of percent from 3.8 to 3.7% okay so again but we don't we don't know why until we look at the um at at the um uh number of people um who are working um what What's called the I'm going up on the name Workforce participation rate okay so now let's look at and then let's look at teens so um let's see unemployment of for teens
18:44 was 12.4% in December dropped to 11.8% in January presumably that's because teens went back to school and so you know a large number left the workforce thereby causing the unemployment rate to drop um I wouldn't attribute this to more teens having found jobs that that that would not be my guess okay now let's look at demographics so uh white Americans the unemployment rate in January is 3.5% down a p tenth of a percent from
19:19 December so you know these are not big changes by the way uh for black Americans the January unemployment rate was 6.2% % up one tenth of a percent from December okay and for asian-americans so oops let's Okay okay so for asian-americans the unemployment rate in December was 3 and a half% and it Rose in January to
19:57 3.7% so at two a 0 2% increase that is that's starting to be uh significant and then for uh Latinos uh the unemployment rate was 5.3% in I'm sorry was uh 5.1% in December and it dropped to 4.8% in January so that that's that is a significant change again is that because more Latinos found jobs or is it because more of them gave up looking for works let's let's answer that question
20:34 now by looking at the civilian labor force participation rate okay so the civilian labor participation rate in January was 62.6% that's up a tenth of a percent from December so if so um that the overall that the overall unemployment rate went down a tenth percent while the labor force participation rate went up by a
21:10 tenth of percent would tend to indicate that the reason uh the unemployment rate uh wait went down is more people found jobs okay but now let's look let's look at at the various groups so uh labor Force participation rate for men went up a tenth of a percent for women it went up uh three1 of a percent okay and 14 teens okay there you go there's my my guess was right it went from
21:46 35.5% to 36 I'm sorry from 37.5% to 36.3% so the reason teen unemployment went down is because you know half a percent of because the workforce participation rate of teens uh dropped by uh 810 of a percent okay so that's that's what's why you saw that significant change there all right now let's look at demographic groups so among white Americans Workforce participation rate uh went up a tenth of
22:24 a percent for black Americans it went up a tenth of a percent okay so not not real big changes for asian-americans Workforce participation rate went up four uh yeah four10 of a four10 of a percent in January okay and finally for Hispanics okay and here's the reason why um un um unemployment among Hispanics dropped it's BEC or among Latinos dropped it's because the workforce
22:59 participation rate by Latinos dropped from 67 a half% in December to 66.7% in uh in January in other words it's a uh five it's a it's a 7% drop okay so the big changes in unemployment the big drops in unemployment didn't come from a lot of people finding work it came from people dropping out of job hunting okay
23:35 and and unfortunately that is not a good sign for the economy that people are giving up okay all right um well I I I will say there this this could also be a seasonal thing people got jobs for uh um you know during the holidays December and now they're going back to maybe they're going back to school or whatever so but but generally speaking it's better for the unemployment rate to drop because more people are getting jobs than it is because fewer people are looking for work all right let's look
24:13 next at okay unemployment by industry okay so this is looking at the one- Monon picture of where um employment grow occurred and as has been the case now for I think since I've been doing economic Echo so over a year the big increases in employment in January took place in private education and Health Services 61,000 net new jobs and government uh
24:52 32,000 net new jobs the other big gainers were retail trade 34,000 new jobs and others which is 177,000 new jobs the big losers were Mining and logging which lost 7,000 jobs um and professional and business services which lost 11,000 new jobs and then uh Leisure and Hospitality lost 3,000 jobs that's probably not unexpected because December is a vacation month end of the year that sort of thing so that's not too too unusual
25:29 okay let's look at the gainers first so where were where were job gains in private UC education and Health Services well private Educational Services actually lost 4,400 jobs healthc care gained 4 almost 44,000 jobs and social assistance gained over 22,000 jobs now the thing about these are these those are both sectors that are driven by government spending Okay so the the and the reason it's important to to understand that is because as the current Administration continues with
