Archive

August 06, 2025
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EA: Resilient Retail Rebound

  • Consumers need to drive activity growth as tariffs and Euro strength harm export competitiveness. Reassuringly, retail sales returned to their trend after a trimmed fall.
  • Growth was broad across countries and categories, taking the annual pace 0.5pp above consensus expectations. Non-food retail is critical and the strongest of them all.
  • Surveys are gloomier, especially about the future, but rarely right. Resilient real wage and employment growth can sustain brisk retail trends, preserving economic expansion.

By Philip Rush

August 05, 2025
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Payrolls Challenge Resilient Narrative

  • Revisions drove payrolls into a stagnation that runs contrary to our narrative of rolling resilience, but some contributors are spurious and don’t break the broader strength.
  • Seasonal adjustment caused 76k of the 258k revision. State and local education workers represented 108k, and are lower since April, despite the DOE closure shifting jobs here.
  • Payrolls still grow by 1% y-o-y, like household employment, with JOLTs data fine and the unemployment rate stable. The Fed should resist cutting without follow-through.

By Philip Rush

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