leofeler.com
Chief Economist at Numerator and Visiting Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Previously UCLA Anderson Forecast & Johns Hopkins.
I write about consumer behavior and macroeconomics.
Website: leofeler.com.
Chicago
Opinions are my own
79 posts
192 followers
193 following
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Fair point. Chicago 2018-2025 vs DC 2010-2018. Look at how cool our stations are: historic and you get to enjoy the beautiful Chicago weather*
* For 3 months each year.
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And yet, Chicago transit is one of the best in the country -- clean, reliable, trains/buses every few minutes, reasonably safe. I've had better experiences with public transit during my time living in Chicago than when I lived in DC, Boston, and LA.
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This isn't necessarily empty shelves. Take a look at levels rather than % changes. Companies built up inventories in Jan-Mar. Now they stopped doing that. The import surge is over. And it's now only slightly below where it was last year.
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The ads create convenient stopping points. Ends up saving time (less time watching TV on any given day).
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We also wouldn't pick up wholesale/bulk purchases.
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These are all purchases at grocery stores, Walmarts, convenience stores, etc... We wouldn't be picking up purchases at school cafeterias.
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For the record, bananas are one of the single most purchased items in the US.
In 2024, we bought 4.6 billion "units" of bananas (a unit can be an individual banana or a bunch). Bananas are right below milk: 4.9 billion units of milk (a unit can be any size bottle: gallon, half gallon, etc.).
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I'm afraid of what Canadians would say about us... but it might not be that much worse than what we're saying about ourselves.
The purpose of these surveys is to see how sentiment translates into purchase behavior.
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...Followed by actual receipt/transaction data for everyday purchases (e.g., what you buy at Walmart, Costco, Kroger, etc.) between 2019 and 2024, showing that even people who said "this is the worst we've been" were actually buying more things in 2024 than 2019.
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We have this one from May-October 2024. Consumer sentiment depending on where you get your news/information from...
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I wish I did. But instead, here's how this looks if we split among 20% of the population in the most right-leaning counties versus the 20% in the most left-leaning counties (by 2024 presidential vote share). From now on, we'll ask this question monthly as part of our consumer sentiment surveys.
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So is the rest of the US. When asked to choose "one word" to describe the world today, here's what a representative sample of 2,500 households said.
You can barely see it, but "Jesus take the wheel" is my favorite.
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Daryl, are you hearing of any disruptions in residential construction?
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There are disruptions to immigrant-dependent industries. A chicken farming / manufacturing client told me 30% of its workforce now have less than 90 days before their temporary protected status is revoked. We'll have labor supply constraints in food manufacturing by summer if this goes on.
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@chicagovtfloor.bsky.social , do you install or repair these types of floors? Or do you know anyone here in Chicago who does?
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How is this different from what Europe already does with its VAT?
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Early read measures from the Chicago Fed are not looking good. -0.8% mom ex autos.
www.chicagofed.org/research/dat...
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Thanks for your question! We should have clarified how big these differences are, so here's a version with standard deviations on the right axis.
Basically, from the healthiest point in January to the lowest point in December is a six standard deviation change and very statistically significant.
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Thank you!!!
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@ivanthek.bsky.social what book is this?
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Congrats Catherine!!
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Isn't this just compelling the US government to pay for work that has already been performed and completed?
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You can read our BriefingBook piece here, with more details and great charts:
www.briefingbook.info/p/digging-in...
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Adding our co-author, Sylvia Hristakeva, @hristakeva.bsky.social.
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papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....