08 Sep, 2010
E.C. Profile, Part II
See the article here. There are a couple of graphics in it, including this one --
If this sounds vaguely familiar, the EleBlog had an item about Part I -- about one month ago. Here.
(More)
07 Sep, 2010
Self-Employed Electricians
Self-employed electricians who run their own companies,
and their companies have ZERO employees.
and their companies have ZERO employees.
That's what this column, which I wrote (using US government statistics), is all about.
05 Sep, 2010
Energy Graphic Porn
03 Sep, 2010
Employment Data - Perspective
But there were many other parts of the nonfarm report that left much to be desired. Here’s an unlucky seven examples of softness beneath the surface:
1. Aggregate hours worked were flat.
2. All the employment gains were part-time — full-time employment, as per the Household Survey, plunged 254,000.
3. Those working part-time for “economic reasons” surged 331,000 — the biggest increase in six months.
4. While private payrolls were better than expected, 10,000 of that +67,000 tally reflected returning construction workers who had been on strike.
5. Manufacturing employment was down 27,000 and total goods producing jobs were flat — hardly signs of a robust economic backdrop.
6. The diffusion index for private payrolls actually fell to 53.0 from 56.7 in July — a seven-month low. It was 68.0 at the April high, which is consistent with an economy slowing down to stall-speed.
7. The labour market gap widened with the all-inclusive U6 unemployment rate rising to a four-month high of 16.7% from 16.5% in July. This is why the odds are stacked against a sustained acceleration in wages.
Yes, Rosenberg spells labor wrong -- he used to work for Merrill Lynch in NYC, but now works for a Canadian firm. His daily comments can be in your e-mail in-box -- go to www.gluskinsheff.com and look (on the home page) for the opportunity to subscribe -- free. 1. Aggregate hours worked were flat.
2. All the employment gains were part-time — full-time employment, as per the Household Survey, plunged 254,000.
3. Those working part-time for “economic reasons” surged 331,000 — the biggest increase in six months.
4. While private payrolls were better than expected, 10,000 of that +67,000 tally reflected returning construction workers who had been on strike.
5. Manufacturing employment was down 27,000 and total goods producing jobs were flat — hardly signs of a robust economic backdrop.
6. The diffusion index for private payrolls actually fell to 53.0 from 56.7 in July — a seven-month low. It was 68.0 at the April high, which is consistent with an economy slowing down to stall-speed.
7. The labour market gap widened with the all-inclusive U6 unemployment rate rising to a four-month high of 16.7% from 16.5% in July. This is why the odds are stacked against a sustained acceleration in wages.
03 Sep, 2010
Electrical Employment
In July, the nation's Electrical Distributors added 1,000 employees (of all kinds), to average 137,600 people employed in the month. It's the first time in 2010 that the employment number in the ED biz topped 137,000.
For Electrical Contractors, I looked at employment of "production workers" (people in the field). That went up to 598,600 in July from 586,000 in June. That's an increase of 12,600.
The BLS now says that the U.S. added 107,000 jobs in private industry in July 2010. Of those, apparently, 13,600 were in the electrical distribution + construction business! I know that seems astonishing (i.e., the electrical biz accounted for one in every eight jobs added in July) -- but that's what the numbers say!
03 Sep, 2010
Part-Time Workers
There are 2 classes of Part-timers -- those who ONLY want P/T work, and those who want full-time work, but are working part-time because that's the best they can do.
Total in August 2009, both classes = 25,726,000 workers. That was out of 139,433,000 employed (18.47%)
Total in August 2010, both classes = 25,516,000 workers, out of 139,250,000 employed (18.32%).
This is actually mixing apples and oranges, as the P/T numbers above are NOT seasonally adjusted, but the employed numbers ARE adjusted.
To net it out, there are 210,000 fewer people employed part-time (as of 8/10) -- and 183,000 fewer people employed, total -- compared with last August.
- - - - - - -
That got me thinking: What did these numbers look like when times were better? I downloaded the August 2007 employment report. In that month, there were 22,157,000 people employed part-time -- out of 145,794,000 people employed. That was 15.2% of the employment total.
Looking at the employed total: As of 8/10, we have 6.5 million fewer people with jobs of any kind.
03 Sep, 2010
U-6 vs. Headline Unemployment
However, I always look for the REAL unemployment rate -- the U-6, defined as
Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part-time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.
Here's the seasonally adjusted number for August: 16.7%. It was 16.5% in each of June and July, and 16.6% in May.
In other words: August was a terrible month for employment in the United States.
03 Sep, 2010
National Employment - FEWER Private Jobs?
Headline news, according to Calculated Risk, was a 67,000 net gain in private jobs.
I looked at the BLS site. Where the BLS economists had added only 6,000 jobs to the July report via the Birth/Deal model, in August they added 115,000 jobs via this estimating (or imaginary) method. ALL of these are in private industry.
I'm not sure how to do the calculations, but if the 115K estimated Birth/Death model jobs were added to the mix to get a +67K for the month, it would seem to me that REAL jobs declined in the private sector in the month . . . and there MIGHT BE 115K newly employed people.
Take it on faith? Not on your life.
02 Sep, 2010
July '10 Construction Spending
Construction spending fell 1.0% to $805.2 billion in July 2010, down from a revised June value of $813.1B.
June was revised down $22.9B
May was revised down $15.1B
June was revised down $22.9B
May was revised down $15.1B
This is all bad news.
+ + + + +
Here's what it equates to (missing from the above verbiage)
UNADJUSTED NUMBERS
Year-to-date (7 months) construction as of July 2010 = $460.3B
One year earlier (as of July 2009) =- $521.99B
Decline = 11.8%
------------------
The government's figures have Private Residential construction UP 2.8%, Public construction down 6.4%, and Private nonresidential down 26.0%.
30 Aug, 2010
Solar Power's Growth
From 2010 to 2015, the U.S. solar market is projected to increase from
$9.8 billion to $78.1 billion. This represents a compound annual growth
rate (CAGR) of 51.4% during this time period.
WOW! There's not much more here.
25 Aug, 2010
China - Must Reading
If you think what happens in China might be important, you need to read the whole thing. Here are some highlights:
It's possible that there are 64.5 million urban electricity meters that "registered zero consumption over a recent six-month period." These could be empty apartments. If so, it's enough empty space to accommodate 200 million residents!
"Most of China's more than 200 million migrant workers may be living in . . . dormitories."
Living space per capita is said to be "between 28 and 30 square meters per person."
From Xie: "I think the vacancy rate for the nation's private, commercial housing stock is between 25% and 30%."
"Most of China's more than 200 million migrant workers may be living in . . . dormitories."
Living space per capita is said to be "between 28 and 30 square meters per person."
[what the heck does 30 sq. meters equal? About 323 sq. ft.]
From Xie: "I think the vacancy rate for the nation's private, commercial housing stock is between 25% and 30%."
25 Aug, 2010
More Significant Power Outages
Experts on the nation's electricity system point to a frighteningly steep increase in non-disaster-related outages affecting at least 50,000 consumers.
During the past two decades, such blackouts have increased 124 percent -- up from 41 blackouts between 1991 and 1995, to 92 between 2001 and 2005, according to research at the University of Minnesota.
In the most recently analyzed data available, utilities reported 36 such outages in 2006 alone.
During the past two decades, such blackouts have increased 124 percent -- up from 41 blackouts between 1991 and 1995, to 92 between 2001 and 2005, according to research at the University of Minnesota.
In the most recently analyzed data available, utilities reported 36 such outages in 2006 alone.
24 Aug, 2010
Wind Economics 102
Beyond the fact that I am confident I am quoting this CORRECTLY -- this is here because it is, truly, amazing and interesting stuff.
-----
Economics of Wind 102 -- some interesting facts from this presentation from Keith Martin of Chadbourne + Parke LLP
a."The typical wind farm costs $2M to $2.2M per mW of installed capacity."
b. "Developers pay $1 or more per acre a year before operation, often make a one-time payment of several thousand dollars per turbine when construction stars, and pay rents after the project starts operating typically of 4% of gross receipts."
c. IMPORTANT OPINION (but still opinion) -- "The odds are better than 50-50 that the cash grant program will be extended. The House is expected to extend, but to turn the grants into tax refunds. The outlook in the Senate is unclear. Senator Schumer's complaint about grants paid on projects that use foreign equipment remains a potential complication."
Note: Right now, the U.S. Treasury will pay 30% (the cash grant referenced above) to a wind project that gets 5% of more of its construction effort completed by 12/31/10 and is completed by the end of 2012. That's what Martin is saying might be extended. And -- 30% is a pretty big chunk of anything, ain't it?
d. "Both the tax equity and debt markets are improving. A number of debt deals have 'reverse flexed' this year. There are 30 active banks, with 15 committing more than $100M per year. There are 14 active tax equity investors."
e. "The federal government pays 56% of the capital cost of a wind farm currently. That is 30% as a cash grant from the US Treasury and 26% as the present value of depreciation deductions taken over five years -- if you can use them."
12 Aug, 2010
EC Census Data - I
------------
Surge In Contractor Numbers
Shows Up in ’07 Census Data
Electrical contractors didn’t have such a wonderful year in 2002. Five years later, the year 2007 was pretty nice (especially relative to ’02 or, for that matter, ’09 and ’10). As it happens, 2002 and 2007 were years in which the Economic Census was conducted by the Census Bureau. So we have data – snapshots – that provide us with a look at changes in the EC industry over the period.
Number of contractors: There were 10,936 more ECs counted by the government in ’07 compared with ’02 – an increase of 17.7% – taking the total enumerated to 72,761. Historically, this is a huge surge:
1992 Census: 54,022
1997: 61,414
2002: 61,825
2007: 72,761
You’d probably hope this increase meant more work for the EC industry (and more sales for tED readers). Here’s the total employees in the industry, on average for each year, as reported on the Census Bureau website:
1992: 487,072
1997: 641,985
2002: 760,748
2007: 828,120
Looking over the 15-year period, the increase in employees is 70%. Note that this is all employees (those working in the field and those in the office). The average number of employees per company rose from 9.02 in 1992 to 11.38 in 2007.
How about sales? The figures that follow for the first two Censuses are “dollar value of business done” (as opposed to construction sales, indicated by an asterisk*):
1992: $40.727 billion
1997: $64.915 billion
2002: $80.787 billion*
2007: $119.678 billion* (total sales = $127.141 billion)
So revenue roughly tripled in the 15-year period, which beats the 70% gain in employees for the industry as a whole. Sales per employee increased from $83,616 in 1992 (using “business done”) to $144,518 in 2007 (using construction sales only).
What
does it all mean?
1. The primary industry served by most electrical distributors has tripled in size over a 15-year period. This is actually a bigger increase than U.S. national GDP over the same 15 years.
2. What’s more, the gain in size is REAL. According to the inflation calculator on the site of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the inflated value of the 1992 EC industry sales figure would have been $60.2 billion in 2007. Actual sales were double that. Conclusion: Inflation, as conventionally calculated, was not a significant factor in EC sales growth from 1992 to 2007.
3. While there’s been a consolidation in the number of distributors, there are more contractors – a near-18% gain in just five years. In addition to the sales gain, over the 15-year period the contractors have added a lot more people as well. – Joe Salimando
11 Aug, 2010
Copper Reports Catching Up
Here's the link - download a PDF of the 3-month report.
Most of the report is data tables. There's a one-page bit of verbiage on the front (1st) page. Here's a bit of it:
Average daily mine production of copper in the first quarter of 2010 was down by about 8% from that in the first quarter of 2009 and 3% from that in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to data compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey. Measures to increase mine production, initiated during the fourth quarter of 2009, had yet to reverse the downward trend in production since yearend 2008. Smelter production in the first quarter of 2010, however, rose by about 10% compared with that of the first quarter of 2009, when a maintenance shutdown had reduced output. Refined copper production fell by about 5% during the same comparative periods; electrolytic, electrowon, and secondary production all declined. Consumption of refined copper rose by about 3% compared with that in the first quarter of 2009, principally owing to a 22% year-on-year increase in wire-rod mill consumption in March.
10 Aug, 2010
Profile Of The Electrical Contractor
E.C. has put the article online, including some graphics (one of which is below).
It's worth a close read, I think.
10 Aug, 2010
Small Biz Data - Perspective
>>> Note: A large percentage of small businesses are in real estate related fields and that will keep optimism down.
I don't know whether it's true, but it's a perspective I did not have until this morning.
10 Aug, 2010
Energy Graphic
07 Aug, 2010
Electrical Employment Numbers
EC INDUSTRY -- I looked for the "production and nonsupervisory workers" number, once again. It came in at an estimated 586,300 for June, up 18,300 (up 3.22%) from May.
Compared to June 2009, this year's number was down 42,400 people, or 6.74%.
June 2010 was the best month of the year. The month numbers have run from 566,600 in Jan. to a low of 555,600 in March to a high in June. In other words, a fairly tight range.
Looking over the history of this "productive workers in the EC business" number going back to the year 2000, this is the first June that has come in below 600,000. That's been the case for each month this year (each month of 2010 was the first in 11 years to come in under 600,000). Unless something big changes, we've got what seems to be a Mortal Lock on 2010 being the worst year of the 21st century, with the year 2000 (the last year of the 20th century) included.
ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTION -- here I use total employees -- for NAICS 42361, which is wholesale trade, electrical equipment and wiring.
The June 2010 figure, subject to revision, came in at 135,900 -- a dip of 1,000 from May. The year's six months have ranged from 135,700 on the low end (April) to 136,900 at the high (May). Obviously, the number is bouncing in a tight range.
For 2009, all of the numbers were above 140,000 until October. So June marks the 9th straight month employment for electrical distributors was left below 140,000. I have the figures from January 2000 to present in front of me; NONE of the months were below 140,000 until this started last October.
Compared with June 2009, the numbers for 6/10 were 6,400 lower, a decline of 4.5%. June 2009 was last year's peak for this number.
07 Aug, 2010
Construction Employment, July
These are the boys and girls doing the actual work on construction job sites. The July figure (subject to revision) was 4,468,000.
That's up 1.5% (66,000 workers) from June. Last year's June-to-July increase was only 22,000.
July's figure is the highest of the year. For Jan-Feb-Mar, the number was below 4 million.
Compared with July 2009, this July's number is down 301,000, or 6.3%
July's figure is the highest of the year. For Jan-Feb-Mar, the number was below 4 million.
Compared with July 2009, this July's number is down 301,000, or 6.3%
For 2009 the annual average was 4.58 million. This is pretty close. But 2009's construction employment PEAKED in July. If 4.47M is the peak, this year's average is going to suck.
07 Aug, 2010
Rosie's POV - US Employment Data
They are worth it. I read his stuff religiously.
Fri 8/6, he was on vacation! But he paused to spit out a quick analysis of the employment data report. Included:
" . . . it is imperative to keep a close eye on the household survey [Eleblog note -- the government reports these numbers but does not use them to calculate the unemployment rate]. Employment here contracted 159,000 in July after sliding 301,000 in June and 35,000 in May.
"Historically, the odds of seeing three whiffs in a row in this survey - without the economy either being in a recession or quickly heading into one - is 50-to-one."
"Historically, the odds of seeing three whiffs in a row in this survey - without the economy either being in a recession or quickly heading into one - is 50-to-one."
Bad bet, it sounds like. The obvious implication is that we're back in a recession (if we indeed ever "left" the downturn).
"Discouraged workers drop out at an alarming rate for an alleged economic recovery -- down 181,000 in July and 1.2 million in the past three months. If the labor force merely stayed the same in the past three months [EleBlog note -- if these 1.2 million discouraged hadn't been SUBTRACTED from the labor force] -- the unemployment rate would be sitting at 10.5% today."
WOW.
" . . . and here we are today, sadly, still 7.7 million below the December 2007 [employment] peak. It will probably take at least 5 years to climb out of this hole."
WOW. 5 years = 2015.
"What we know is that we are heading into Q3 knowing that there was minimal grwoth coming from that key 70% of the economy, otherwise known as the U.S. consumer."
In other words, don't count on economic growth from within the U.S.
07 Aug, 2010
Employment Data - Other Commentary
The Labor Force Participation Rate decreased to 64.6% from 64.7% in
June. This is the percentage of the working age population in the labor
force. This decline is very disappointing, and the rate is well below
the 66% to 67% rate that was normal over the last 20 years.
The reason the unemployment rate was steady at 9.5% was because people left the workforce - and that is not good news. As the employment picture improves, people will return to the labor force, and that will put upward pressure on the unemployment rate.
The reason the unemployment rate was steady at 9.5% was because people left the workforce - and that is not good news. As the employment picture improves, people will return to the labor force, and that will put upward pressure on the unemployment rate.
There will more on this from Rosenberg in another post in a few minutes.
- - - - -
You might have noticed that the stock market "took gas" yesterday (Fri. 8/6). Why? This report wasn't awful (not really -- we didn't lose 700,000 jobs, as we did in the recent past in monthly reports). Barack Obama pointed out more gains for private employment.
Well, it's all about EXPECTATIONS. See this post from InvestmentPostcards.com, headlined "US Payrolls to Surprise on the Upside?" (posted before the number, obviously)
07 Aug, 2010
July Employment Numbers - 1
That takes the Census ups and downs (which are about temporary workers anyway) out of the picture.
Headline employment rate = 9.5% (same as June's).
U-6 unemployment rate = 16.5% (same as June's), seasonally adjusted. This is the rate that includes "all persons marginally attached to the labor force plus total employed part-time for economic reasons" -- which means, part-time b/c they can't get full-time jobs. Note that the U-6 rate for 7/09 = 16.4%, so if there is any actual "good news" in this report, it's that things aren't getting terrifically worse (at least not yet).
On another front, the Birth/Death bogus estimate from government economics added only 6,000 jobs to the total found. So the numbers aren't totally out of whack (as they have been in the past).
06 Aug, 2010
China + Cars
The graphs are worth a peak. Especially if it makes you think: China's per-capita car ownership is 1/40th that of the U.S.
02 Aug, 2010
What's Coming In 2011?
Where does this leave us for the rest of 2010 and especially on into 2011?
- - - - -
EleBlog take:
I don't see Residential booming between now and 2012 (it may "recover," but a boom may not come until the 20-teens).
We can't get the situation much better
than it is right now (we really can't) -- mortgage rates at all-time
lows, prices falling, and the government willing to print money to fund
the mortgage market. Plus, builders salivate if someone just drives by
one of their model homes.
I also don't see a quick recovery in Nonresidential.