26:05 its plans to downsize government so the funds available to increase the number of jobs in government or um sectors of the economy that rely very heavily on government financing are likely to uh shrink and so it'll be interesting to see what happens in private education and Health Services um as as um president Trump's time in office uh continues okay for government uh like I said um 32,000 uh
26:41 new jobs um 9,000 new jobs at the federal level uh 2,000 at the state level local government continues to be the big incre biggest increase in government jobs at 21,000 and um education almost 11,000 local local education 11,000 and local government excluding education almost 10,000 now in the federal government the job gains came okay so um the US Postal Service hired almost 6,000 new people whereas the federal government overall
27:18 hired um about 3,700 new people okay so so again um th those are the those are the big and then let's look at retail trade so um general merchandise retail 31,000 new jobs uh followed by um uh sports sporting goods Hobby and musical instruments books and and miscellaneous retailers 7 7 7,600 new jobs and then vehicle motor vehicle and parts dealers um 4,500 new jobs now those were offset
27:55 a little bit by a loss of 800 jobs and building material and garden equipment and supplies uh 1 1700 jobs lost in furniture and Home Furnishings Electronics Etc and 7700 jobs lost in clothing clothing accessories shoes and jewelry retailers so it is interesting because excuse me um I I noticed that um in um where I'm often um walk in Beverly Hills so um a store by the name of cost
28:31 closed it's they're a a higher they're the higher end label for H&M which is a a European company and I was talking to the people um it turned out just a day before the store was actually closing and they were telling me that cost has really not figured out uh what its strategy needs to be in the United States and it's struggling that follows another European uh clothing store closing just two doors away from that one on the same street Scotch and Soda which uh with Drew from the United
29:07 States at least for now so um you know clothing retailers are struggling and so that's why we're seeing job losses there okay but overall retail uh trade is is increasing okay now looking at where jobs were lost first of all professional and business services so um professional scientific and Technical Services actually increased 177,000 jobs but management of companies and Enterprises dropped 2500 jobs and administrative support dropped 25,000 jobs so you can see that employers are cutting down on
29:45 their personnel you read about this um uh um Starbucks announced I believe it was yesterday they're laying off 1100 people in their corporate acrost the corporate Services um that's one of the biggest layoffs they've had in quite some time uh a number of companies are laying off um you know mostly middle managers and administrative and support by the way as AI continues to gain become better and people learn how to use it better I think we're going to see
30:22 even greater job losses in these two categories because the I think one of the main benefits of AI is going that is going to be that it makes people able to work more efficiently it's that's what's going to enable us as as individuals to make more money is if we can be more efficient in other words get more done in the same or less time that makes us more valuable and therefore businesses uh you know companies can afford to pay us more so um and this is why um if you saw the
30:57 show I think it was it was two or three weeks ago when I talked about um things that that that you can do with AI That's why I I urge you to start experimenting with AI and and and what how it can help you specifically in your work um I know AI saves me a tremendous amount of time so um I had um uh one of my business associates um asked me to do some research on um some issues affecting our our our our business uh our business and
31:33 I was able using AI I was able to do that research it took me I think about 30 or 40 minutes otherwise I I probably would have taken me literally hours to do that research so um now you know as I mentioned in in the show um on on a using AI you know you do have to verify the information you get but um it's much easier to get information and then verify it than than it is to find the uh initial information so uh AI is going to be a big a big change is going to cause
32:09 big changes in Business and Professional Services okay um okay so drilling down then um the big gainers in professional scientific and and Technical Services are computer system design related Services one would imagine that includes AI architectural and engineering and related Services I would say there would be a big jump here in Los Angeles certainly we have big swaths of our city to be rebuilt those were partially offset by losses in management scientific and Technical Consulting Services okay and most of the
32:44 other ones had minor changes there was a a a jump in other professional scientific and Technical Services okay um the other major loser Mining and logging okay so log Ling was essentially flat there were 100 new jobs Mining quarrying and oil and gas extraction dropped 7,700 jobs now obviously that's going in the opposite direction of where the current Administration wants to go with their whole you know drill baby drill um situation but um first of all um uh um
