Recent Articles from Jeff Thredgold
English required
Welcome to the global community in 2012! English has increasingly become the international language of business. Within more and more nations, businesses are demanding their executives become fluent in English. Some ignore such a requirement at their own peril. English-learning courses are popular around the globe. While perhaps one quarter of the world’s population can […]
Braking for jobs?
March employment gains were less than expected, less than exciting, less than worth writing home about and will again pose the question of whether U.S. job creation is about to slow as summer months approach. Such a pattern occurred during the past two years. The American economy added 120,000 net new jobs during March, sharply below […]
First, the good news
The dismal science of economics typically focuses on bad news. We clearly face many significant challenges. However, there are also many favorable developments taking place within the U.S. economy. Here’s some good news: Consumer-owned stocks rose by $4 trillion in the past 12 months. U.S. economic growth has now been positive for 11 consecutive quarters. Electricity produced […]
Finishing this sentence
…those seeking the Presidency would discuss critical issues facing the American people, instead of so many side issues …European political leaders would finally and fully address the Continent’s sovereign debt challenges …we weren’t running a federal budget deficit this year of $160 million every 60 minutes …men and women were from the same planet …we […]
Slow growth beats no growth
The “good” news? The U.S. economy has now been in growth mode for 33 months, ever since the Great Recession ending in June 2009. The “bad” news? U.S. economic growth has averaged a 2.4 percent real (inflation adjusted) annual growth pace since the expansion began, the weakest economic expansion since the 1940s. The long-in-place economic headwinds of […]
The economic doomsayers
I do not think much of those economic forecasters whose only message is, and nearly always has been, that U.S. economic and global collapse is just around the corner. They do sell a lot of books and high-priced newsletters…after all, bad news does sell newspapers. A recent story in USA Today noted three authors or […]
Renaissance manufacturing
The common wisdom is that we have lost our ability to “make things” in this country, lost it to China, Mexico and others. Our nation is now a place where we simply trade information with each other and serve each other hamburgers The common wisdom – so often wrong The Numbers The American manufacturing sector […]
Jobs forecast: Sunnier skies
After three years of essentially lousy employment reports, the January 2012 report was simply better. Job growth exceeded expectations, it occurred in almost every employment classification, hours worked in various sectors rose and the unemployment rate ticked down for the fifth month in a row. The U.S. economy added an estimated 243,000 net new jobs during […]
And now, for some good news
It’s nice for a change to be able to talk about an American economy that is, for the moment, getting stronger. After growing at a truly pathetic real (inflation adjusted) annual rate of less than 0.9 percent during 2011’s first six months, the economy grew at a revised 2.0 percent real annual rate during the […]
The latest economic numbers:
The October employment report was kinda’ like kissin’ your sister: a little tingle here and there, but not all that exciting (actually I never had any sisters!) The report did support the idea that modest U.S. economic growth is likely to continue with a lesser chance of a renewed recession. The American economy added 80,000 […]
U.S. versus Japan
Economic and financial pain within the U.S. has been all too commonplace during the past few years. The S&P 500, a weighted stock market index of 500 large publicly held companies that trade on either the NYSE or the NASDAQ-and a broader stock market measure than the Dow average-is now where it was 12 years […]
As the nation goes, so goes Colorado
A more impressive U.S. economy should set the stage for stronger Colorado economic growth. A stronger U.S. economy over the balance of the year, following weak first-quarter 2011 performance, will benefit the state’s small businesses. Colorado already has shown positive performance, a trend that continued in April as Colorado’s unemployment rate was estimated at 9.2 […]