As discussed in a
July post here, the consensus construction forecast is for a 3%
improvement in Nonres in 2011. That comes from AIA's combining of the
outlooks of all of the usual respected suspects in construction
economics. And most think it will be a late 2011 recovery . . . if it
comes.
Now here's the rub: Public Construction. It accounted for the largest share of the 3 biggies in the year's first half, at 35%. But it's likely to decline into 2011 and 2012.
Why? The national government's stimulus plan has been slow to kick in. It's helped (I think it's helped construction, and especially alternative energy building) -- but it's come out in dribs and drabs. And it's mostly gone.
A second national stimulus seems unlikely. Certainly, one on the scale of $787B is impossible. I would be willing to discuss it were the country's finances not in such a disgraceful condition. And even if the leadership of the Democrats could gin up plans for another HUGE stimulus: (a) they couldn't get a single Republican vote (they didn't the first time, tho); (b) they would get fewer Democratic votes (with the 2012 elections pending); and (c) even if they passed it into law this minute, it would take time for the money to be expended.
Here's the final ruinous (for construction) piece of the puzzle: LOCAL + STATE governments. They are wounded. They are being forced to cut back. I don't know where they were in spending in 2007, and where they were in 2009, and where they were in the first half of 2010. But they are likely to greatly reduce what is on the drawing board (even if most of it is in road-building, it will hurt construction and hurt the national economy).
A second national stimulus seems unlikely. Certainly, one on the scale of $787B is impossible. I would be willing to discuss it were the country's finances not in such a disgraceful condition. And even if the leadership of the Democrats could gin up plans for another HUGE stimulus: (a) they couldn't get a single Republican vote (they didn't the first time, tho); (b) they would get fewer Democratic votes (with the 2012 elections pending); and (c) even if they passed it into law this minute, it would take time for the money to be expended.
Here's the final ruinous (for construction) piece of the puzzle: LOCAL + STATE governments. They are wounded. They are being forced to cut back. I don't know where they were in spending in 2007, and where they were in 2009, and where they were in the first half of 2010. But they are likely to greatly reduce what is on the drawing board (even if most of it is in road-building, it will hurt construction and hurt the national economy).
[For a more expert and detailed look, see Jim Haughey's July post, State FY '11 construction budgets will have to be cut. FY 2011 began, for most states, on July 1, 2010.
(More)
02 Aug, 2010
Comparing '10 With '07
Total construction in 2007's first half was $543.6B, vs $389.6B this time -- a decline of 28%.
Further, Private Residential construction in Jan-June 2007 was $251.46B, or 46.25% of the total. This year, Resi was 30.71% (at $119.64B)
Interestingly, Nonresidential did not fall off a cliff, compared with 2007. That year's first half saw $164.1B, vs. this year's $133.0B. That's a dip of less than 20%.
Public Construction is where things get interesting. It was $128.1B in 2007's first six months. This year, it was $136.94B. That's a gain of 6.9% -- funded by the stimulus.
02 Aug, 2010
Nonresidential Outlook - Not Much Better
There was big excitement (headlines, this means) in April, when the index bounced up the 48 mark. It was a blip. The "50" line divides expansion from non-expansion.
See the AIA's report and charts here.
Among other stuff in the report:
Regions -- "The Northeast region has the score closest to 50, but it has weakened every month since reporting minimal growth in April."
02 Aug, 2010
Nonresidential Malaise
Lodging, -59.5%
Office, - 39.5%
Commercial, - 31.8% *(remember, commercial = about 2/3rds retail)
Manufacturing, - 31.5% (this had been one of the "stars" up until recently)
Amusement and Recreation, - 30.4%
Educational, - 20.3%
Health Care, - 18.5%
Religious, -15.2%
Transportation, - 10.0%
Communication, - 10.0%
Power, - 7.1%
Ranked by gross 2010 dollar volume, POWER was the biggest (@ $34.09B) in the year's first 6 months, with Manufacturing next ($20.68B), Commercial 3rd ($19.08B), Health Care next ($15.03B), and Office 5th ($12.66B).
02 Aug, 2010
Construction Spending, First Half
TOTAL: -11.2% vs. 2009's first half.
AND: 2009 wasn't so damn wonderful.
COMPONENTS
Private residential: +4.2% vs. first 6 months of 2009, to $119.6 billion.
Private Nonresidential: -25.9%, to $133.0B
Public construction: -5.1%, to $136.9B.
Private Nonresidential: -25.9%, to $133.0B
Public construction: -5.1%, to $136.9B.
Yes, as the gross numbers show, Public is now the largest of the markets.
31 Jul, 2010
Construction Starts At Mid-Year
a. MHC is not the U.S. government.
b. MHC has a history of compiling this report.
c. "Starts" is an index of projects that just got started, and will be going forward for some period of time.
What does the June report say? Read it here. Two things worth noting:
1. On a scale where construction activity in the year 2000 -- a VERY very good year for construction -- =100, activity in June fell to an 82 from 84 in May. This equates to BLAH.
2. The 6-month UNadjusted construction start data are in the report. I've repasted them below. This isn't the ONLY take on starts (Reed Construction Data sees things differently -- and more positively -- interestingly enough!). But if this table reflects reality, then things not only SUCK right now -- but they are going to for at least a while longer.
YEAR-TO-DATE CONSTRUCTION STARTS
Unadjusted Totals, In Millions of Dollars
| 6 Mo. 2010 | 6 Mo. 2009 | % Change | |
| Nonresidential Building | $72,408 | $84,996 | -15 |
| Residential Building | 63,374 | 51,585 | +23 |
| Nonbuilding Construction | 63,831 | 70,586 | -10 |
| Total Construction | $199,613 | $207,167 | -4 |
22 Jul, 2010
Copper + China
NO, it wasn't nefarious, it was in a public, on-the-web document.
It's a Goldman Sachs slide (from a presentation on commodities). Look at the heading!!!
22 Jul, 2010
Updated 2010 Forecast
The gist: MH Construction took back a percentage point of the growth for 2010 it saw in the original (Oct. 09) forecast.
19 Jul, 2010
LATER for Nonresidential
The update release, dated 7/14, has this headline: "Nonresidential Construction Recovery Possible by Latter Part of 2011."
Talk about throwing Cold Water on Cold Water!!! Key word in that headline is "possible."
From the release: 2010 nonresidential construction spending drop of more than 20%.
. . . marginal increase of 3.1% in 2011 in inflation-adjusted terms.
. . . marginal increase of 3.1% in 2011 in inflation-adjusted terms.
Sounds like a dead-cat bounce.
- - - - -
For those who can avoid suicide even tho getting more information, there's a "full report" provided on the AIA site. There are a lot more words, yes -- but what I like about this is the Table included with the piece. FIRST, click to enlarge it. NEXT, what you get is the set of nonres consensus numbers assembled by AIA's chief economist, Kermit Baker. BUT IF YOU MOUSE OVER THE SOURCES ON THE RIGHT, the numbers changed -- so you get to see updated 2010 and early 2011 numbers from McGraw-Hill, Reed, and FMI, among others.
Worth your time, if you're interested in national numbers.
06 Jul, 2010
COPPER
TEDMAG.com just posted two blogs (6/29 and 6/30) on the subject, by me. They are the top 2 items on this page, which is a roundup of everything blogged on TEDMAG by me in the month of June.
06 Jul, 2010
More On The AIA's ABI
What's the diff? More details. More graphics. See the AIA newsletter write-up here.
27 Jun, 2010
June 'Metals Monthly'
What's the outlook for copper?
SHORT TERM -- an increase from $6,622 per tonne (2,205 pounds) to $7,750 in 12 months. That's a run up from $3 per pound (price now) to $3.51.
LONG TERM -- the numbers Fortis provides for the annual averages -- updated every month -- are
2010 = $6,981 ($3.17 per pound)
2011 = $7,908 ($3.59)
2012 = $8,168 ($3.70)
2013 = $8,525 ($3.87)
2014 = $7,950 ($3.61)
(More)
27 Jun, 2010
AIA May Report: OOOPS
Here's a quote from the AIA's release on the April number (which came out in May):
“It appears that the design and construction industry may be nearing an
actual recovery phase,” said AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon.
AIA. “The economic landscape is improving, although not across the
board, but doing so at a gradual pace. It is quite possible that we
will finally see positive business conditions in the foreseeable
future.”
NOW, the May number is out. It's back down, to 45.8. One month doesn't make a trend, of course -- but the AIA ABI has been below 50 now for 28 straight months. The trend is NEGATIVE. April may have been a blip, not an indicator of any change in the landscape. Here's a quote from the same guy -- a respected fellow, by the way -- one month later:
“This dip is somewhat of a surprise since it appeared that conditions
were pointing towards a recovery,” said AIA Chief Economist Kermit
Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “The overriding issue affecting the entire real
estate sector is unusual caution on the part of lending institutions to
provide credit for construction projects that apparently would be
successful in this economic environment.”
27 Jun, 2010
Reed: May Construction Data
Not only does that run counter to McGraw-Hill's 3%, but the Reed year-to-date number (for 5 months) is POSITIVE for residential, nonresidential, and heavy construction (and thus higher for the Total).
Page down to the bottom of the item linked above and you can download a PDF with a lot of free RCD info.
27 Jun, 2010
MHC: May Construction Data
YEAR-TO-DATE CONSTRUCTION
STARTS
Unadjusted Totals, In Millions of Dollars
| 5 Mo. 2010 | 5 Mo. 2009 | % Change | |
| Nonresidential Building | $56,650 | $67,500 | -16 |
| Residential Building | 52,698 | 40,437 | +30 |
| Nonbuilding Construction | 52,685 | 57,147 | -8 |
| Total Construction | $162,033 | $165,084 | -2 |
(More)
23 Jun, 2010
Miles Driven As Indicator
On a rolling 12 month basis, miles driven are still 2.0% below the peak -
and only 0.6% above the recent low - suggesting a sluggish recovery.
What was stunning, to me, was the gross actual April number:Travel for the month is estimated to be 255.9 billion vehicle miles.
21 Jun, 2010
Residential Pulse-Taking
However, there were a couple of sour notes in there:
As occurs in most downturns, new home sizes have been declining during
this recession. However, even as market conditions improve, residential
architects are reporting that home sizes are continuing to decline. As
of our first quarter 2010 survey, fewer than 3% of residential
architects were reporting that the square footage of homes was
increasing, while almost 57% reported sizes to be declining. Every year
since the AIA’s Home Design Trends Survey began in 2005, an increasing
share of respondents has reported home sizes to be declining.
and
As of the first quarter 2010 survey, over 40% of respondents reported
that upscale/formal landscaping was declining in popularity while only
11% saw this as increasing. Likewise, upscale outdoor features (swimming
pools, tennis courts, gazebos) and decorative water features are
generally seen as declining in popularity. For each of these property
improvement categories, over a third of residential architects see them
as declining in popularity, while about a 20% see them as increasing.
and
Even with billings increasing, firms are operating with dangerously low
levels of project backlogs. Backlogs (the amount of time that current
staff will be fully employed given the amount of work in-house and under
contract) fell to 2.7 months in the first quarter. Three-quarters of
respondents indicated that backlogs were three months or less at their
firm.
Project backlogs had been at 4.0 months as late as Q1/2008, according to one of the graphics.
17 Jun, 2010
Data Begin Turn -- DOWN
I typed "begun" because I believe this could be the beginning of the ramp down. I don't know that it will be dramatic; I suspect it will be a few months (maybe 6 to 9, even) before it becomes generally recognized.
The two pieces of data:
1. Yesterday's New Residential Construction report. May's new single-family housing starts were given as 45,100, down from 52,300 in April,and lower than 47,400 in March. The May data are subject to a revision. Last May was 39,500, so this is "up" -- but only vs. 2009.
This is a bad sign. And I think this number will get worse.
TOTAL housing starts in the Jan-May period (including multifamily) came in at 250,700. The NAHB last year predicted 600,000 starts this year, later revising that down to 550,000. At this point, I would think we'd be lucky to get 250,000 starts in the next 7 months, and came in at 500,000.
If you're interested, see NAHB's take on the May report.
2. Today was TH, which is the day they release the weekly unemployment claims numbers. It's a weekly number, it bounces around, there are revisions, and going by one week's number (or even 4 weeks of these numbers) is . . . a shaky way to think about an economy (or invest money!).
However, the number came in HIGHER, at 472K. The NY Times Economix blog (referenced in the previous item posted today here) noted that --
"They are largely unchanged over the course of 2010."
In other words, there's an economic recovery, and yet jobless claims are pretty much in the same place in May as they were in January. This is bad. And if the weekly claims number somehow happens to drift higher -- say, back above 500,000 a week -- folks WILL start to notice.
I think that is precisely what is about to happen.
16 Jun, 2010
Copper + The S&P 500 - Linked?
. . . is a piece posted to SeekingAlpha.com by a person who does not sign his/her name. It's not long. It does have a number of links to articles (going back to 2007) on copper and China, etc.
Might be worth your time, even if you conclude there is no "correlation."
15 Jun, 2010
Surprise: Copper Is NOT Up!
But measuring the price of things in dollars is FAULTY thinking.
See this graphic, from this website, which measures things vs. the price of Gold.
Ooooooooooooops!
14 Jun, 2010
RE 'To Grow Rapidly' -- BUT
Here's the gist: Renewables will grow at 3% per year, coal-fired power at 2.3% a year.
Great, eh? Renewables will grow faster than coal!
EXCEPT FOR THIS: Renewables have a tiny share of power generation right now. Coal is at 48% in the U.S. Outgrowing the big boy by 0.7% annually, even compounded over 28 years, Gets Us Nowhere.
Great, eh? Renewables will grow faster than coal!
EXCEPT FOR THIS: Renewables have a tiny share of power generation right now. Coal is at 48% in the U.S. Outgrowing the big boy by 0.7% annually, even compounded over 28 years, Gets Us Nowhere.
THIS IS NOT A GOOD PICTURE OF THE FUTURE. Forget global warming/climate change for a minute: We need to get more of our power from non-polluting sources. And we can.
11 Jun, 2010
Now, Wait A Minute . . .
07 Jun, 2010
Scary Job Chart
07 Jun, 2010
Late 09 Copper Report
The Oct-Nov-Dec 09 report is a 12-page PDF. The verbiage below comes from page one. I have bolded a key word
Mine production of copper in the fourth quarter of 2009 declined slightly from that of the third quarter of quarter of 2009, but was down by about 16% from that in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to data compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey. Mine and refinery production for the full- year 2009 were down by 10% and 9%, respectively, from production in 2008, primarily owing to cutbacks and closures announced at the end of 2008. Reported consumption of refined copper declined by 19% compared with that for 2008.
Since 1965, when U.S. consumption of refined copper first rose above 1.7 million metric tons (Mt), domestic consumption has fallen below 1.7 Mt only in 1975 (1.39 Mt), 1982 (1.66 Mt), and 2009 (1.65 Mt), all periods of economic recession. By comparison, U.S. consumption of copper peaked at 3.0 Mt in 2000, and has trended downward since.
According to preliminary data compiled by the International Copper Study Group (ICSG) (2010), in 2009, there was a refined copper production surplus over demand of about 365,000 metric tons (t), or about 2% of global demand. Global copper mine production rose to a record-high 15.7 Mt, an increase of 205,000 t (1.3%), and global refined production rose nominally to 18.4 Mt, an increase of 120,000 t. World copper consumption, however, remained unchanged at 18 Mt.
Chinese apparent consumption, which accounted for 40% of world consumption in 2009, grew by almost 2 Mt (38%) and offset a 16% decline in consumption in the rest of the world.
(Note, however, Chinese apparent consumption does not account for unreported inventories held by the State Reserve Bureau, industry, and private investors that were believed to have accumulated during 2009.) The global surplus might have been greater had numerous factors (labor unrest, technical issues, and industry cutbacks in response to lower prices and anticipated global oversupply) not reduced mine output.
Consequently, mine production did not keep pace with the growth in global mine capacity and, according to ICSG production and capacity data, the average global mine capacity utilization rate fell to about 81%, down from 83% in 2008, and was at the lowest level since 1988 (International Copper Study Group, 2010).
Since 1965, when U.S. consumption of refined copper first rose above 1.7 million metric tons (Mt), domestic consumption has fallen below 1.7 Mt only in 1975 (1.39 Mt), 1982 (1.66 Mt), and 2009 (1.65 Mt), all periods of economic recession. By comparison, U.S. consumption of copper peaked at 3.0 Mt in 2000, and has trended downward since.
According to preliminary data compiled by the International Copper Study Group (ICSG) (2010), in 2009, there was a refined copper production surplus over demand of about 365,000 metric tons (t), or about 2% of global demand. Global copper mine production rose to a record-high 15.7 Mt, an increase of 205,000 t (1.3%), and global refined production rose nominally to 18.4 Mt, an increase of 120,000 t. World copper consumption, however, remained unchanged at 18 Mt.
Chinese apparent consumption, which accounted for 40% of world consumption in 2009, grew by almost 2 Mt (38%) and offset a 16% decline in consumption in the rest of the world.
(Note, however, Chinese apparent consumption does not account for unreported inventories held by the State Reserve Bureau, industry, and private investors that were believed to have accumulated during 2009.) The global surplus might have been greater had numerous factors (labor unrest, technical issues, and industry cutbacks in response to lower prices and anticipated global oversupply) not reduced mine output.
Consequently, mine production did not keep pace with the growth in global mine capacity and, according to ICSG production and capacity data, the average global mine capacity utilization rate fell to about 81%, down from 83% in 2008, and was at the lowest level since 1988 (International Copper Study Group, 2010).
The key word is "apparent." All of these words, basically, are lifted from the ICSG. And the ICSG can't realistically assess what's going on in China -- it has to be honest and use the word "apparent."
05 Jun, 2010
Rosenberg on May Employment #s
"big red flag was clearly waved by the Household Survey, where total employment actually fell 35,000 -- the first decline of the year and a splash of cold water on the widespread view that this recovery was gaining steam."
and
"The unemployment rate did manage to come down to 9.7% from 9.9%, but this was a pure statistical anomaly, owing to the 322,000 plunge in the labor force. Absent that decline, the headline jobless rate would have actually climbed back to 10%."
and [see earlier post here on the U-6]
"The broad U-6 unemployment rate also managed to drop . . . again owing to a sharp decline in the total pool of available labor last month. We have no idea where these 504,000 souls wandered off to . . . "
and, finally --
"The fact that the nascent improvement in the labor market data has stalled out just as the equity market has rolled over and the risk premia is on the rise yet again, lends enormous credence to the notion that the economy will soon confront either a growth relapse or an outright double-dip."