33:23 oil and gas extraction companies are looking to be more efficient in in their activities and so uh you know they're they're looking to use more technology um they're looking to use it more intelligently and so it may be that you know they they can still increase production even with a smaller number of people okay um and well and so here we go oil and gas extraction actually was was not changed um mining except oil and gas extraction lost 100 jobs so the real
34:00 losses were in support activities for mining okay 7600 jobs lost so that shows you that you know the the the people who are actually working the oil rigs and such it looks like that's not changing really what's changing is all the support which um you know companies are looking to do more efficiently okay and then the other the other um loss um is in um Leisure and Hospitality so a Comm commodation and Food Services dropped 17,500 jobs that makes sense people traveled in December and they went back
34:35 to work in January on the other hand Arts entertainment and Recreation gained almost 15,000 jobs so people are going back to a you know a a a more um arts and entertainment related uh leisure activities as opposed to Vacation oriented activities okay and where did where were the real gainers so um Amusement gambling and Recreation industry that gains 7 15,000 jobs um museums and historical sites gain 700 um essentially offset by a loss of 900 jobs in Performing Arts spectator sports and
35:11 related Industries okay and then um in terms of accommodation and food services so both accommodation and eating and drinking places lost jobs which again make makes sense okay so this is the one- month picture let's look at the 12month picture just to see um not a whole lot of difference in terms of what's happening in various sectors again health care and government lead the way in job creation over the last year with almost with uh 1.4 million jobs gained there um construction had 178,000 new jobs Transportation
35:46 warehousing at 128,000 new jobs uh Business and Professional Services lost 69,000 jobs over the last 12 months um and Manufacturing lost over 100,000 jobs jobs in the last 12 months so that gives you an idea of some of the trends um by the way all of these links will be in the show notes if you want to look at you know where where you're the sector in which you're working right now and and what what seems to be the trend over the last month three six 12 months that's I think a smart thing to do especially if you're considering a job change um look at where things are
36:23 growing now it is it's going to be more difficult to estimate that right now because with the change of administration um the the the focus has changed so whereas the two sectors that grew the most over the last 12 months private education health services and government um you know like I said combined um added about 1.4 million jobs my guess is a year from now we're not going to see the same you know tremendous increases in those two sectors those two sectors um create did
36:58 more jobs by a factor of it looks like two or maybe three than all the other sectors put together okay so just something to keep in mind all right next let's look at okay let's look at the housing market so let's we're going to look at um I I told you we were going to look at uh Cal so the California housing market um the median sales price of a home went up 6.2% year-over-year so that that shows
37:33 you why housing costs in in Los Angeles um went up by as as much as they did so let's look specifically at um Los Angeles as opposed to California here we go oh there it goes okay uh oh it doesn't want to give us it's not going to give us the median for Los Angeles okay well we'll have to go back okay so um uh let's see now um okay so California Housing Supply the
38:08 number of homes um available on the market um in January there were um 80 over almost 84,000 homes for sale um number of new and that's up 22% year-over-year uh the um number of newly listed homes was up almost 30,000 21% year-over-year okay so so that that those are um those would tend to be an indication of a softening um housing market we'll have to see how that plays out though um over time okay housing
38:45 demand so um homes sold above list price uh 33.3% um which is down almost 3% year-over-year hom sold with price drops 20.6% um that's up 2.2% and sail to list price 99.2% so not withstanding that we saw uh significant increases in in the number of homes for sale the the market in California remains um pretty pretty tight um and so um um you know homes are
39:24 still selling pretty close to to list price okay 10 most competitive cities in Los in California for buying a home Mountain View Fremont Santa Clara Hayward San Jose you can see several of these cities are in the the greater Silicon Valley area and then there's a couple well there's one in in uh Orange County Garden Grove uh Citrus Heights is around Sacramento um and San is in the San Diego area so um most of the competitive uh cities in California are in uh sort of North Central uh