You really should subscribe to Rosie's just-about-daily thoughts, which come downloadable -- a FREE PDF. Go to Gluskin Sheff's site . . . click on the link, sign up.
05 Jun, 2010
Employment Expectations
05 Jun, 2010
Electrical Jobs
APRIL electrical contractor employment = 557,900, up from 555,600 in March. The 4/09 figure was 623,700. In May of 2007 and 2008, there were 716,000 and change employed in electrical contracting.
APRIL electrical distributor employment = 135,800, identical to the revised figure for April. One year earlier, distributors had 143,700 employed; in 2008, it was 153,500.
05 Jun, 2010
Construction Jobs
For May, the BLS estimate is 4,272,000 construction jobs, up 136K from 4,136,000 in April. Both numbers have a (p) next to them, which means they are preliminary (subject to revision later on by BLS economists, as more info becomes available).
An increase in construction jobs -- any increase -- seems GOOD.
Of course, in May 2009, the figure was 4,677,000. And the last time there were fewer than 4.27M construction workers employed in May, it was 1995. The good Mays in there are 2006 (5,995,000) and May 2007 (5,957,000).
05 Jun, 2010
Numbers + Complexity
1. The first lines of the verbiage from the Bureau of Labor Statistics say there was a 431,000 increase in employment in May, of which
-- 411,000 came from temporary workers employed by the Census
and
-- 41,000 came from the private sector.
NOW, I just looked at the BLS's Birth/Death estimate, and it says that the BLS added 186,000 jobs to the tally in May.
NOW, I could be wrong on this, but the math does not seem to add up. I normally SUBTRACT the birth/death adder. If you do that, it means the nation LOST real jobs in May -- one heck of a lot of them.
Could that be?
05 Jun, 2010
U-6 Unemployment
However, there may be a bit of number mumbo-jumbo in here. It's hard for me to tell.
05 Jun, 2010
Employment Numbers - Disappointing?
The May employment report came out. There was a 431,000 increase in nonfarm payrolls in the month.
The government hired 411,000 temporary employees to work on Census 2010.
Private-sector employment supposedly increased by 41,000.
The unemployment rate was reported at 9.7%.
- - - - -
Here's a typical report (from Marketwatch.com) -- stocks tumble after "weak" May employment report.
What they expected was the addition of big private sector hiring to the Census hiring, creating some kind of momentum.
Didn't happen.
Surprise?
- - - -
If you had been reading EleBlog's monthly reports on the employment data, however, you wouldn't have been surprised, as this site has dissected each report . . . and found not much there. For example:
Read previous reports -- APRIL --- MARCH -- FEBRUARY --- JANUARY
. . . you'll get the general idea. This site has been saying the national economy is OFF for a long time; the fact that the market cratered on Fri. June 4 just means that the rest of the world caught up to YOU, the reader of The Eleblog.
03 Jun, 2010
Why Local/State Gov't $$$ Matters
In 2007, the nation's 72,000+ electrical contractors did $119.7 billion in construction work.
Of that, $17.6B (14.7%) came on "state & locally owned" government projects. That's one out of every seven dollars.
Although I worked for Electrical Contractor magazine from 1979 to 1983, and was publisher of the magazine from July 1990 to April 1998, I do not remember previously seeing such a number.
01 Jun, 2010
Historical Construction Spending Data
2010 = $248.6B
2009 = $287.5B
2008 = $331.6B
2007 = $341.2B
2006 = $353.8B
2005 = $348.3B
As one can see, the 2010 figures aren't "Fall Off A Cliff"-type horrible. Taking the least of the "good" years (2008), the 2010 number is merely down 25%.
What that tells you: Things are never so bad that they can't get worse. Consider that the 2010 number is coming with ZERO interest rates, scads of billions (trillions, really) of government stimulus . . . etc.
01 Jun, 2010
Data That Makes Sense
Today, the U.S. government's "construction put-in-place" data for April 2010 came out. For the year's first four months, nonresidential construction is down 25% from Jan-Apr 2009.
This makes sense.
In the Nonres category, Power construction was up 2.8%. Every other category (Lodging, Office, Commercial, Health Care, Educational, Religious, Amusement and Recreation, Transportation, Communication, and Manufacturing) was negative. The worst among 'em was Lodging (formerly called Hotel + Motel) -- at $4.24B, down 57.5%. The biggest (other than Power) was Manufacturing, at $17.53B, down 31.1%.
Elsewhere, private Residential was down 2.0%, which isn't bad -- but (of course) this category has already had the heck kicked out of it.
Public construction was also down, -5.7%.
OVERALL, total construction was $248.6B, down 13.2%.
16 May, 2010
Copper Miner ETFS
In the past three months, two exchange-traded funds have launched to allow investors to gain exposure to COPPER mining companies.
THIS IS NOT A RECOMMENDATION. Do some investigation. Here are the stock symbols -- one is CU. The other is COPX.
Here's a chart (thanks, Yahoo! Finance) of their performance since launch. It looks bad, but then copper has fallen about 11% in price lately.
(More)
07 May, 2010
More From Rosie
The attempt here is to get investors focused on what is most important in this report, which is the continued rising amount of slack in the labour market fully nine months after output has bottomed. To be sure, this is not the first time this has happened coming out of a recession but it is the first time it has happened with measures of excess capacity running as high as it is today and wage rates running so low.
The total pool of available labour now stands at a record 21.2 million, which is nearly eight million higher than the pre-bubble norm. So, to put today’s stellar headline figure into proper perspective, it would take another 28 months of gains like this to absorb the excess and reverse the deflationary tide that is now gripping the labour market. More than likely, this process of unwinding the idle capacity in the labour market will take at least twice as long as that.
Income strategies work best in a deflationary environment, which is why bonds have begun to overtake equities on the total return ladder on a year-to-date basis. This remains a secular trend, periodic divergences like 2009 notwithstanding.
The total pool of available labour now stands at a record 21.2 million, which is nearly eight million higher than the pre-bubble norm. So, to put today’s stellar headline figure into proper perspective, it would take another 28 months of gains like this to absorb the excess and reverse the deflationary tide that is now gripping the labour market. More than likely, this process of unwinding the idle capacity in the labour market will take at least twice as long as that.
Income strategies work best in a deflationary environment, which is why bonds have begun to overtake equities on the total return ladder on a year-to-date basis. This remains a secular trend, periodic divergences like 2009 notwithstanding.
07 May, 2010
Rosenberg On The Employment Numbers
So, what happened last month is that even with the nice headline employment gains, the labour force soared 805,000. The really critical number, which is not making the front pages, is that the ranks of the unemployed swelled 255,000 in April, the steepest increase since May of last year.
The takeaway from this analysis is that demand is not keeping pace with supply and as a result, every measure of labour market slack widened in April.
• The headline U3 unemployment rate rose to 9.9% from 9.7%, the high-water mark for the year.
• The U4 unemployment rate, which includes discouraged workers (up203,000, the sharpest increase in 16 years) jumped to a record high of 10.6% from 10.3%.
• The broadest U6 rate backed up to 17.1% from 16.9%—to put this into perspective, before this Great Recession, this metric had never even gotten as high as 12%. It’s over 17% today. Jeez.
The takeaway from this analysis is that demand is not keeping pace with supply and as a result, every measure of labour market slack widened in April.
• The headline U3 unemployment rate rose to 9.9% from 9.7%, the high-water mark for the year.
• The U4 unemployment rate, which includes discouraged workers (up203,000, the sharpest increase in 16 years) jumped to a record high of 10.6% from 10.3%.
• The broadest U6 rate backed up to 17.1% from 16.9%—to put this into perspective, before this Great Recession, this metric had never even gotten as high as 12%. It’s over 17% today. Jeez.
07 May, 2010
Distributor Employment
ED employment was last this low in September, 1994.
07 May, 2010
Gain of 290,000 -- or Not?
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/05/nfp-290000/
A couple of points to pull out of his bullets:
1. Birth-Death adjustment added 188,000 jobs in April. That's an estimate of jobs created by Bureau of Labor Statistics economists. You should have zero faith in this number. I typically zero it out, no matter which direction it's pointing (sometimes they subtract).
2. 59,000 of the "new" jobs are temporary census hires. These jobs will disappear later in 2010. I would zero them out for that purpose, and I think you should, too.
If you're keeping score at home, that's 247,000 of the 290,000 jobs that you might -- you just might -- zero out.
3. Barry also showed temp workers increased 26,200. I don't suggest that any of us disregard this, but it's an awfully small number (on the basis that "temporary jobs now = full-time jobs later).
If you want to be a hard ass, you get down to 43,000 "real" jobs, of which 26,200 are temps. It doesn't look at all that wunnerful, I don't think.
07 May, 2010
March Employment - EC Industry
In March, ECs had 556,600 production workers (foremen, journeymen electricians, apprentices, helpers, etc.) in the field -- down from 558,000 in February. Call it a flat month.
Compared with March 2008, (716,000), this March's preliminary figure (subject to revision next time) is down 159,400.
07 May, 2010
Construction Employment in April
Table A-14 -- unemployed in Construction up from April 2009 (1,737,000) to 1,919,000 -- 21.8% of all construction workers out of work. I believe this is lower than March's figure.
+
Summary Table B shows the following numbers for Construction in 2010:
+
Summary Table B shows the following numbers for Construction in 2010:
February 2010 - 51,000
March 2010 + 26,000
April 2010 + 14,000
March 2010 + 26,000
April 2010 + 14,000
AND
I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics table-generator to "query" the database: How many "Production" workers were employed in April in construction? Production workers are (I think) the "field" people . . . the boys and girls who do the actual work of putting construction in place -- foremen, journeymen, apprentices, helpers.
This table shows March 2010 at 3,932,000 and April 2010 at 4,132,00 -- an increase, if I've got this right, of 200,000 construction jobs.
07 May, 2010
Drop In Unemployment - !
However, I went immediately to Table A-15 of the report, where the U-6 unemployment number is provided. This is:
U-6 Total unemployed,
plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force,
plus total employed part time for economic reasons,
as a percent of the civilian labor force
plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force,
plus total employed part time for economic reasons,
as a percent of the civilian labor force
plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
The seasonally adjusted figure for April 2010 is provided as 17.1% up 0.2 percentage points from March 2010 -- and up 1.3 percentage points from the 15.8% of April 2009.
Bottom line: The REAL unemployment percentage sucked in April 2009, and really blew big-time in April 2010.
03 May, 2010
Where The Money Went
In the third quarter of 2008, approximately 45 percent of U.S. residents lived in households in which at least one individual received government benefits, according to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. These benefits came from programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
According to the report, about 28.4 million households, or 24 percent of the U.S. total, received means-tested benefits — either cash or noncash — in an average month during the quarter. Medicaid (21.1 million), free or reduced-price school meals (11.5 million) and food stamps (9.3 million) were the most widely received such benefits. (Means-tested programs are those that provide cash or services to people who meet a test of need based on income and assets.) However, it was two non-means-tested programs, Social Security and Medicare, that affected the largest number of households, with 33.6 million receiving Social Security or Railroad Retirement benefits and 30.8 million receiving benefits from Medicare.
In keeping with the economic downturn, participation rates for each means-tested program were on the upswing between May and November 2008. The percentage of households receiving any type of means-tested benefit climbed from 23.2 percent to 24.7 percent between May and November of that year, with the percentage receiving food stamps increasing from 7.6 percent to 8.8 percent and the share of those receiving Medicaid rising from 17.5 percent to 18.5 percent.
02 May, 2010
Inflation For Suppliers
NO, I'm not here to promote Baldor stock (everyone I know in the electrical industry kinda sorta likes the company, but do your own research!)
Baldor Electric includes in its press releases a "selected" Q-and-A. Here's one question and answer:
Q… Are your raw material costs increasing?
Yes, they
are. Due to increases in the costs of copper, electrical steel,
petroleum products, transportation and other materials used to produce
our products, we recently announced a 4.6% price increase on motors and
drives and a 3.6% increase on generators effective for all orders
shipped after May 30, 2010. These are
our first price increases in approximately two years. We are also
experiencing some cost increases for the materials used in mechanical
power transmission products and expect a price increase early in the
third quarter of this year.
25 Apr, 2010
Copper - Better Than Nickel
However, a publication in India interviewed one guy who says copper is a better buy than nickel.
In copper 7800-7850 was a
strong area of resistance and old resistance becomes near support, once
it moves
about that we expect copper to move towards 8200 and if it doesn’t
breakdown below 7800 or 7700 on a daily close basis, I think copper
should be
held because LME stocks are being drown down
Just in case that's not clear, '7800-7850' is a reference to the price, in dollars, of one tonne of copper as traded on the London Metals Exchange. One tonne = 2205 pounds. So 7850 works out to a spot price of $3.56 per pound23 Apr, 2010
FLAT
NOTE that only the Midwest (at "51") is above the magic 50 dividing line between expansion and NON-expansion. Look carefully at those 4 lines; do you really see an Upward trend?
(More)
23 Apr, 2010
What Goes Up . . .
(More)
21 Apr, 2010
This Just In . . .
These reports used to come out monthly.
To my memory, at one time they were somewhat current -- as in, the report on March 2009 came out in April or May of that year.
Doing the months 3 at a time might help. Or it might point out how this exercise isn't needed. For example, from the July-Aug-Sept report:
"Copper prices, which plummeted during the latter part of 2008, trended upward through 2009, and by the end of October were averaging about $3.00 per pound."
No kidding? This isn't exactly news in April 2010.
14 Apr, 2010
Copper Update
Where's The Ceiling? (part 1)
Copper, China + Questions (pt 2)
06 Apr, 2010
Statistics On Electrical Distributors
Part 1 http://www.tedmag.com/news/news-room/special-report/Special-Report/Special-Report--3-30-2010.aspx
Part 2 http://www.tedmag.com/news/news-room/special-report/Special-Report/Special-Report--3-31-2010.aspx
Part 3 http://www.tedmag.com/news/news-room/special-report/Special-Report/Special-Report--4-05-2010.aspx
Part 4 http://www.tedmag.com/news/news-room/special-report/Special-Report/Special-Report--4-06-2010.aspx
02 Apr, 2010
EC Industry Employment
According to the BLS table, EC employment of production (field) workers in Feb. 2010 was -- subject to future revision -- 558,100.
In Jan., the revised number was 566,600. So the decline (of 7,500 workers) was small, about 1%.
In Jan., the revised number was 566,600. So the decline (of 7,500 workers) was small, about 1%.
One year ago, the industry had 638,500 field people employed in the month of February. The one-year decline is 12.6% . . . not tragic, but it "feels" worse.
The peak year in the 2002-08 period -- in the month of February -- was 2/08, when there were 716,000 field workers employed in the EC biz, according to BLS. The decline from there to 2/10 is 22%. It feels every bit of that (and maybe even . . . worser?).
The peak year of the past 21 Februarys was 2/01, when the EC biz had 749,000 people at work in the field (woooo!). Those were BOOM times.
02 Apr, 2010
Increase in Construction Jobs
That's up from 3,807,000 in Feb. and 3,905,000 in Jan.
In March 2009, construction employment was 4,478,000.
02 Apr, 2010
Employment Gains - Real + Estimated
Increase in jobs: 162,000
Temporary census hiring (48,000)
Birth/death estimation of jobs created = totally bogus baloney (81,000)
Hiring increase in Temporary Help Services (40,200)
Birth/death estimation of jobs created = totally bogus baloney (81,000)
Hiring increase in Temporary Help Services (40,200)
OK, now do the math. 162,000 minus those 3 numbers = -7,200.
So even the headline number is "wrong" -- the country lost jobs in March.
02 Apr, 2010
Unemployment INCREASES (???)
unemployment rate flat with Feb. @ 9.7%
Increase in jobs, even factoring out the temporary Census-taker hiring.
Revisions in numbers (upward!) for Jan. + Feb.
Increase in jobs, even factoring out the temporary Census-taker hiring.
Revisions in numbers (upward!) for Jan. + Feb.
HOWEVER -- and it's a damn big however -- the EleBlog turns, as usual, to the U-6 Unemployment Report. This is now found in Table A-15.
U-6 is the REAL employment + underemployment report. As officially provided:
U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
Are you ready? Seasonally adjusted U-6 unemployment rates = January 2010, 16.5 - Feb. 16.8 - March 16.9
So unemployment INCREASED. That's right, it went up.
What was it one year ago, when we were DIVING down, economically (the Dow and S&P hit big lows in March 2009)? It was 15.6%. So it's UP from a year ago.
One good note: On a 'not-seasonally-adjusted' basis, the U-6 dropped from 17.5% in Feb. to 17.2% in March. However, 17.2% is still JUST AWFUL.
02 Apr, 2010
Jobs, Historial Perspective
For the current recession, employment peaked in December 2007, and this
recession is by far the worst recession since WWII in percentage terms,
and 2nd worst in terms of the unemployment rate (only early '80s
recession with a peak of 10.8 percent was worse).
Instant analysis here: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/04/march-employment-report-162k-jobs-added.html02 Apr, 2010
Now at 2002 Levels . . .
The release isn't accessible at this moment, no doubt for web-tech reasons, but you'll find a link to it here:
02 Apr, 2010
Construction Spending
2-month spending down 14.4%
Private construction $ down 18.5%
Residential construction (private) down 7.8%
Non-residential down 24.7%
Residential construction (private) down 7.8%
Non-residential down 24.7%
Manufacturing, which was good in '09, down 35.6%
Hotels/motels, down 51.7% (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!)
Office down 38.0%
Commercial (which is mostly retail) down 36.7%
Power construction was UP 7.8%. Power was the largest single non-res niche in the year's 1st 2 months.
Hotels/motels, down 51.7% (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!)
Office down 38.0%
Commercial (which is mostly retail) down 36.7%
Power construction was UP 7.8%. Power was the largest single non-res niche in the year's 1st 2 months.
Public down 4.3% (seems impossible, but consider that states are cutting back while the stimulus coming from the USG is slow).
Summary: This sucks and it's sucking worse than it did in the report for JAN. Let's blame the Feb. snows!
01 Apr, 2010
'Hopeful Signs' -- ????
Facts:
The ABI is a sentiment indicator. Architects respond based on their feeling about their own businesses, basically.
It's about NON-residential.
FEB Reading = 44.8
Up more than 2 points from January.
50 is the dividing line between good and Sucks.
This index has been below 50 for 2 years.
It was "closer" to 50 just a few months ago.
It's about NON-residential.
FEB Reading = 44.8
Up more than 2 points from January.
50 is the dividing line between good and Sucks.
This index has been below 50 for 2 years.
It was "closer" to 50 just a few months ago.
The best I would be able to muster about a 44.8 after a 42-and-change in JAN is . . . at least it didn't head lower. "Hopeful signs" in diff. regions of the country are what AIA said it saw -- read the piece here:
http://www.aia.org/practicing/AIAB082538
29 Mar, 2010
Copper, Jan-June 2009 (& more)
U.S. mine production of copper was 4% lower in 1/09 to 6/09 vs. the same period in 2008.
Domestic refined copper production declined by 10% vs. the same period in 2008, "owning to a 16% decline in electrolytic refined production."
U.S. produce price for copper fell from a monthly avg. of $3.49/lb. in 8/08 to $1.45 by 12/08, yet had risen to $2.34/lb by 6/09.
. . . and kept going up, to hit $3.25/lb. in December 2009.
BY THE WAY, I tracked a 20-cent-per-pound increase in copper on the past 2 full global trading days, Fri. 3/26 and Mon. 3/29. On up to $3.52. Wowsa!
29 Mar, 2010
Oil Reserves Not Quite That
. . . new research argues that estimates of conventional reserves should be
downgraded from 1,150bn to 1,350bn barrels to between 850bn and 900bn
barrels and claims that demand may outstrip supply as early as 2014. The
researchers claim it is an open secret that OPEC is likely to
have inflated its reserves, but that the International Energy Agency
(IEA), BP, the Energy
Information Administration and World Oil do not take this
into account in their statistics.
Shocked -- I'm shocked that there's gambling going on in this casino . . . read the whole thing here:
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-reserves-exaggerated-by-one-third-tele-2459f22bb875.html?x=0
24 Mar, 2010
Data From Reed
Unsold new homes picture deteriorates again (in Feb.) -- 3/24
Feb. Construction Starts Drop Led by Institutional -- 3/22
Contractors hiring in California -- 3/7
23 Mar, 2010
Construction Contracts (MHC)
However, the numbers IS the numbers. Here they are after 1/6th of 2010
YEAR-TO-DATE CONSTRUCTION
STARTS
Unadjusted Totals, In Millions of Dollars
| 2 Mo. 2010 | 2 Mo. 2009 | % Change | |
| Nonresidential Building | $21,125 | $25,453 | -17 |
| Residential Building | 17,274 | 13,588 | +27 |
| Nonbuilding Construction | 18,833 | 18,093 | +4 |
| Total Construction | $57,232 | $57,134 | -0- |
05 Mar, 2010
Rosenberg On Jobs Data
The Household survey showed a decent 308,000 increase in February, which may have caught the eye of Mr. Market, but this number was less pristine than it appears on the surface.
First agricultural and related employment surged 198k, which ranks as the fourth largest increase in 25 years. So, the same month that we endured one of the stormiest months, weather-wise, in recent memory, the farming community went out and hired a handful of corn planters.
The rest of the Household survey was government related
. . . therefore, what we see out of this survey was that private sector nonfarm workers actually fell 89,000 (and not weather affected).
First agricultural and related employment surged 198k, which ranks as the fourth largest increase in 25 years. So, the same month that we endured one of the stormiest months, weather-wise, in recent memory, the farming community went out and hired a handful of corn planters.
The rest of the Household survey was government related
. . . therefore, what we see out of this survey was that private sector nonfarm workers actually fell 89,000 (and not weather affected).
05 Mar, 2010
National Employment Picture
Supposedly, the nation lost 36,000 jobs in Feb. (from January). The "Birth/Death Model," used by economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, added another 97,000 jobs. I don't believe those exist, so put the number at 130,000.
There's also the hiring of workers by the FedGov -- to perform the decennial census. The BLS release said 15,000 workers were hired. Add those in, and maybe the country really lost 145,000 jobs in February.
Then again, it snowed like the dickens in much of the North and East, so perhaps even 145K means nothing. And it's nowhere near the 600K - 700K monthly losses of a short while ago.
OTHER DATA
1. The seasonally adjusted REAL unemployment rate in February was 16.8%. That includes total unemployed, plus "all persons marginally attached to the labor force," plus people who are working part-time who want full-time work.
2. Note that p2 of the 39-page report claimed that "the number of persons working part-time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased from 8.3M to 8.8M in February . . . these individuals were working part-time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job."
3. That cohort of people "marginally attached to the work force" numbered 2.5M in Feb., up 476,000 in one year. From the BLS: "They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey."
4. The size of the workforce expanded by more than 2 million in the previous 12 months, illustrating just how difficult it is for the economy to "keep up" (and keep the unemployment % down). We had to find 2M jobs just to march in place! Of course, it helps if, at the same time, the nose-counters at the BLS find 476,000 people who can be excluded from the labor force!
5. An interesting factoid: There is also a category of people counted as working "part-time for noneconomic reasons." In other words, these folks PREFER part-time work (they would not take a full-time job were it offered). This is an awfully BIG number -- 18,360,000 in February. The BLS counted 138,641,000 employed people in Feb., so the part-time-on-purpose group = 13.2% of the national total.
05 Mar, 2010
Total Construction Employment, Feb.
Some numbers:
February was down 104,000 from January, unadjusted. That's a 2.66% drop.
2/10 was down from 4,512,000 in 2/09. That's a 15.7% fall in one year. Ugly.
1996 was the last time the U.S. had fewer than 4 million "production and nonsupervisory" people working in the field.
AND: The average # of workers in the field in construction for 2009 came in at 4,583,000, down 17% from 2008. The peak year, according to the BLS, was 2006 -- with 5.903M employed, on average, over the 12 months.
05 Mar, 2010
Employment: EC Biz
For the electrical contracting biz, here's the news:
2009 -- BLS is now finished revising the data. The annual average for 2009 was 623,900 "production workers" (foremen, electricians, apprentices, helpers) employed in the field for electrical contractors. That's the lowest average since 1997 (601,800).
2010 -- the preliminary number for Jan. 2010 was 565,900 -- down 58,000 from Dec 2009. That's 9.3% lower. Ugly.
Also: The last time the January monthly number was lower was 1996, at 528,100.
02 Mar, 2010
When does Nonresidential improve?
From an ELECTRICAL point-of-view, however, nonresidential provides much more employment that housing. The construction spending data for January (see below) shows nonresidential taking a big, big hit.
So an obvious question is: When will the nonresidential market improve? Wells Fargo asked that question in its quarterly survey of construction folks.
Answers:
Q2 or Q3 of 2010 (i.e., right about now) -- 17.1%
Q4 of 2010 or Q1 of 2011 (in 6+ months to one year) -- 27.6%.
Q2 of 2011 or beyond -- 55.2%
It's been a cold, white winter. And it's gonna be a cold spring, summer, fall, winter, spring, and maybe summer after that, too.
Hatten down the batches!
(More)
02 Mar, 2010
Construction Spending
OFFICIALLY, Jan. 10 came in 9.3% below Jan. 09, at a SAAR of $884.1B. SAAR = seasonally adjusted.
NOT-SAAR, the national put $67.8B of construction in place in January. That's 11.5% below Jan. 09.
But get this: The big hit wasn't in residential (private res. down 8.3%). It was in nonresidential (private nonres down 21.3%).
DATA POINT OF NOTE -- I get an e-mail from the "Economics & Statistics Administration" with releases like this. The cover note (the e-mail) included a data point NOT in the official Census Bureau release:
"Construction spending is 27.1% below its March 2006 peak."
Yuck.
(More)
25 Feb, 2010
Stimulus $ Unspent (YET)
So let me retype what it said that I noted (bolding was in original):
"Nearly one year following [the stimulus legislation's] passage, the numbers indicate that its impact has yet to be felt. Of the approximately $33 billion in DOE-designated funds focused on energy infrastructure and efficiency measures, Government reports indicate that approximately $23B has been awarded.
"However, according to those same Government reports, just a little over $1.5B has been paid out to recipients."
"However, according to those same Government reports, just a little over $1.5B has been paid out to recipients."
So there's a lot of REAL stimulus yet to be felt in the energy efficiency/infrastructure markets. Wait 'til this year?
25 Feb, 2010
Housing Industry Trends
Industry Trends & Strategies: Something Old, Something New
- Sales agents have to generate their own traffic by going back to the “old ways” of targeting neighborhoods/apartment buildings, putting flyers on cars, donuts to Realtors, etc. Guerilla Marketing is in vogue.
- Social media (e.g. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter) is much more important today than the old methodologies that included radio, print and TV, perhaps accounting for as much as 33% of sales.
- The average new home size has decreased from 2309 in ’07 to 2094 in ’09. On a similar note, Meritage announced smaller, more efficient home designs during the show, joining others like KB, Shea, etc. with similar offerings.
- Meritage’s CEO stated that despite the historic higher value usually placed on new homes vs. existing, he absolutely will only buy a piece of dirt today underwritten against resales.
- For privates, don’t go head to head against the publics’ balance sheet because when they need to drop the price to create velocity, they will, and you’ll get creamed. Go where they’re not.
- This environment is the “New Normal.” Get used to it.
The decrease in house sizes has been widely reported, but still -- that 3rd bullet shows a decline of 217 sq. ft., or better than 9%. That's a significant shrink, doncha think?
12 Feb, 2010
Teens & Manufacturing
52% have little or no interest in a manufacturing career
21% are ambivalent
21% are ambivalent
I'm not sure if the glass is half-full or half empty. By my math, that shows 27% gave some kind of Non-Negative answer. Is that spozed to be bad?
05 Feb, 2010
EC Employment, 2009
It was 594,600. That's almost precisely 100,000 below the 694,300 employed in the industry one year earlier (12/08). That's a 14.4% decline.
The preliminary AVERAGE FOR 2009 of production workers in the EC industry was 623,900.
That's down from 720,700 in 2008. The 2009 figure is also the lowest figure in the 200s.
In 2000, the average employed in the EC biz was 758,400. The average for 2001 was 759,400.
Essentially, there were jobs for 134,500 in the EC biz in 2001 that did not exist in 2009.
05 Feb, 2010
Construction Employment
December 2009 was 4,220,000.
January 2009 was 4,639,000.
The declines are just awful, if you look around on the chart. The all-time high (set in Aug. 2006) was 6,236,000. That is to say, in that month, the average employment in the construction industry was 6.2M. Now, it's 3.9M. We're not comparing apples-to-apples, as construction jobs increase in good weather, and shrink in winter.
But what that says is there were 2.3 million people who were gainfully employed in construction in the summer of 2006 who are now either doing something else, counted among the unemployed, retired, dead, or just sitting around not looking for work.
05 Feb, 2010
Unemployment Numbers -- More
NOT SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA
People unemployed for 27+ weeks (that's half a year) -- 6.4 million in January 2010. It was 2.7M one year earlier.
People unemployed for 15+ weeks (that's more than a quarter) -- 8.98M in January 2010. It was 8.5M in December -- and 4.8M one year earlier.
- - - - -
UNEMPLOYMENT RATES
National unemployment rate supposedly improved, from -10.2% at its worst and -10.0% in December to -9.7% in January.
The U-6 "real" unemployment rate (counting "persons marginally attached to the labor force" and those who are working part-time but want full-time work) declined from 17.3% to 16.5% on a seasonally adjusted basis, December to January. It was 14.0% in Jan. 2009.
. . . on a NOT seasonally adjusted basis, the U-6 real reate was 15.4% in 1/09, 17.1% in 12/09, and 18.0% in 1/10.
05 Feb, 2010
National Employment Sitch - Jan.
1. Nonfarm payroll employment fell 20,000 from December.
2. The federal government added 9,000 temporary positions for Census 2010.
3. Fedgov added 24,000 other positions.
4. Temporary help services added 52,000 jobs, making it 247,000 new employed in that category since 9/09 (5 months).
5. Health care employment up 15,000.
6. How about people who actually produce something or help move things produced around?
CONSTRUCTION -- -75,000 jobs in the month (1.9 million jobs lost in construction in the past 26 months).
MANUFACTURING --- +11,000 jobs in the month.
TRANSPORTATION + WAREHOUSING -- a "large job loss among couriers and messengers" (-23,000) led to a total loss in this sector of 19,000. Go figure.
RETAIL TRADE -- added 42,000 in January. I have a hard time figuring from where this came.
- - - - -
To sum this up:
+ 39,000 jobs in people who do nothing contributory (fedgov) or help people who are sick.
- 41,000 jobs in occupations that produce, move, or sell things.
I would call it a blah report.
02 Feb, 2010
Construction Updates
How about housing? One look at the thing, and you turn to a pillar of salt.
02 Feb, 2010
What Do Linemen Make?
That's what the Bureau of Labor Statistics says -- here.
Only thing is, I've heard there is a shortage of these people -- and that some of them make MANY times that annual amount. Think about multiplying it by the number 3 (! ! !).
01 Feb, 2010
Public Construction, 09
The biggest categories last year:
Educational public construction -- up 0.9%, to $86.29B
Highway and street -- up 3.7%, to $84.65B
If you want to look at it on a % basis, $317.3 is a bit more than 33.3% of 2009's construction volume. That 3.7% year-over-year increase might fool year; the Obama stimulus kept the number elevated (private construction as a whole died by 18.8% in '09). In other words, the stimulus didn't create a big huge GAIN in public construction, but it helped sustain the relatively high level to which it had already arrived.
Here are the public construction numbers for 2002, for the sake of comparison:
Total public = $210.43B, 24.4% of the total '02 construction pie.
Educational -- $57.46B
Highway and street -- $60.5B.
(More)
01 Feb, 2010
Manufacturing Construction UP
2002 = $16.6B (down 16.3% from 2001)
2003 = $14.2B
2004 = $23.5B
2005 = $39.9B
2006 = $34.3B
2007 = $42.2B -- higher in this year than all other nonres categories except Commercial (which is mostly retailbb) and Office.
2008 = $60.8B
2009 = $74.8B -- the only nonres category higher last year was Power, at $77.0B.
QUESTION: Did you know this was happening? Keep in mind the government is counting the easiest stuff to count (new construction) -- not necessarily including rehabs, renovations, modernizations, and certainly NOT maintenance/repair/upgrades.
01 Feb, 2010
Nonresidential, 2009.....
2008's $416.1B was up from 2007's $357.5B
2006 was put at $295.72B
. . . and so on. The 2002 nonres figure was $228.9B.
So while last year did see a decline, it was (really) about the 2nd-best year of the past 7 for nonresidential.
However, all of the forecasts for 2010 saw nonres will be down double digits --11% to 15%.
We shall see!
01 Feb, 2010
Residential 2009.....
2008 was down from 2007, which came in at $492.5B
2007 was down from 2006, which was at $641.33B
2006 was down just a hair from 2005's tota, $642.28B
2004 was actually LOWER than 2005, at $563.38B.
2003 came in at $476.14B.
2002 was $421.52B
. . . and so on. Last year was really the pits for new housing construction, wasn't it?
01 Feb, 2010
Construction 2009 Total (prelim)
For 2009, $939.06 billion
2008 -- orig. reported as $1,078.85B, it's now shown as $1,072.13B.
As you see, the revisions ain't big-time concerns. The numbers below are all the year-later revisions.
2007 -- $1,137.15B
2006 -- $1,192.24B
2005 -- $1,143.66B
2004 -- $1,027.74B
2003 -- $915.74B
2002 -- $860.92B
I went back to 1998, for a story to appear in TED magazine -- and used the Bureau of Labor Statistics online inflation calculator to adjust the numbers. Not only was 2009 the first year since 2003 that the "nominal" (reported) total was under $1T, but it was the slowest year -- adjusted for inflation -- since 1998. I inflation-adjusted the 1998 number to $930B . . . so, essentially, last year was pretty much FLAT with 1998.
It was just about the worst year for construction in 11.
26 Jan, 2010
Housing, 2009
2008 housing starts: 905,500 total, 622,000 one-family.
2009 (subject to future revisions): 553,800 total, 443,500 one-family.
Lots of people (including the Natl Assn of Home Builders) think 2010 will be better, esp. in one-family construction. I'm not so sure . . . there are a lot of houses on the market (existing homes), and a lot of empty homes NOT on the market (held off by their owners, some of whom are banks).
For NAHB's official mid-October forecast on 2010 housing, see this TEDMAG blog (by yours truly).
26 Jan, 2010
MHC On '09 -- DOWN 26%
2009 saw a 33% decline in NONresidential building, which employs one heck of a lot more electricians than does Residential (down 31%). It also probably puts more electricians to work than Public ("nonbuilding") construction, down 9% -- that last category includes roads and bridges.
19 Jan, 2010
UEMPMEAN - Ugly Visual
Double-ugly, right?
19 Jan, 2010
Copper
I came down on Mr. Chanos's side. And I ended up with a two-part piece for TEDMAG's Special Report blog:
Part One
Part Two
11 Jan, 2010
Employment Report - 2
CONSTRUCTION -- 4,380,000 employed in this industry in December. Comparisons:
November 2009 = 4,632,000 (i.e., down 5.8% in one month)
December 2008 = 5,137,000 (= down 14.7% vs. one year earlier)
December 2006 (best December in the 11 years 1999-2009) = 5,778,000 = 12/09 down 19.8% from peak
- - - - -
ELECTRICAL CONTRACTING -- 610,300 in November (niche numbers always one month behind).
That's down 10,500, or 1.69%, from October. It's down 104,100, or 14.6%, from November 2008.
Note that peak November employment in electrical contracting in the 11 years 1999-2009 came in 2001, at 781,200. That's a big number!
- - - - -
ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTING -- 137,100 employed in November, down 700 from October and down 13,500 (9%) from one year earlier.
Note that the 11-year chart thrown up by the database for Electrical Distributing includes 131 months (from 1/99 to 11/09). The 137,100 figure for November is actually THE WORST on the whole damn chart. Before July, the number of employees in this distribution niche hadn't previously been below 140K in the decade. The figure for November 1999 was 162,500 -- 18.5% higher than the recent (same-month) number.
- - - - -
What does it all mean? The EleBlog take on this is that numbers in electrical construction have held up better than they seem to have a right to. I'm not sure why!
11 Jan, 2010
Employment Report - 1
Here's the most important paragraph of the various reports -- for me -- from The New York Times:
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, forecasts that the unemployment rate will reach 10.8 percent by
October. The so-called underemployment rate — which counts people who
have given up looking for work and those who are working part time for
lack of full-time positions — now sits at 17.3 percent.