40:01 California okay let's see if we can do another city see if it's gonna oops okay now let's contrast that with Omaha Nebraska so Omaha Nebraska uh median price in January went up 3% to 261 ,500 okay and number of homes sold dropped slightly uh to 284 median days on Market
40:36 28 um okay now the median sales price of a single family home was two 263,000 as opposed to um condos which uh which are 194,00 a 30% drop year-over-year in the median sales price for a condo okay as opposed to a townhouse where actually tow houses are selling at a higher price than single family homes interesting slightly higher okay now um okay sale to list
41:14 price um 98.2% so a pretty tight in um in Omaha as well um and and you can see that 17.3% of homes sold above list price 32 point and that that was down from that's down 9% from year-over-year whereas 32% sold with price drops that's up 10% so it would appear that um the Omaha Market is cooling um a little bit so um people
41:49 moving to Omaha um are they're moving to Omaha from places like Kansas City Washington La San Francisco Denver Las Vegas Seattle Columbus uh Nebraska Lincoln Nebraska and New York interestingly enough people leaving Omaha um on the other hand are generally leaving for um other Midwestern cities um and Florida the outliers are Chicago Illinois although it's just a a small net outflow um and and that's it all the
42:24 rest are Midwestern cities or Florida so they're looking for uh you know uh warmer weather I think if they're moving to Florida okay let's do one [Music] more oops I don't know why it's doing that sometimes it gives me the data and
42:59 sometimes it doesn't that's that's weird okay well let's see Trends okay well it doesn't want to let me do another city anyway um again you can use this this link and you can look at housing prices and what's happening in the various markets okay so now let's look at uh rents oops a little too far okay so here we go okay so this this this gives you a nice comparison of
43:35 various cities you can see Phoenix rents have flattened out Los Angeles they've dropped a little bit Etc so let's look at some of these markets let's look at La first of all okay so month-over-month change rents went down $30 uh year-over-year change rents went down $50 a month um and you can see the rental price range um really starts at about 1,700 and goes all the way there's um uh up up to uh wow $300,000 I that must be some kind of home okay um average uh
44:11 rent price over time you can see um there was a spike in October but it's been right around 2800 uh for the last okay so not a big change the market temperature is warm okay um and these are sort of sub markets um you can see rents decline in Beverly Hills and Marina del um they uh sort of tapered off in View Park Windsor Hills and Ladera Heights and Culver City so some of the submarkets okay now let's go let's look next
44:47 at Omaha okay so Omaha Nebraska average rent about $1,500 down $144 month over month but up almost $200 year-over-year and you can see that the rental price ranges in in Omaha really go from 700 to you know maybe about 2500 there are some very pricey um rentals in in Omaha but they top out at $5,000 a month as opposed to $300,000 a
45:22 month uh in Los Angeles okay um rents have been relatively uh um flat at around $1,500 a month since uh July of of last year um before that they they fluctuated quite a bit between um uh about 1300 and $1,500 a month um but they've been rising steadily since April to where they are now okay so um again the market temperature is warm um in in in Omaha
45:57 and then let's look at one more Market let's look at Miami Florida okay Miami Florida um average rents went up $3 a month uh $3 a month month over month but down $247 year over-year okay and you can see that the rental property properties range from about 1,700 to maybe about about $33,900 $4,000 a month although um there is quite a bit at the over $5,000
46:34 a month those are the very Luxury Rentals for sure okay rents have been trending down in Miami since June of last year they were flat from March through June um and now they've trended down um losing uh you know over $200 um a month really since it's really been since June so um you know there's been a lot of discussion about how hot the Miami Market is um they're they're listing the rental market is being warm right now that's probably because um people feel
47:11 they they've been priced out um and so it's not near nearly as desirable a place to go as it was you know a years ago okay so those those are where you can find uh you know how rents are trending if you're looking to move to renegotiate your lease relocate both the average home price and the uh rental uh you know average rent those are things I encourage you to take a look at okay the last thing we're going to look at is uh consumer