Why so impt? Zandi has gotten everything right about this housing-led economic cataclysm. He might not remain correct forever, but -- as they say in markets -- "the trend is your friend." Somehow, Zandi has been right when just about EVERYONE ELSE has been wrong.
Go with his read.
(More)
05 Jan, 2010
Updating Chinese Wage Data
I found updated numbers in "The End of Chimerica," a 2009 paper from Niall Ferguson adn Moritz Schularick.
The data for 2008 show hourly Chinese wages in manufacturing of about $1.20 compared to $31,000 in the U.S.
That's 4%.
05 Jan, 2010
Construction Spending - November Report
Interesting, actual spending (11/09 may yet be revised a bit) in the calendar months of November was down 13.0% from year to year.
Here are component totals for 11 months:
RESIDENTIAL (private) - 29.6%
NONRESIDENTIAL (private) - 10.7%
PUBLIC CONSTRUCTION = + 4.3%
NONRESIDENTIAL (private) - 10.7%
[worst subcategory = "Commercial" (a catch-all category), down 33.9%. Best niche = Manufacturing, up 26.2%]
PUBLIC CONSTRUCTION = + 4.3%
Note that POWER is the leading non-residential category, at $70.3B thru 11 months, up 12.2%. Manufacturing construction is now the 2nd-biggest non-residential category, at $68.98B thru 11 months. Next (3rd-largest) is that catch-all Commercial category (which is nearly two-thirds Retail) . . . at $50.2B.
04 Jan, 2010
Energy Storage Graphic
It uses the term EROI -- "energy return on investment." This is sometimes elongated to EROEI -- energy return on ENERGY invested.
Another term (this one was new to me) was EIRR = "energy internal rate of return."
And then there's "round-trip efficiency." Konrad offered a graphic (below) on RTE, with this explanation:
Neither hydrogen nor batteries will replace the current storable fuels
without a further penalty to EROI. Whenever you store electricity, a
certain percentage of the energy will be lost. The percent that remains is
called the round-trip efficiency of the technology, shown on the vertical axis
of the graph below, taken from my earlier comparison of energy storage technologies.
Round trip efficiency (RTE) for energy storage technologies is equivalent to EROI for fuels: it is the ratio of the energy you put in to the energy you get out. You can see from the chart, most battery technologies cluster around a 75% RTE. Hence, if you store electricity from an EROI 20 source in a battery to drive your electric vehicle, the electricity that actually comes out of the battery will only have an EROI of 20 times the RTE of the battery, or 15. Furthermore, since batteries decay over time, some of the energy used to create the battery should also be included in the EROI calculation, leading to an overall EROI lower than 15.
The round trip efficiency of hydrogen, when made with electrolyzers and used in a fuel cell, is below 50%, meaning that, barring huge technological breakthroughs, any hoped-for hydrogen economgy would have to run with an EROI from energy sources less than half of those shown.
Taking all of this together, I think it's reasonable to assume that any future sustainable economy will run on energy sources with a combined EROI of less than 15, quite possibly much less.
24 Dec, 2009
ND Good, Rest Bad
24 Dec, 2009
Copper @ $3.20/lb. Again
According to a 12/24 Bloomberg report, it's all about the dollar. Well, maybe.
17 Dec, 2009
Copper Goes Bananas
Here's a Bloomberg story (filed 12/17) noting a drop to $3.12. Apparently, it then fell another 4-plus cents.
Does this mean something? I don't know. Most commodity market moves are dominated by technical traders, but I'm pretty sure this hasn't been the case for copper. Either that, or the dominant traders in copper are manic depressives who just can't get their medication right.
The red metal was roughly $4/pound in June 2008, fell to $1.25 in December 2008, and now is hanging around above $3 (see chart below, from www.kitcometals.com).
Good luck figuring this out.
15 Dec, 2009
Smart Grid 'Data Surge'
I've taken to going over what's posted at SmarGridNews.com. For an example of how no one of us can get the full picture, see: "Smart Grid Data Surge . . . You Can't Ignore It."
Here is "the minimum case" as presented in the article:
If
we estimate the maximum case, the numbers are even higher than I had
referenced in the earlier article. Let's not think about real-time (the
numbers are mind-numbing), but instead look at a simple check every 5
minutes:
12 (reads/hr) X 24 (hrs/day) X (365 days/yr) X 16K (bytes/read) yields roughly 1.7GB/meter/year
Multiply
that by the number of meters (pick your own scope), and I think the
challenge is clear. For more reality, take that number and multiply by
5 for readings every minute, or by 300 for readings every second.
That's big.
If that's a WOW!!! to you, it sure is to me. The author of that piece points out that, to cope with this surge, people in charge of TSG will probably throw security out the window.
07 Dec, 2009
Employment Report
November's construction employment fell big-time.
October's EC industry employment fell from September (not a big shock, but still not-so-doggone-great)
October's employment figure in electrical distribution took a minor dip.
October's EC industry employment fell from September (not a big shock, but still not-so-doggone-great)
October's employment figure in electrical distribution took a minor dip.
See a report on this (and more) in the blog posted today on TEDMAG.com.
04 Dec, 2009
2010 Outlook, And More
Part One: 2010
Part Two - 2011 & After
02 Dec, 2009
October Construction Update
In the year's first 10 months, total construction spending is down 12.6%, to $794B. In the month of October itself, $81.5B of construction was recorded, down from almost $95.6B in 10/08 -- that's a decline of 14.7%.
Some 10-month "private" comparison numbers:
RESIDENTIAL (private) -- down 30.8%.
NONRESIDENTIAL (private) -- down 9.5%
PUBLIC -- up 4.4%.
. . . note that Total Private Construction was down 19.4%.
29 Nov, 2009
Hotel Construction
WHAT THIS IS: All of the data are from McGraw-Hill Construction. I have saved every official report from MHC on the $ value of construction starts -- going back to 1998. I dragged them all out, dove into them, and came up with this (for this segment and for the others).
Data from 1998 to 2008 are "actual" numbers as provided by MHC.
2009 is an estimate (it's not over yet) -- and 2010 is a forecast.
WHY THIS IS IN SQUARE FEET instead of dollars -- dollars are subject to interpretation, inflation adjustment, etc. A square foot is a sq. ft.! And construction people can relate much better to square feet than dollars, in my experience.
27 Nov, 2009
Manufacturing Construction
WHAT THIS IS: All of the data are from McGraw-Hill Construction. I have saved every official report from MHC on the $ value of construction starts -- going back to 1998. I dragged them all out, dove into them, and came up with this (for this segment and for the others).
Data from 1998 to 2008 are "actual" numbers as provided by MHC.
2009 is an estimate (it's not over yet) -- and 2010 is a forecast.
WHY THIS IS IN SQUARE FEET instead of dollars -- dollars are subject to interpretation, inflation adjustment, etc. A square foot is a sq. ft.! And construction people can relate much better to square feet than dollars, in my experience.
22 Nov, 2009
Warehouses - '98 to 2010
WHAT THIS IS: All of the data are from McGraw-Hill Construction. I have saved every official report from MHC on the $ value of construction starts -- going back to 1998. I dragged them all out, dove into them, and came up with this (for this segment and for the others).
Data from 1998 to 2008 are "actual" numbers as provided by MHC.
2009 is an estimate (it's not over yet) -- and 2010 is a forecast.
WHY THIS IS IN SQUARE FEET instead of dollars -- dollars are subject to interpretation, inflation adjustment, etc. A square foot is a sq. ft.! And construction people can relate much better to square feet than dollars, in my experience.
18 Nov, 2009
Stores + Sq. Ft. -- 12 Years
WHAT THIS IS: All of the data are from McGraw-Hill Construction. I have saved every official report from MHC on the $ value of construction starts -- going back to 1998. I dragged them all out, dove into them, and came up with this (for this segment and for the others).
Data from 1998 to 2008 are "actual" numbers as provided by MHC.
2009 is an estimate (it's not over yet) -- and 2010 is a forecast.
WHY THIS IS IN SQUARE FEET instead of dollars -- dollars are subject to interpretation, inflation adjustment, etc. A square foot is a sq. ft.! And construction people can relate much better to square feet than dollars, in my experience.
18 Nov, 2009
1-Family Housing Starts
Let's look at the UNadjusted numbers, for some perspective:
October (one month) = 40,200 SF houses started.
October 2008 = 45,800.
10-month total of SF home starts in 2009 = 380,900. One year ago, the 10-month total was 564,600.
October 2008 = 45,800.
10-month total of SF home starts in 2009 = 380,900. One year ago, the 10-month total was 564,600.
What happened in October?
According to media reporting I heard/read, it's all about the expiration (at 11/30/09) of the $8,000 first-time-buyer federal tax credit. If this explanation reflects reality, with a tax credit scheduled to expire in just one month, people pulled back (and home builders pulled back in response).
IF THAT'S THE CASE -- it doesn't make sense to me, but it might be reflective of reality anyway -- that means that the economy is much too weak RIGHT NOW for the government to remove the props it has underneath just about everything. So the recent action of Congress and the President, to extend and expand the housing buyer tax credit, ought to "work" and lead to more SF construction in the next year.
IF THAT'S NOT THE CASE -- to my mind, the expiration on 11/30 would lead to a rush of closings in October, but that might not lead to more starts -- then the economy is weakening for other reasons. I don't know that this reflects reality. But we'll know in the fullness of time, because -- if this is true -- the extending/expanding of the buyer tax credit won't work.
17 Nov, 2009
Office Buildings: 12 Years
WHAT THIS IS: All of the data are from McGraw-Hill Construction. I have saved every official report from MHC on the $ value of construction starts -- going back to 1998. I dragged them all out, dove into them, and came up with this (for this segment and for the others).
Data from 1998 to 2008 are "actual" numbers as provided by MHC.
2009 is an estimate (it's not over yet) -- and 2010 is a forecast.
WHY THIS IS IN SQUARE FEET instead of dollars -- dollars are subject to interpretation, inflation adjustment, etc. A square foot is a sq. ft.! And construction people can relate much better to square feet than dollars, in my experience.
EleBlog comment: Does it look like we fell off of a cliff? In office buildings, it sure as heck does.
10 Nov, 2009
Electricians - Job Outlook
Here's a tiny sliver of the info that awaits you there:
In May 2006, median hourly earnings of wage and salary electricians were $20.97. The middle 50 percent earned between $16.07 and $27.71. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $12.76, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $34.95. Median hourly earnings in the industries employing the largest numbers of electricians were:
| Motor vehicle parts manufacturing | $31.90 |
| Electric power generation, transmission, and distribution | 26.32 |
| Local government | 23.80 |
| Nonresidential building construction | 20.58 |
| Electrical contractors | 20.47 |
| Plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors | 19.56 |
| Employment services | 17.15 |
03 Nov, 2009
Construction Spending Report
Here's what's in Table 2:
Total construction spending DOWN 12.1% vs. the first 9 months of 2008.
Private residential down 31.2%
Private non-residential down 7.6%.
Public construction -- up 4.7%.
Private non-residential down 7.6%.
[worst component = commercial = -31.6%. Best component = manufacturing = + 37.6%. Unfortunately, there is - and has been! - a lot more commercial construction ($62.8B in 2008's first 9 months) vs. manufacturing construction ($42.4B in the same period). Altho -- they are getting closer together, aren't they?]
Public construction -- up 4.7%.
[With the flow of money out of Washington, and to local governments, this shouldn't be a surprise. The biggest 2 components of this are -- again, no surprise -- Education construction, at $67.9B in 2009, and Highway & Street, $62.6B]
03 Nov, 2009
Pulse-Takings -- Construction
Additionally, AIA reported a big decline in project backlogs at the firms responding to its survey. This only makes sense, if you've been following this survey month after month (which EleBlog has.
- - - - -
McGraw-Hill Construction's September report showed the $ value of new contracts for construction down 7% from August. The EleBlog (which follows this one, too) tries to ignore the month-to-month fluctuations and seasonal adjustments. The bottom line: After 9 months of 2009, the $ value of contracts for new construction -- which you can otherwise think of as "Construction Starts" -- is down 32% from one year ago.
That sucks. What's of note: Non-residential $ values are down (-37%) just as much as residential (-38%).
- - - - -
Reed Constuction Data's October newsletter shows September's construction starts fell only 1.5%. Considering that MHC and Reed are looking at the same thing, it's interesting to find them coming up with a disparity. Reed has the total $ value of construction starts in the Jan-Sept. period down 21.6%. Reed's numbers for "Commercial" construction in the first nine months show the $ value down 34.3%.
- - - - -
If you want to draw a conclusion from this, it's that construction isn't bolting out of the gate for 2010. It's likely to be a mediocre year . . . at best.
26 Oct, 2009
Construction Forecast, 2010
The BIG numbers -- overall MHC forecast -- presented in two parts, 10/23 and 10/26 (today).
Commodity forecast (from Global Insight's John Mothersole) -- 10/22. Yes, there's stuff about COPPER in there (whadjathink?).
Housing outlook -- 10/21. If you skip one of these, skip this one (it's not as good as the others).
Construction and CREDIT and DEBT -- 10/20. If you wanna be sure to read the best of these, READ THIS ONE!!!
"Macro" economic outlook (from a Standard & Poor's economist, David Wyss) -- 10/19.
I put a lot of work into these. It's hard to sit still in a room and take notes (especially if you might not agree with 75% of the stuff said). Give some of it a scan, it might be well worth your time!
26 Oct, 2009
Existing Home Sales: NOT (no not!) UP
These recently were reported to be UP, sparking some more (BOGUS) "we're in a recovery" enthusiasm.
Existing home sales ain't up. We're not in a recovery. Be rational.
Two more things:
a. I really like the way Barry concluded his post:
I am honestly unsure of whether the folks at the NAR are dumb as lawn furniture and make these misrepresentations honestly — or whether are just another group of disgusting spin doctors, willfully peddling lies because it helps their own agenda.
Those are pretty much the only options: Idiots or full of shit. (You decide).
b. He provided a follow-up blog entry on seasonal adjustments, further explaining the problem with the idea that existing home sales were "up" (which they were NOT).
26 Oct, 2009
Construction Contracts Down 32%
But context (find the table at the bottom of this web page) is provided by the UNadjusted year-to-date numbers (9 months of 2009 vs. first 9 months of 2008):
Total construction down 32%.
Non-residential down 37%.
Non-residential down 37%.
BOTTOM LINE: This is a look-ahead indicator. The next 6 to 18 months in non-residential construction, and construction as a whole, will suck.
26 Oct, 2009
Project Backlogs Shrink
It's been under 50 for more than 18 months. The August number came in below 42.
The September figure, just out, is 43.1. BIG WHOOP!
[If you read the verbiage provided by AIA, it works out to a wordy version of "big whoop" as well]BUT -- here's the bad bad news: "Average project backlog" is now 3.9 months at the architecture firms responding. That's down 25% in the past year.
In other words: Not only is there less work looking ahead, there's less work in the bank (as you'd expect, based on 18 months of non-growth).
05 Oct, 2009
'Birth/Death Follies'
05 Oct, 2009
EC Employment
Series Id: CEU2023821006 | |||||||||||||
| Year | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 664.4 | 662.9 | 665.1 | 671.3 | 684.2 | 706.3 | 724.0 | 730.2 | 729.6 | 732.4 | 733.7 | 734.4 | 703.2 |
| 2000 | 722.3 | 719.3 | 727.3 | 738.0 | 747.3 | 764.2 | 777.1 | 783.9 | 784.1 | 778.9 | 781.2 | 776.7 | 758.4 |
| 2001 | 758.3 | 749.0 | 755.3 | 759.2 | 769.7 | 774.0 | 781.1 | 774.3 | 762.2 | 755.9 | 739.4 | 734.4 | 759.4 |
| 2002 | 709.7 | 701.0 | 697.4 | 693.9 | 699.0 | 709.4 | 714.6 | 713.8 | 704.3 | 688.8 | 685.1 | 677.2 | 699.5 |
| 2003 | 655.2 | 645.7 | 641.3 | 645.6 | 652.0 | 670.0 | 679.7 | 681.5 | 678.6 | 675.4 | 665.3 | 659.8 | 662.5 |
| 2004 | 637.7 | 629.0 | 634.5 | 641.9 | 650.1 | 664.4 | 674.1 | 668.7 | 661.3 | 669.7 | 672.0 | 667.0 | 655.9 |
| 2005 | 649.1 | 641.3 | 648.5 | 653.9 | 660.1 | 673.6 | 683.7 | 686.5 | 683.3 | 691.0 | 693.7 | 688.9 | 671.1 |
| 2006 | 677.7 | 682.8 | 687.6 | 691.8 | 696.4 | 710.5 | 722.2 | 728.7 | 726.6 | 723.8 | 718.7 | 720.5 | 707.3 |
| 2007 | 708.1 | 701.3 | 705.7 | 716.2 | 727.2 | 742.5 | 752.6 | 747.4 | 747.2 | 749.7 | 741.7 | 740.5 | 731.7 |
| 2008 | 722.9 | 715.6 | 716.0 | 717.4 | 721.6 | 729.0 | 740.2 | 741.8 | 733.3 | 731.0 | 714.4 | 701.5 | 723.7 |
| 2009 | 668.2 | 647.2 | 636.3 | 633.5 | 635.3 | 639.3 | 644.8 | 636.3(P) | |||||
What's above is the Employment numbers among "production workers" (field people) in Electrical Contracting for the past 10+ years. The latest number -- the (p) means preliminary, subject to revision -- is 636,300. That August number is down 14.22% from one year ago.
My analysis of BLS data tells me that "production workers" in the EC business are foremen, journeymen electricians, apprentices, and helpers.
Note that BLS is always one month behind in "niche industry" analysis. It just reported the September national employment sitch AND data for August here for the EC biz. That's the way it has been.
(More)
05 Oct, 2009
Construction Employment
Further: Thus far (thru 9 months) in 2009, every month has seen the Construction number BENEATH 5 million. The last time that happened was 1998.
05 Oct, 2009
National Unemployment Sitch
a. Economists have continually gotten big issues WRONG. Who could give any credence to a minor number (one month's zig or zag either way?)
b. The diff between 180K and 265K in an economy with 154M people in the civilian labor force is NADA, nothing, zilch, zippo. It doesn't actually pass "the smell test" as a miss. It's not worth tracking or reporting, is it?
c. What WAS worth reporting is the U-6 unemployment rate, which tracks with how these numbers were reported in years gone by (like, say, 1931). It was 16.1% on a not-seasonally-adjusted basis, down from 16.5% in August. But it was 17.0% on a seasonally adjusted basis, up from 16.8% in August (SA) and 16.3% in July (SA). Now, let's focus on what that means:
Labor force = 154,006,000. U-6 unemployment rate = 17% seasonally adjusted. That's 26 million people who are counted as unemployed, "discouraged" and not looking for work, or working part-time when they really want full-time work.
d. Another item in the report was the "adder" from the Birth/Death model. According to BLS, the vast mass of humans in the U.S. created 34,000 jobs via the start-up of new businesses in September -- business BLS admits it cannot track. That's up from 18,000 jobs hypothetically created in 9/08. I am having trouble with the concept that more start-up business were created this year than last, and with the idea that these are real jobs. Fortunately, the number is low (as opposed to May-June-July-Aug, in which four months the BLS actually ADDED more 555,000 jobs to our national total with this hypothetical numbers-crunching.
SUMMARY: Forget the top-line number and what was or was not estimated. We might have had 26 million people representing SLACK in our workforce in September. And the real numbers might be a lot worse, based on that Birth/Death nonsense.
27 Sep, 2009
McGraw-Hill -- Starts Up 2%
YEAR-TO-DATE CONSTRUCTION STARTS
Unadjusted Totals, In Millions of Dollars
| 8 Mo. 2009 | 8 Mo. 2008 | % Change | |
| Nonresidential Building | $110,465 | $175,885 | -37 |
| Residential Building | 73,015 | 122,343 | -40 |
| Nonbuilding Construction | 91,322 | 111,785 | -18 |
| Total Construction | $274,802 | $410,013 | -33 |
27 Sep, 2009
AIA: Rotten 'Work On Boards' Number
Since the ABI rebounded from all-time low scores earlier this year to
scores regularly in the low 40s, it has stalled and not moved any
higher. Conditions at firms are better now than they were last winter,
but a recovery is not yet imminent. Inquiries, on the other hand,
remain relatively strong, with a score over 50 in August for the sixth
month in a row. However, architecture firms continue to report that
clients are shopping projects around, meaning that firms are seeing
many inquiries but few are translating into actual billable work.
Note that a slight blip up a short while ago made a lot of headlines. It wasn't much, and now it's been undermined by reality. If you click thru, be sure to page down to the graphic "Commercial/Industrial Projects Have Been Hardest Hit By Credit Market Problems." It's ugly.
27 Sep, 2009
Reed: Aug Starts Up 9.2%
I pay attention to the year-to-date figures, which offer 09 v. 08 comparisons
RESI -- down 41.5% Jan-Aug vs. Jan-Aug
NON-RES -- down 21.8%
HEAVY ENGINEERING -- up 8.4%
Total construction = 22.7% through the year's first 8 months.
NON-RES -- down 21.8%
HEAVY ENGINEERING -- up 8.4%
Total construction = 22.7% through the year's first 8 months.
From Jim Haughey, economist, on the Heavy Engineering market -- "The stimulus-funded component will likely expand a little further and remain high for several more quarters, but the rest of the heavy market will be declining well into next year. This is the consequence of a huge surplus in private facility capacity and the weakest public budgets in several decades."
Note that if you page thru to page 2 of the report, Commercial construction (one big component of Non-Res) is down 30.8% year-over-year. Retail (the largest single piece) is down 40%; hotel/motel is down 54.6%; and private office is down 39%.
29 Jul, 2009
Electrical Demand To Drop 2%
Mish is not an energy analyst. He writes about financial stuff. I've read his stuff, on and off, for years.
As he notes: Coal consumption is down 5.2% this year, "but it expected to rise only 1.6% in 2010."
29 Jul, 2009
Reed's Non-Residential Numbers
Perhaps also of interest, here are RCD's numbers for the $ value of construction starts in the year's first half:
Residential -- DOWN 49.3%
Non-residential Building -- DOWN 27.5%
Heavy Engineering -- DOWN 7.7%
TOTAL -- down 31.6%
Non-residential Building -- DOWN 27.5%
Heavy Engineering -- DOWN 7.7%
TOTAL -- down 31.6%
That's not very far from McGraw-Hill Construction's assessment, which was (a few posts back) down 36% for total construction start $ values in 2009's first six months.
28 Jul, 2009
MHC's June Construction Data
That puts the "Dodge Index" of new construction starts at 82 for June, down from 87 in May. The index is arranged so that "100" = construction activity in the year 2000.
There's also this: The half-year UNadjusted data. It's noteworthy to me that the decline in Nonresidential is starting to equal (in percentage terms) the drop in Residential.
YEAR-TO-DATE CONSTRUCTION STARTS
Unadjusted Totals, In Millions of Dollars
| 6 Mo. 2009 | 6 Mo. 2008 | % Change | |
| Nonresidential Building | $79,135 | $134,130 | -41 |
| Residential Building | 50,516 | 93,468 | -46 |
| Nonbuilding Construction | 65,792 | 78,012 | -16 |
| Total Construction | $195,443 | $305,610 | -36 |
24 Jul, 2009
Deeply Entrenched Downturn
Summary: After three months of holding steady, the ongoing slowdown in business conditions at architecture firms accelerated again in June. The Architecture Billings Index (ABI) score fell to 37.7, its lowest point since February, indicating that the downturn may be more deeply entrenched than anticipated.
It has now been 18 months since the ABI has reported a score above 50. (ABI scores above 50 indicate growth; a score below 50 indicates decline.) On the other hand, the index of inquiries into new projects had a score of 53.8 this month, marking the fourth consecutive month that growth has been reported. While this is an encouraging sign, business will continue to be tough until these inquiries tu
(More)
22 Jul, 2009
Energy Intensity
USA + EU 4.6% of world's population, 25.9% of GDP, using 20.5% of its energy.
European Union 7.5% of world's population, 31.1% of GDP, using 15.9% of its energy.
China + India 37.1% of world's population, 8.1% of GDP, using 19.7% of its energy.
European Union 7.5% of world's population, 31.1% of GDP, using 15.9% of its energy.
China + India 37.1% of world's population, 8.1% of GDP, using 19.7% of its energy.
Whether you "believe" in global warming or are a skeptic, this is NOT good. Source of the data was "various US/EU sources" and it was all dated to 2006.
20 Jul, 2009
Nonresidential Non-recovery
You need to see it (click on the words above). In addition to presenting the consensus, it allows you to get at any single source's 2009-2010 forecast by "rolling over" (with your mouse) the name of the source -- McGraw-Hill, FMI, Economy.com, Reed, etc.
The gist:
2009 = nonresidential construction spending to finish down 16%. That augurs a pretty rotten 2nd half.
2010 = some moderation in the decline, so the year's decline comes in at -12%. That's not such wonderful news.
2010 = some moderation in the decline, so the year's decline comes in at -12%. That's not such wonderful news.
Of the various sources, Reed Construction Data shows the most moderate declines. FMI (which is the home of the construction industry's leading consulting firm) has 2010 actually worse than 2009.
29 Jun, 2009
No Green Shoots Here, Either
Is this scientific? I trust it more than "sentiment" indices (which ask people how they feel about things). The survey that leads to this report is asking AIA member what they are seeing at their companies. Plus, the guy who supervises things (Kermit Baker, AIA's chief economist) seems to me to be an economist who you might actually trust (as opposed to, say, Ben Bernanke!).
One month ago, the "architecture billing index" (official name) showed "optimism," according to reports. The report for May put the index at 42.9, up a smidge from the 42.8 in April. Essentially, no movement. Two interesting notes (see the longer of two reports on the June data here).
1. Baker's comments noted that the May data "indicates that business conditions at architecture firms are still deteriorating." That tempers the optimism with which the report on April's data was greeted.
2. There is a component of this report -- "inquiries for new project activity" -- that came in strong for the 3rd straight month. But here's what Baker wrote about that:
the fact that favorable levels of inquiries have not yet generated an
increase in billings at firms may point to a change in how clients are
searching for design services. Several respondents to this month’s
survey noted that they are seeing more competition for projects and
feel that many clients are casting a wider net in looking for bidders
on design projects, which may generate more inquiries for firms but not
necessarily more work.
25 Jun, 2009
More On May Construction Starts
Now, you can go over and see the recent newsletter with contrasting May analysis from MHC's competitor, Reed Construction Data.
The gist:
Total construction start $ values down 22.3% in the first five months of 2009.
Non-residential down 14.0%.
Start $ values up 16% in May (over April), but "no sustained rise until 2010."
Non-residential down 14.0%.
Start $ values up 16% in May (over April), but "no sustained rise until 2010."
23 Jun, 2009
May Construction Starts (MHC)
YEAR-TO-DATE CONSTRUCTION STARTS
Unadjusted Totals, In Millions of Dollars
| 5 Mo. 2009 | 5 Mo. 2008 | % Change | |
| Nonresidential Building | $62,374 | $109,670 | -43 |
| Residential Building | 39,378 | 76,589 | -49 |
| Nonbuilding Construction | 52,465 | 61,357 | -14 |
| Total Construction | $154,217 | $247,616 | -38 |
23 Jun, 2009
Copper Use In Transformers
A large number of Distribution
Transformers used in India, particularly in smaller ratings such as
25KVA,. 63KVA, 100KVA (11KV/415V, 3 phase) use aluminum and
conventional methods of manufacture, resulting in very high failure
rates around 25% which is not favorably comparable to international
norms of 1 to 2%. Further the life of these conventional transformers
is very low (6-8 years).
The higher failure rate also adds to the already high Transmission & Distribution (T&D) losses in the power distribution network in India.
There is thus a case in the use of low-loss, high-grade materials for the core and winding to result in low-loss, high-efficiency, Energy Efficient Distribution Transformers (EE DTs). The no load losses can be reduced by 75% and load losses by 40% by using Copper windings in place of Aluminium windings.
The higher failure rate also adds to the already high Transmission & Distribution (T&D) losses in the power distribution network in India.
There is thus a case in the use of low-loss, high-grade materials for the core and winding to result in low-loss, high-efficiency, Energy Efficient Distribution Transformers (EE DTs). The no load losses can be reduced by 75% and load losses by 40% by using Copper windings in place of Aluminium windings.
21 Jun, 2009
Offshore Wind's Relative Costs
One such article, posted 6/1, was "Some Cautionary Thoughts About Wind" -- which came with this graphic.
17 Jun, 2009
Housing Data = Mediocre
a. The seasonally adjusted annual rate for May is 532,000. That still SUCKS. We were building 2 million homes a year not long ago.
b. The SAAR for April (revised) was 454,000. That's the 17.2% increase, from 454K to 532K.
c. May 2008's rate was 971,000, so year-over-year, housing starts in May were DOWN 45%.
d. As is my habit, I paged back to the UNADJUSTED data. Here are single-family housing starts for 2009 so far:
January 22,700
February 24,600
March 31,000
April 34,000
May 39,600
February 24,600
March 31,000
April 34,000
May 39,600
e. Starts for the year-to-date (single-family ONLY) are 151,900. For 2008's first five months, 1-family starts were 290,600. And 2008 wasn't such a good year.
f. Take May as the best month of the year so far. Assume we're gong to have 7 more months of 50,000 starts each (OPTIMISTIC!!!). That would mean 1-family starts in 2009 would be, at best, 500,000. Great, eh? NO. Last year, 1-family starts finished at 622,000. In 2007, 1-family starts were 1,046,000.
g. SO -- from where did that 17% gain come from? Why the positive spin? Multi-family starts (5 dwelling units each or more) were 10,900 in May, up from 5,900 in April. This isn't a tally of buildings, it's units (in other words, apartment buildings that -- when finished -- will have 10,900 dwelling units in them were started in May). The multifamily numbers are notoriously volatile, meaning they bounce around a lot from month to month.
Bottom line: It's better to have single-family starts increasing by 5,600 homes in May from April. It's better to have the apartment-start volatility bounce UP than downin a given month. But there's not much here to get excited about, unfortunately.
15 Jun, 2009
Electricians Working For ECs
By the way HOTS = heard on the street.
15 Jun, 2009
Future Electrician Needs
13 Jun, 2009
Copper Prices - Round Trip?
But here comes a story from Purchasing.com in which an analyst says (still) that copper prices for calendar 2009 will average $1.70.
. . . that's what make horse races. And it might make the electrical business a bit more complicated from here to Christmas, too.
10 Jun, 2009
Workforce Shortage -- Still Around!
But here's a sampler of recent reading:
May 2009 T&D World -- "30% or more of the existing utility workforce is or will be eligible for retirement in the next five years."
Dec/Jan SOLARPRO magazine (5p PDF) -- "Extending the federal tax credits for solar through 2016 is expected to create 440,000 permanent jobs in the U.S. solar industry, according to Navigant Consulting" from Mark Culpepper, vp at SunEdison: "Right now, I would call it a marginal roadblock. In the future, it could become a very big roadblock."
08 Jun, 2009
Construction Employment Data
05 Jun, 2009
EC Employment
In April, ECs had 633,800 employees on average (subject to revision), down 2,500 from the March revised figure of 636,300.
Call April flat with March.
In 2008, April (717,400) was also virtually flat with March (716,000).
April 2009 is 11.65% down from April 2008.
April 2009 is 11.65% down from April 2008.
Thus far (thru 4 months), EC employment in every month in 2009 has started with a "6", whereas for 12 months of 2007 AND 2008, every month's average started with a "7".
05 Jun, 2009
Construction Gains
May's figure is down 15.3% below May 2008. April 2009 was 14.8% below last year's comparable month.
05 Jun, 2009
Birth/Death Adjustments ?????
What is the Birth/Death Model? It's an attempt by the BLS to estimate how many jobs were created in the economy that the BLS can't "find" through its various official tracking efforts.
In April and May of 2008 (one year ago), the B/D Model ADDED 1,246,000 jobs to the national employment estimates. This is from the "not seasonally adjusted" piece of the B/D page.
In April and May of 2009, the B/D model added (subject to revision) 590,000 jobs to the national employment estimates. 319,000 were added in May (220,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis).
WHAT THIS MEANS: Take out the B/D Model (put it at zero) and the unemployment number for May would have been 567,000 rather than 345,000. I think.
- - - - -
UNFAIR: It's unfair to pick on the B/D Model because of what it did or did not do in May or April-and-May together. ON THE OTHER HAND: Considering we are going through a kinda UNIQUE economic period, the idea that the BLS economists know what they are doing right now is fairly ridiculous.
My preference would be to avoid using B/D Model numbers at all and to go with just the Establishment data. But that's not happening, and it's not going to happen.
BUT . . . in a difficult period for the global and national economy, isn't it kinda hard to believe that tiny existing businesses and start-up companies created 590,000 jobs in the 61 days between 4/1/09 and 5/31/09????
05 Jun, 2009
U-6 Unemployment
"Total unemployed plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part-time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers."
The figure for May 2009, no seasonally adjusted, is 15.9%. It was 15.4% last month and 9.4% one year ago.
In May 2007, it was 7.9%.
05 Jun, 2009
Unemployment Numbers Mess
So I downloaded the Bureau of Labor Statistics release. Here's what I see on just the first two pages:
Paragraph One, page one -- "nonfarm payroll employment fell by 345,000 in May . . . the unemployment rate continue dto rise, increasing from 8.9% to 9.4%."
Paragraph Two, page one (I kid you not) -- beneath a subhed that says "Unemployment (Household Survey Data)" -- "The number of unemployed persons increased by 787,000 to 14.5 million in May."
Table A -- under the column heading April-May change --
Employment -437,000
Unemployment -- +787,000
Unemployment -- +787,000
- - - - -
So what's the correct number? The difference between the household survey number (787K more unemployed in May) and the "official" number in the headlines (345K more unemployed) is that the official number comes from a survey (of, if I remember correctly, 400,000 employers). The household number comes from a phone survey of 60,000 citizens (if I remember correctly).
I've asserted in the past that I'd rather go with the Establishment survey. That still seems reasonable to me.
- - - - -
Some other random data:
a. The civilian labor force increased by 350,000 people from April to May.
b. The number of people "not in labor force" decreased by 170,000 from April to May.
c. These two things along could have contributed to the increase in the number of unemployed to 14,511,000 in May (from 13.7M in April).
More in the next posts above.
02 Jun, 2009
Haughey's Take On Spending
It was a short 2-paragraph entry. I'm going to regurgitate all of it here (here's a link to Jim's blog) because this is important. I've subdivided some of the paragraphs for emphasis or easier reading:
The revised spending data show that residential remodeling spending
plunged 12.2% in February, stayed at about that reduced level in March
and then recovered most of the abrupt drop in April.
This is implausible.
But by now we are used to wild swings and frequent large revisions in the remodeling data.
This is implausible.
But by now we are used to wild swings and frequent large revisions in the remodeling data.
There are three key insights in the April spending report.
- First,
the housing market continues to weaken rapidly, down 6.7% more. The
recent stabilization of home sales will not stop the spending slide for
a few more months.
- Second, the manufacturing and power markets
continue to expand with each now nearly as large as single family
housing. This is momentum from the 2003-07 business expansion which
will not last much longer.
- Third, commercial real estate is more distressed than reported earlier with downward revisions for both office and retail construction spending.
02 Jun, 2009
Green Shoot Baloney - Case #4,137
EXAMPLE -- Headline from Bloomberg.com: "Construction Spending in the U.S. Unexpectedly Climbs."
When I saw that, I said to myself "no it didn't!!!!!!!" But here's the story:
"The 0.8% gain (in April) wasthe biggest since August and followed a revised 0.4% increase the prior month [March]."
In other words, March was slightly better than February, on a seasonally adjusted basis, and April supposedly was significantly better than March.
Well, how the F--- could construction spending be DOWN 11%-plus in the year's first 4 months vs. 2008, then? Manipulation? Look over here, don't look over there?
Well, how the F--- could construction spending be DOWN 11%-plus in the year's first 4 months vs. 2008, then? Manipulation? Look over here, don't look over there?
I don't know. The same idea permeated a lot of the reporting (and apparently led to a stock-market uptick on 6/1). Example: Christian Science Monitor blog: "US construction spending rises, raising eyebrows."
I do know that some sources got it right ("Construction Spending Sinks," read the headline in the Portland Business Journal - as in Ore.).
02 Jun, 2009
Construction Spending in April
1. As noted here before, I cut straight to Table 2, the value NOT Seasonally Adjusted.
2. For total construction in the year's first 4 months, it's $286.3B, down 11.3%. That's right, DOWN 11.3%.
3. Private construction for the first 4 months = down 16.4%.
4. Private residential construction for 4 months, down 34.3%.
5. Private nonresidential construction is flat (0.0% change). It was $125,012,000,000 in the year to April 2009, $125,018,000,000 in the first 4 months of 2008. Flat. That's almost the same (but not quite) as the report last month, in which nonresidential was UP 0.2%.