47:47 sentiment okay so this is a a survey done by the University of Michigan this is we we I just recently added this um to economic Echoes I think just a month or two ago and uh it's got some interesting data here so the index of consumer sentiment has dropped year-over-year by almost 16% okay and and just um in the last month it's dropped dropped 10% okay so
48:23 consumer sentiment um is is how people um feel about um uh you know how the economy is doing basically so um uh for example um um and I'm just giving you from the notes here all five index components deteriorate this month led by a 19% Plunge in buying conditions for durables in large part due to fears that tariff induced price increases are imminent okay so expectation for personal finances and short run e out economic
48:59 Outlook also declined while um as did the long run uh economic Outlook okay and this is the lowest reading since 2023 okay now this is a part somewhat partisan divide so the sentiment fell for both Democrats and independents but uh Republicans uh were unchanged okay and so really what that indicates is that um you know Republicans appear to like the economic
49:34 policies in the early days of the Trump Administration whereas um Democrats and independents are are you know either don't like them or are more skeptical about them okay um the uh index of current e economic conditions Al um over 17% year-over-year 12 and a half% month over month okay so how people feel about current economic conditions they are not nearly um as positive okay now um and again another
50:09 drop in the index of consumer expectations so a 15% drop year-over-year and an 8% drop month over month so um really what this is showing is trepidation on the part of uh of of consumers of of people um and and and that's not unusual um for this to happen in the early days of a change of administration while many of these policy new policies are coming in um change tends to be what
50:47 disturbs people so I think uh you know as as the Trump Administration continues uh with its activities um how things are going to go will become clearer and we might start to see uh consumer sentiment um certainly level off if not increase again um that's possible um as as the impact of programs like Doge and such um start to actually be felt in the economy right right now um really nothing that
51:23 uh president Trump has done has really made its way through the econ things just don't Ripple through that quickly and so we really we really need to give it some time to see how that's going to play out okay so let's see got a oh hey hey uh lamon good to see you he he dropped me a comment um and uh so so that's our economic Echoes for for this month um we'll be back um toward the middle end of next month with to see how things have changed and uh again I encourage you to spend just 20 minutes 15 20 minutes
52:00 really looking at the economic data and thinking about um how it affects you personally and and and how it and how that and how it impacts the uh decisions you need to make for you and your family uh so you can do it in a more informed way so thank you so much for joining me today really appreciate it and let's see tomorrow at 5: pm Pacific time is my show jigger's place this is our end of the week time to have a cocktail and talk about all the things that have
52:36 nothing to do with business and and our business and professions that sort of thing um so I'm going to be talking about the things that make life worth living um not family and all of that which of course does but the the little niceties I shouldn't say that make make life worth living maybe I should say that that make life more enjoyable um and my I'm going to be doing that through one of my favorite books it's called acquired tastes by one of my favorite Au authors Peter Ma I've read I
53:11 believe every book that Peter M has written uh starting with a year in provance which was his breakthrough book book and um you know he he wrote both fiction and non-fiction and um like one of my favorite authors unfortunately he he passed away um but uh continue to read and enjoy his books um in kind of in his memory so and we're going to have a libation we're gonna have one of uh Peter Ma's favorite Libations um tomorrow at jigger's Place 5:00 pm Pacific time so I hope you'll join me uh then next
53:46 week at on Monday at uh 10: a. Pacific time uh my show trust in Estates weekly my guest is Blair Dell and he's going to talk about risk navigation for estate planning so I hope you will join me with um you know to to hear what Blair has to say and then on Tuesday at 10: am Pacific time it's the anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo the famous Battle of the Alamo with uh Sam Houston and Davey Crockett and and and Company and we're
54:21 going to look at business lessons that we can learn from the Battle of the Alamo on business lessons from the military and then a week from today we'll be back with the next edition of trusts and I mean of people making money so once again I thank you for joining me especially my live viewers always a treat wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and signing off Marie darling you are my bell courage at all times my friends