6. Public construction was up 3.4% in the year's first 4 months.
Those are the facts. In the next item, we'll deal with the baloney.
01 Jun, 2009
Truck Tonnage Index Falls
The American Trucking Associations’ advance seasonally adjusted (SA) For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index fell 2.2 percent in April, after plunging 4.5 percent in March. April marked the second sequential decrease.
In April, the SA tonnage index equaled just 99.2 (2000 = 100), which is its lowest level since November 2001. The not seasonally adjusted (NSA) index, which represents the change in tonnage actually hauled by the fleets before any seasonal adjustment, was down 2.9 percent from March. In April, the NSA index equaled 101.6.
Compared with April 2008, tonnage contracted 13.2 percent, which was the worst year-over-year decrease of the current cycle and the largest drop in thirteen years. In March 2009, tonnage dropped 12.2 percent from a year earlier.
In April, the SA tonnage index equaled just 99.2 (2000 = 100), which is its lowest level since November 2001. The not seasonally adjusted (NSA) index, which represents the change in tonnage actually hauled by the fleets before any seasonal adjustment, was down 2.9 percent from March. In April, the NSA index equaled 101.6.
Compared with April 2008, tonnage contracted 13.2 percent, which was the worst year-over-year decrease of the current cycle and the largest drop in thirteen years. In March 2009, tonnage dropped 12.2 percent from a year earlier.
So . . . where, exactly, are the "green shoots?"
26 May, 2009
Copper Prices
This is contrary to my expectations. The U.S. dollar index has come WAY down in recent weeks, from the 85-86 range to less than 81 today.
Ordinarily, I would guess that a big dip in the $ index would mean a pop in the price of copper. It HAS NOT worked out that way.
One reason might be that the Chinese have either finished completely or "finished for now" their program of buying copper hand-over-fist and sticking it into warehouses. That's what they've been doing for much of 2009, according to numerous reports -- and that might just be what has held up the price of copper.
26 May, 2009
Eco/Construction Update
McGraw-Hill Construction -- this April report is interesting, but page down to the bottom of the web page. The UNadjusted non-residential construction total for the year's first 4 months = a 42% decline in the $ value of construction starts. The above index (AIA Billings Index, or ABI) has been giving off negative signals since 2/08. Now, the work that didn't make it onto the architects boards IS NOT being built on jobsites.
Reed -- this alternative to MHC above shows April as a worse month than MHC says it was, but overall nonresidential is down only 21.5%. Who is "right?" I have no idea, but there sure is a big difference between a 21.5% decline and a 42% decline, isn't there?
NAHB -- "The Economic Contraction Is Losing Steam," it says here. The EleBlog thinks this is a bunch of hogwash, but we're all entitled to our views -- and you are entitled to look at something with which I don't agree.
08 May, 2009
National Unemployment
Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus
total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent
of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent
of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
The UNadjusted figure for April was 15.4%, which The EleBlog would call the "true" unemployment rate, down from the 16.2% in March.
April 2008 = 8.9%
On a seasonally ADJUSTED basis, the April number was 15.8%, up from 15.4%. April 2008 was given as 9.2%.
08 May, 2009
EC Employment -- March
- March's total, at 636,000 (subject to revision next month), was the lowest total since March 2004.
- February and March 2004 were low-employment months in electrical construction. You have to go back to early 1998 to see monthly numbers consistently running below 640,000.
- Feb 09's revised total was given as 647,200. So EC production-worker employment fell marginally from Feb to March.
- March 2009 was 11.17% below March 2008.
08 May, 2009
Construction Employment -- April Update
- 4,682,000 production workers were employed in Construction as of April. This is a preliminary number, subject to two future revisions (next 2 months).
- That compares with 5,507,000 such workers employed in 4/08. The decline is almost exactly 15%.
- At 4.68M, the April number is higher than February and March. However, it's lower than January's total. Is that attributable to good January weather?
- That 4/09 number is the lowest April construction employment number since 1998.
- For April, the BLS added 38,000 construction jobs via its Birth/Death model estimate. This just seems so unlikely. But there it is!!!
08 May, 2009
March Construction Spending Numbers
Total construction in the year's first 3 months -- down 10.9%, from $235B in '08 to $209B this year.
Private residential -- down 32.3%
Private non-residential -- down 0.2%
Public construction -- UP 2.4%
Private non-residential -- down 0.2%
Public construction -- UP 2.4%
These are seasonally UNadjusted, the real numbers.
EleBlog take: Thus far, nonresidential construction hasn't been seriously hurt. YET.
28 Apr, 2009
How Is 'The Industry' Doing
Today, ANIXTER came out with its Q1 resuilts. Sales down 14%. The company sells a lot of datacom stuff, wire & cable, and fasteners. But te Q1 decline was really only 7%, according to the boss (Robert Eck, president/CEO):
As we expected, our first quarter results were negatively impacted by
strengthening of the U.S. dollar and the decline in the spot market
price of copper that occurred in late 2008. After excluding these
effects and those associated with acquisitions completed in the second
half of 2008, we saw an overall organic sales decline of 7 percent.
Last week, WESCO offered its Q1 results. Sales were down 19.5% vs. one year ago, but the company noted that, on a comparable basis, the decline was 15.7%.
From John Engel, SVP/COO: " . . . we get better information as we talk with our supplier partners and who
have a sort of broad range of customers and we compare with sort of in
broad terms how we are doing and how their other customers are doing
sort of in the aggregate. And with the wide range of our largest
suppliers I can tell you the data that we’re getting the feedback that
we’re getting is that our performance is outpacing, the market meaning
that others are bearing more poorly.
Grainger's sales were down 12% vs. Q1 2008, which the company adjusted to "down 10% on a daily basis." Grainger apparently will act like a greedy capitalist (that is NOT criticism), with these words from Jim Ryan, the boss:
"We do not believe that we've seen the bottom to the sales decline and
expect increased pricing pressure throughout the remainder of the year.
Given our financial strength, we see an opportunity to gain more share.
We expect to incur some reductions to our margins by expanding our
sales force and implementing additional customer incentives in the
second quarter.
Now, these three companies are NOT necessarily competitors. WESCO is a huge national supplier of electrical products; Anixter and WESCO's CSC unit compete on datacom; Grainger gets some walk-in service contractors business that, no doubt, WESCO would like.
- - - - -
EleBlog take: The results above provide us with the following picture:
- Anixter's diversified business was down 7% in Q1.
- Grainger's differently diversified business was down 10% in Q1.
- WESCO's more-concentrated business was down 15.7% in Q1
Want more? Symbols are AXE for Anixter, GWW for Grainger, and WCC for WESCO. Go to Yahoo! Finance to grab the earnings press releases, Seeking Alpha to take a look at the transcripts of each company's confernce call. Anixter's earnings call is being held now (4/28, morning), so it might not be posted for a while.
- - - -
Final note: We'll get more input on how Q1 went in the electrical industry in the near future via the following sources:
a. GRAYBAR, which is NOT a public company, will post its 10-Q for Q1 at some point. The company has to do this because it has so many shares out (in the hands of retirees and current employees).
b. REXEL SA, which is based in France, has a huge U.S. subsidiary. The company normally posts a comprehensive press release on quarterly earnings, which offers some glimmers about what's going on in the U.S. (or at least "North America").
28 Apr, 2009
Architects' Index Turns Optimistic
Note that it might be a one-month (or reflect the beginning of a several-month) "dead cat bounce." That's the suspicion here at The EleBlog.
Included in AIA's ABI write-up was this note of interest:
Reflecting the persistent weakness the profession is currently experiencing, our survey panelists reported this month that guaranteed compensation is anticipated to decline across the board in 2009. Senior staff will be the hardest hit, with principal/partner salaries predicted to decline by more than 6 percent. Compensation for licensed architects will fall by 4 percent, and salaries for more junior positions (nonregistered graduates, interns) will be down by more than 3 percent.
For firms where salaries have declined or will decline this year, more than a third (35 percent) indicated that the primary cause would be a reduction in compensation, without reducing hours worked. One quarter attributed the decline to reduced hours worked, while an additional 26 percent will reduce both salary and hours worked. The remaining 14 percent cited other reasons for the decline.
Am I trying to make you feel sorry for the construction designer community? Absolutely not. But this is the kind of thing that slowly (but surely) leads to a contraction in the economy. When salaries are cut "across the board," people in respected professions (i.e., architects) --(a) have less disposable income;
(b) FEEL as if they have a LOT less; and
(c) spend much less.
. . . so perhaps those "licensed architects" will take a 4% average hit to their average compensation and spend an average of 10% less in 2009-2010.
28 Apr, 2009
Non-Res Starts DOWN 47%???
YEAR-TO-DATE CONSTRUCTION STARTS
Unadjusted Totals, In Millions of Dollars
| 3 Mo. 2009 | 3 Mo. 2008 | % Change | |
| Nonresidential Building | $34,143 | $64,454 | -47 |
| Residential Building | 20,717 | 43,319 | -52 |
| Nonbuilding Construction | 28,302 | 31,791 | -11 |
| Total Construction | $83,162 | $139,564 | -40 |
That's a HOLY CRAP number. The 40% down is a HOLY CRAP number. The 11% down in Nonbuilding Coinstruction is a HOLY CRAP number.
Obviously, this amount of blessed municipal solid waste sent me in search of WTF is happening. Here's an explanatory paragraph from the text (read the whole thing by clicking the link above):
On an unadjusted basis, total construction during the January-March
period of 2009 was reported at $83.2 billion, down 40% from the same
period a year ago. By major sector, large declines were registered by
nonresidential building, down 47%; and residential building, down 52%;
while a more moderate shortfall was shown by nonbuilding construction,
down 11%.
The nonresidential sector during the first three months of 2008 had been lifted by the start of five exceptionally large projects – the $7.0 billion Motiva refinery expansion in Port Arthur TX, three towers at the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan with a combined construction start cost of $3.9 billion, and the $1.1 billion Revel Resort and Casino in Atlantic City NJ. If these five large projects are excluded from the January-March 2008 statistics, nonresidential building for the first three months of 2009 would be down 35% from a year ago, and total construction would also be down 35%.
For the five major regions, total construction during the first three months of 2009 showed this pattern – the Midwest, down 25%; the West, down 37%; the South Central, down 39%; the South Atlantic, down 42%; and the Northeast, down 56%.
The nonresidential sector during the first three months of 2008 had been lifted by the start of five exceptionally large projects – the $7.0 billion Motiva refinery expansion in Port Arthur TX, three towers at the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan with a combined construction start cost of $3.9 billion, and the $1.1 billion Revel Resort and Casino in Atlantic City NJ. If these five large projects are excluded from the January-March 2008 statistics, nonresidential building for the first three months of 2009 would be down 35% from a year ago, and total construction would also be down 35%.
For the five major regions, total construction during the first three months of 2009 showed this pattern – the Midwest, down 25%; the West, down 37%; the South Central, down 39%; the South Atlantic, down 42%; and the Northeast, down 56%.
I'm not sure that helps. It tells us that five big projects started up in Q1 2008. But let's throw those projects OUT and look at the numbers without them:
Nonresidential down 35%
Total construction down 35%
Total construction down 35%
. . . how good is that?
AND THE KICKER: These figures (the ones posted above in the table) are actually significant improvements over MHC's February data.
FINAL NOTE: Reed Construction Data, which is trying to do the same thing as MHC, said Q1's construction starts were down 17.7% overall, and 8% in nonres.
21 Apr, 2009
Housing Starts, First Quarter
January 22,700 starts in 2009 vs. 48,500 in 2008
February 24,600 starts in 2009 vs. 51,900 in 2008
March 30,900 starts in 2009 vs. 61,500 in 2008.
February 24,600 starts in 2009 vs. 51,900 in 2008
March 30,900 starts in 2009 vs. 61,500 in 2008.
Here is what we can KNOW (not guess) from these data:
1. TOTAL STARTS (subject to revisions) -- only Single-Family, remember -- 78,200 in Q1 2009 vs. 161,900 in the same period in 2008.
2. . . . and 2008 was not the best year.
3. Reports from the real estate and housing biz indicate houses are getting smaller. So not only are we at less than 50% of the single-family starts, but the total square feet might be down by more. If starts are down almost 52%, perhaps the square footage is down a bit more (55%? 57%?).
4. By focusing on single-family ONLY, we remove from the data the "noise" of multi-family housing starts. These things bounce around an awful lot and can be distracting.
5. Overall, the story is: Single-family housing starts down 50% in the year's first quarter AND down about 50% in the month of March.
2. . . . and 2008 was not the best year.
3. Reports from the real estate and housing biz indicate houses are getting smaller. So not only are we at less than 50% of the single-family starts, but the total square feet might be down by more. If starts are down almost 52%, perhaps the square footage is down a bit more (55%? 57%?).
4. By focusing on single-family ONLY, we remove from the data the "noise" of multi-family housing starts. These things bounce around an awful lot and can be distracting.
5. Overall, the story is: Single-family housing starts down 50% in the year's first quarter AND down about 50% in the month of March.
- - - - -
For the sake of comparison, I went back to the March 2003 release, which gives Q1 figures for 2003 and 2002:
2002 single-family housing starts: 293,300
2003: 305,400
2003: 305,400
Neither of those years was a barn-buster in housing construction, relatively speaking (relative to 2005 and 2006, that is).
At this point, we might have in the vicinity of 300,000 or 350,000 single-family housing starts in the WHOLE YEAR of 2009.
- - - - -
Tentative conclusion: We might have bottomed. We might not have bottomed. We might spend a long time on the bottom. The only thing we can KNOW for sure from these numbers is that housing construction right now is in a very, very bad place.
This matters to electrical contractors, of course. But it matters to the general economy, too, as the completion of a new house generates all kinds of economic activity.
19 Apr, 2009
Gas Price Hike To Be Mild
EleBlog take: From EIA's lips to God's ears.
19 Apr, 2009
March Construction Starts (1)
Construction Recession Deepends in March 2009.
Total construction starts in the Jan-Mar period were down 17.7% vs. 2008, with an 8.1% decline in Nonresidential being a bit surprising.
Commentary: Jim Haughey, RCD's chief economist, wrote: "Construction starts declined 3.3% from February to March, a sharp contrast from the usual seasonal pick-up of over 20%."
That should worry somebody.
07 Apr, 2009
National Unemployment Data
Total unemployed = 13,161,000
Total working Part-Time who want Full-Time work = 4,911,000 ("part-time for economic reasons")
Persons not in the labor force who currently want a job = 5,535,000
Total above, unemployed + P/T + not-in-labor-force = 23,607,000
...REAL national unemployment/underemployment rate = 23.6/154.05 = 15.32%.
That's actually an improvement from February -- see last month's similar post.
07 Apr, 2009
Electrical Construction Employment
In two months (comparing February 2009's average employment with the average in December 2008), the industry has shed 77,200 people. Bureau of Labor Statistics data for the EC industry go back to 1990 (thanks to revisions in the way EC employment is tallied now vs. earlier data, the BLS made them disappear).
It appears, from a quick glance, that this is the worst two-month decline in the BLS records. Since the records don't include the 1970s or early 1980s, I'm not sure that means all that much.
07 Apr, 2009
Construction Unemployment
From one month earlier (Feb. 09) -- down 24,000, or 0.5%. Normally, employment in construction increases as the weather warms. I went back and checked, and March has been higher than February every year going back to 1976.
From three months earlier (Dec. 08) -- down 960,000 people, or 17.26%. I'm not sure how that stands relative to all-time numbers, but it looks horrible.
From one year earlier (March 08) -- down 799,000 people, or 14.79%. That's a pretty horrible percentage decline, year over year, but it's not out of line. In 1991, the March year-to-year comparison (with March 1990) was down 12.28%.
26 Mar, 2009
February Construction Starts - Reed
Now Reed Construction Data says there was a "slight" slip (quantified as a 10.4% decline) from February 2008 to February 2009.
I'm confused.
Here's commentary by Jim Haughey, the Reed construction economist . . . a short-term prediction:
Starts will trend down through the summer, until the new money from Washington is being spent. During this period, construction layoffs will continue at a high pace, suppliers of material and equipment will have to make further production cutbacks, contractor margins will shrink further, and the materials price index will slip slightly lower.
Download the 6-page PDF here.
23 Mar, 2009
AIA Data Spur Optimism
. . . the period of steepest declines may be nearing its end. The AIA’s Architecture Billings Index moved up two points in February to 35.3. While still pointing to reduced workloads, this score indicates some moderation in the downturn. Even more encouraging is the increase in the index for new project inquiries.
The inquiries index has moved up more than 10 points since December, and the February reading of 49.5 suggests that the downturn in project inquiries is stabilizing.
(More)
18 Mar, 2009
More Data
18 Mar, 2009
A HEAP OF BLARNEY!!!
a. Housing starts were reported as increasing dramatically from January.
b. The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared in response.
c. I saw an "analyst" on BloombergTV recommend going into retail stocks.
- - - - -
OK. Here are some facts to go with the heaping helping of nonsense:
1. Anyone who knows anything easily identified this as a BLIP, not the bottom. Here's a report from Multi-Housing News that totally demolishes a positive spin on the report in just a few paragraphs. Be sure to re-read (a few times) the sentence about building permits; it says there might be WORSE yet coming on the housing-starts-news front.
2. Check out this Marketwatch.com story on mortgage rates. THEY might have bottomed (although I don't believe this story is credible, read it -- I could be wrong, you know).
AND
- - - - -
3. Just to check on my instincts, I went back on did some research on SINGLE-FAMILY housing starts in January and February. Why?
- multi-family housing starts, which caused the February "blip," are notoriously volatile. 1-Family starts ain't!
- 1-family starts matter a lot more, in the end, to the construction industry AND the national economy. You build a new house, you buy a lot of stuff. If someone buys the new house, he/she/they MOVE from an existing house. 1-family construction was a pillar of the economy in recent years (although it was more important in the 2000s than in most prevoius decades, I think).
- I thought an historical perspective, at least from recent history, would be valuable. This kind of stuff, believe it or not, is NEVER reported by the mainstream media. I don't know why, the research I did to put this together took 3 friggin' minutes!!!
Single-Family Housing Starts
Totals in thousands
2009 47.0
2008 100.5
2007 158.2
2006 244.6
2005 255.4
2004 201.6
2003 184.1
2002 183.8
2001 169.6
Source; Census
Totals in thousands
2009 47.0
2008 100.5
2007 158.2
2006 244.6
2005 255.4
2004 201.6
2003 184.1
2002 183.8
2001 169.6
Source; Census
What's the bottom line on these numbers? Draw your own conclusions!!! The specific data on January and February 2009 are as follows:
January: 22,400 February 24,600
. . . that's a statistical rounding error, for Heaven's sake -- not an indicator of the bottom.
- - - - -
FINAL NOTE: February 2009 might actually HAVE been the bottom, for all we can know at this moment. But there's no reason to declare it a bottom, or jump the gun and recommend retail stocks. It is my fervent belief that the guy who appeared on TV recommending retail stocks on St. Patrick's Day:
1. Needs to get a new job, parking cars for a living.
2. Might have been drunk, for perhaps weeks.
3. Most importantly, such a stupid thing, said outloud into a microphone in front of a camera, indicates that the national wave of speculation is NOT over, and that we have further to go on the downside in the stock market.
When we are REALLY at the bottom in stocks, a responsible entity (i.e., this guy's employer -- or the guy himself) and BloombergTV itself won't put such idiotic recommendations in front of the public.
In other words: When you hear NO ONE recommending stocks, and the wounded are quietly seeing to their bandages and nursing their injuries, THAT might be the moment to buy.
But not one minute before.
(More)
16 Mar, 2009
Feb. Constrruction Starts: Down Huge
YEAR-TO-DATE CONSTRUCTION STARTS
Unadjusted Totals, In Millions of Dollars
| 2 Mo. 2009 | 2 Mo. 2008 | % Change | |
| Nonresidential Building | $23,152 | $47,582 | -51 |
| Residential Building | 12,950 | 28,485 | -55 |
| Nonbuilding Construction | 16,598 | 19,133 | -13 |
| Total Construction | $52,700 | $95,200 | -45 |
EleBlog take: The fall in nonresidential building is STUNNING.
See the MHC update here. Note that the "headline" is that construction start dollar values fell 8% -- from the monthe earlier (Jan 2009). The numbers above compare Jan-Feb 2009 with Jan-Feb 2008.
15 Mar, 2009
Distributor Data
Rexel -- sales down 11% in the U.S. in Q4.
(More)
12 Mar, 2009
Construction Inflation Reverses
Turner, owned by a German contracting firm, is the largest general contractor in the U.S.
(More)
11 Mar, 2009
Green Jobs: Data Roundup
The Apollo Alliance's New Apollo Program proposes
an investment of $500 billion over 10 years to create 5 million
green-collar jobs in a range of industries including renewable energy;
energy efficiency; transit and transportation; and research,
development, and deployment of cutting-edge clean-energy technologies.
The Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute call for spending $100 billion over 2 years to create 2 million jobs in building retrofitting, expansion of the transit and freight rail grids, construction of a "smart" electrical grid, wind and solar power, and next-gen biofuels.
A report prepared by Global Insight for the U.S. Conference of Mayors forecasts that renewable power generation, building retrofitting, and renewable transportation fuels will together generate 1.7 million new jobs by 2018 and another 846,000 related engineering, legal, research, and consulting positions. That total jumps to 3.5 million jobs by 2028 and 4.2 million by 2038.
A study by the American Solar Energy Society asserts that the renewable energy and energy-efficiency industries represented more than 9 million jobs and $1.04 billion in U.S. revenue in 2007, 95% in private industry, and could mushroom to as many as 37 million jobs by 2030 -- more than 17% of all anticipated U.S. employment.
A report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation predicts that a $50 billion investment in the smart grid over 5 years "would create approximately 239,000 new or retained U.S. jobs for each of the 5 years on average."
The Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute call for spending $100 billion over 2 years to create 2 million jobs in building retrofitting, expansion of the transit and freight rail grids, construction of a "smart" electrical grid, wind and solar power, and next-gen biofuels.
A report prepared by Global Insight for the U.S. Conference of Mayors forecasts that renewable power generation, building retrofitting, and renewable transportation fuels will together generate 1.7 million new jobs by 2018 and another 846,000 related engineering, legal, research, and consulting positions. That total jumps to 3.5 million jobs by 2028 and 4.2 million by 2038.
A study by the American Solar Energy Society asserts that the renewable energy and energy-efficiency industries represented more than 9 million jobs and $1.04 billion in U.S. revenue in 2007, 95% in private industry, and could mushroom to as many as 37 million jobs by 2030 -- more than 17% of all anticipated U.S. employment.
A report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation predicts that a $50 billion investment in the smart grid over 5 years "would create approximately 239,000 new or retained U.S. jobs for each of the 5 years on average."
This last claim -- in particular the phrase "approximately 239,000 new
or retained" jobs -- underscores one of the problems with green-job
claims, and is a source of concern: We don't really know how to define a green job, let alone measure when one is created or "retained."
08 Mar, 2009
Construction Spending - Jan
Total Not Seasonally Adjusted:
January 2009 $65.60 billion
January 2008 $75.66 billion
January 2007 $81.16 billion
2-year decline 19.2%
1-year decline 13.3%
- - - - -
January 2009 details:
Private Residential DOWN 28.5%
Private NONresidential UP 0.1%
Public Construction UP 2.8%
- - - - -
EleBlog comment: The January unadjusted numbers for NONresidential show hotel construction up marginally and office up 2.7% vs. January 2008. I don't believe this is going to continue.
08 Mar, 2009
True National Unemployment = 15.4%
From Associated Press:
More than 2.9 million people were seeking jobs for 27 weeks or more in February, the Labor Department said Friday, up from the year-ago tally of 1.3 million. Last month's total is the highest on records dating to 1948, though adjusted for the size of the work force the numbers were much worse in the early 1980s.
EleBlog take: That last clause (adjusted for size.....) is KEY. These numbers aren't yet as horrible as they could be.
From Bloomberg.com
The Labor Department today reported 639,000 first-time unemployment applications, the fifth straight week above 600,000. The agency also said worker productivity, a measure of employee output per hour, fell at a 0.4 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2008. Separate data showed factory orders slumped.
EleBlog take: This isn't supposed to happen. Productivity is supposed to increase as the economy sheds workers. At least, that's what's happened in past recessions.
Another from AP:
Tolling grimly higher, the recession snatched more than 650,000 Americans' jobs for a record third-straight month in February as unemployment climbed to a quarter-century peak of 8.1 percent and surged toward even more wrenching double digits. The human carnage from the recession, well into its second year, now stands at 4.4 million lost jobs. About 12.5 million people are searching for work -- more than the population of Pennsylvania.
EleBlog take: Listening to the news on BloombergTV yesterday, I heard that the "third-straight month" record is ALL-TIME. That is, we've never before had almost 2 million people put out of work in just 90 days. Then again, you have to adjust this for the size of the workforce. Back when they started keeping these records (in the 1940s or 1950s), there were NOT 154 million people in the workforce!
Additional data from BLS:EleBlog take: All of this data harvesting sent me to the original BLS press release on February employment. Here are some raw data:
People employed in February 2008, not seasonally adjusted: 144,550,000. Employed in February 2009, n-s-a: 140,105,000.
Unemployed: February 2008, 7,953,000. February 2009: 13,699,000.
Notice how the total employed declined by 4,445,000, but the number unemployed soared by 5,746,000. Interesting, eh? The word from demographers has been that our country needs to add 150,000 jobs a month to keep up with employment growth and people joining the workforce (graduating HS or college). 12 x 150,000 = 1.8 million. Add 1.8 million to 4.4 million, and you get a higher figure than shown.
Final note on this one: The actual number of UNEMPLOYED people given in the Feb. 2009 report is 12,467,000, not the higher number shown above. Reason: These numbers are "adjusted" by the BLS economists. Let's go with 12,467,000, OK? Persons at work PART-TIME for economic reasons:
February 2008 = 5,119,000. February 2009 = 9,170,000.
What this means: These are people who would take a full-time job, but can't find one.
In theory, these are 4,051,000 MORE people who want a full-time job. At least, enough respondents told survey-takers that so that BLS put 9.17 million people into this category.
AGAIN, in theory -- you would add the 9.17 million to the 12.467 million unemployed.
- - - - - AGAIN, in theory -- you would add the 9.17 million to the 12.467 million unemployed.
Persons not working but "Marginally attached" to the labor force:
February 2008 = 1,585,000. February 2009 = 2,051,000.
What this means: These are people who could have worked but didn't in the week of the national employment survey. They are NOT counted among the unemployed.
In theory, you add these people to the numbers above. That means you add 2.051 to 12.467 and 9.17 million. You end up with 23,688,000 people who could have worked full-time but did not.
EleBlog Conclusion: BLS gives the February 2009 civilian labor force as 154,214,000. That puts the "true" unemployment rate at 15.36%.
(More)
08 Mar, 2009
EC Employment - Jan
a. BLS is always one month "behind" in subcontractor data. So the report this past week revealed January 2009 data for the first time; it is subject to revision.
b. This is "production employees" -- the guys and gals who do the work in the field. It omits overhead people.
c. To get a two-month picture, we have to look at data from December 2008.
Here's how it looks:
December January
2007 740,500
2008 701,500 715,600
2009 669,600
PEAK YEAR
2000 776,700
2001 758,300
2007 740,500
2008 701,500 715,600
2009 669,600
PEAK YEAR
2000 776,700
2001 758,300
Yes, the best numbers were put up in Dec 2000/Jan 2001, as shown. While construction may have set monthly records in Jan-Feb 2007, that didn't happen in electrical contracting.
Field employment in electrical contracting --
Down DEC 2008 by 5.3% vs. one year earlier.
Down JAN 2009 by 6.4% vs. one year earlier.
Down JAN 2009 by 6.4% vs. one year earlier.
08 Mar, 2009
Construction Employment - Feb
a. Numbers for January and February 2009 are subject to revision (Jan. will get one more revision, Feb. is likely to get two).
b. Looking over the historical table, the record employment in the industry in those 2 months happened just two years ago, in Jan-Feb 2007.
c. Employment in Jan-Feb 2009 has quickly fallen to the level last seen in the year 2003 (in which construction was recovering from a recession).
d. I used NOT SEASONALLY ADJUSTED numbers. These are the real deal.
Here are the numbers:
Year Jan Feb
2003 4,729,000 4,621,000
2007 5,537,000 5,409,000
2008 5,400,000 5,431,000
2009 4,746,000 4,622,000
2003 4,729,000 4,621,000
2007 5,537,000 5,409,000
2008 5,400,000 5,431,000
2009 4,746,000 4,622,000
What this means:
Jan 09 = down 12.1% from 2008.
Feb 09 = down 14.9% from 2008.
Feb 09 = down 14.9% from 2008.
Compared with the 2007 peak year (ever) for these two months:
Jan 09 = 791,000 fewer workers employed in construction
Feb 09 = 787,000 fewer workers employed in construction
Feb 09 = 787,000 fewer workers employed in construction
05 Mar, 2009
Retail Store Closure Update
02 Mar, 2009
Roundup: January Data
American Institute of Architects -- the "work on the boards" index hit an all-time low for the 2nd straight month. The ABI index was 33.3, which is far below "50" -- the dividing line between expansion and construction.
"Inquiries" went up from a 38.5 index reading in Decmeber to 43.5 in January, still below 50, but perhaps indicating a reason to think we all might become encouraged in the future. AIA's official comment downplayed that increase, noting that "this does not yet indicate a recovery."
McGraw-Hill Construction -- the $ value of January construction starts was said to be down 3% (vs. where things were in December). That's seasonally adjusted. If you page down to the bottom, the UNadjusted table shows the $ value of total January construction starts to be DOWN 46%.
MHC's "Dodge Index" -- which was indexed to equal "100" for construction activity in the year 2000 -- was at 87 in January 2009. It had surged as high as 150 or therabouts several times in 2005.
Reed Construction Data -- shows a 9% drop in the $ value of January construction starts in vs. January 2008, with residential down another 36.7% and non-residential down 2.9%.
Economist Jim Haughey wrote: "trended estimates now in the [data] table suggests a volume decline of about 20%. This overestimates the weakness in the value of starts expected in 2009." In other words, January was an especially horrid month.
02 Mar, 2009
How Many Housing Starts?
a. There are real numbers (for housing starts in the month of January, for example).
b. What's reported, however, is the January starts at an annualized basis (SAAR).
c. You can't know anything about the adjustments. That's in footnotes somewhere. Are they accurate? How often are they changed? Do the seasonal adjustments reflect what goes on during a Depression? NO ONE KNOWS.
d. Finally, people get confused. The other day I saw a Bloomberg TV broadcaster report that U.S. GDP fell 6% in Q4. That's not what happened. U.S. GDP fell 1.5% or thereabouts in Q4, according to the most recent estimate. ANNUALIZED, it fell at a 6% rate. It would take longer to read the footnotes, adjustments, and such that go with this number than to just fling the number out itself.
[For example, the first estimate of Q4 GDP had it down 3.8%, SAAR. And: There is one more "final" estimate to come, in about a month]
- - - - -
OK, having spilled all of that officious bile, here's my point today: I keep hearing and reading that housing starts are DOWN to a certain number. But that doesn't tell me anything. Construction started on X number of REAL (not seasonally adjusted) houses in the U.S. in January.
How many?
Here's the answer, with some historical perspective:
January, 2009 -- construction started on 22,000 single-family houses (a # probably subject to some future revision).
January, 2008 -- construction started on 48,500 single-family houses.
AND HERE's THE KICKER --
January, 2005 -- construction started on 114,300 single-family houses.
January, 2004 -- construction started on 99,500 single-family houses
January, 2008 -- construction started on 48,500 single-family houses.
AND HERE's THE KICKER --
January, 2005 -- construction started on 114,300 single-family houses.
January, 2004 -- construction started on 99,500 single-family houses
Bottom line: single-family housing construction starts in January 2009 was 19.2% of what it was in January, 2005.
18 Feb, 2009
More Bad News
2010 Construction recovery threatened
by postponing a fix for credit markets
by postponing a fix for credit markets
13 Feb, 2009
Wind Energy Maintenance Market
For much of the rest of the word, MRO = maintenance, repair and operations. According to Lucintel:
The wind MRO
market includes maintenance, repair and overhaul of wind blades,
generators, gear boxes and other turbine components.
(More)
08 Feb, 2009
Construction Spending -- Pieces
Total construction down (unadjusted for anything, including inflation) 5.1% in 2008 vs. 2007.
Private construction down 9.4%.
Private residential construction down 27.2%
Private NONresidential consturction UP 15.3%
Public construction up 7.4%
Private residential construction down 27.2%
Private NONresidential consturction UP 15.3%
Public construction up 7.4%
Note that public construction was 22.31% of the total in 2004 and last year was up to 28.56%. Just another indicator of the growing role of "government" in every corner of American public and private economic life, perhaps?
08 Feb, 2009
Construction Spending -- 5 Years
2008 spending: $1,079,858,000
2007: $1,137,152,000
2006: $1,192,238,000
2005: $1,143,655,000
2004: $1,027,738,000
[I took those figures from the December construction spending reports for each year previous).
2007: $1,137,152,000
2006: $1,192,238,000
2005: $1,143,655,000
2004: $1,027,738,000
[I took those figures from the December construction spending reports for each year previous).
EleBlog take: If you look at the 5-year period, construction has been "flat" -- or so you might say (or hear). But you've got to subtract construction inflation from the 2008 figure to equalize it with the 2004 figure.
If you figure construction inflation at about 5% per year (which might be about right, more or less), the 2008 number would have to be $1.233 trillion to equal the 2004 figure. There's a 12.5% gap.
So one way of looking at it (call it The EleBlog Way, if you like) is that construction in 2008 was down roughly 12.5%, in real terms, from 2004. More or less.
06 Feb, 2009
Construction 2008 - One Look
The relevant data -- the "year 2008" totals -- are posted below. These are unadjusted for seasonal this or inflationary that.
EleBlog take: It's the nonresidential building number that is important here. We all know housing is crippled. A 1% "up" year for nonresidential in what was (for much of 2008) an inflationary environment for construction costs means nonresidential was down-but-near-flat.
It's the number to watch in the coming months.
YEAR-TO-DATE CONSTRUCTION STARTS
Unadjusted Totals, In Millions of Dollars
| 12 Mos. 2008 | 12 Mos. 2007 | % Change | |
| Nonresidential Building | $237,655 | $235,459 | +1 |
Residential Building |
162,054 | 264,724 | -39 |
| Nonbuilding Construction |
143,125 | 138,001 | +4 |
| Total Construction |
$542,834 | $638,184 | -15 |
(More)
06 Feb, 2009
Multi-Family Problem
"The credit market has turned upside down on us." Before banks will consider financing a project, "we have to bring two or three times as much equity to the project."
30 Jan, 2009
Reed's Data On '08
Total -- down 14.1%
Residential -- down 36.0%
NonResidential -- up 0.1%
Heavy Engineering -- up 2.8%.
Says Jim Haughey:
"Commercial will suffer earliest and hardest, but will recover first."
"The full impact . . . has yet to hit the institutional market . . .this sector may decline into early 2010."
"The 'heavy' sector, largely insulated from the financial market and general-fund tax receipts, will dip last and least."
"The full impact . . . has yet to hit the institutional market . . .this sector may decline into early 2010."
"The 'heavy' sector, largely insulated from the financial market and general-fund tax receipts, will dip last and least."
EleBlog doesn't agree. But Haughey, the chief economist at RCD, has earned the right to have his predictions presented without immediate dissent. I think. Maybe.
30 Jan, 2009
Retail Closings Update
I've been trying to follow the updated tally that David Bodamer (who writes the Traffic Court blog for Retail Traffic magazine) is maintaining on his blog. As of yesterday (1/29), it was up to 1,633 stores to close due to bankruptcies, liquidations, and announced closings.
Note these are storefronts (each store = 1), so the biggest single component of that seemingly HUGE number is Circuit City, which said on 1/16 that it would liquidate, closing 567 stores.
Here's the thing: Bodamer is updating this frequently. I printed out the 1/22 version. One week ago, including Circuit City, his tally was 1,322.
30 Jan, 2009
EBCI Numbers Still Suck
the "current conditions" index component "rose" to a reading of 20 in January. That's a gain of 12 from December 2008 (last month's reading was a 7-year low).
The "future conditions" in North America index was 37.5. That was up 1.5 points. It's still way below 50.
You can read NEMA's paragraphs on this, and/or follow a link to a 5p PDF -- here.