Thursday, September 17, 2015

Will there be a rate hike today? UPDATE: Nope.

The announcement of whether or not the Federal Open Market Committee will raise rates (and by how much) will come today at 2 pm Eastern, according to MarketWatch.

I suspect that chairwoman Janet Yellen will not raise rates today; if Aunt Jan does tap on the brakes, it will be by a quarter point, and it will be the only rate increase for the rest of the year.

Readers, any guesses as to whether or not the Fed will raise rates in a few hours?

It's been a while since I've done a broader jobs update, so this post is a good one to do that:

The national unemployment rate for August 2015 was 5.1%, and the broader U6 measurement of unemployment was at 10.3%.

The unemployment rate for college graduates aged 25 and above was 2.5%; the unemployment rate for people without a high school diploma was 7.7%.

The estimated number of workers in the chemical manufacturing subsector was 812,300 workers.

The distribution of unemployed persons by duration of unemployment was 26.5% for those unemployed less than 5 weeks, 30% between 5 and 14 weeks, 15.8% between 15 to 26 weeks and 27.7% for those unemployed more than 27 weeks. Interesting distribution there.

UPDATE: From the Fed: "To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the Committee today reaffirmed its view that the current 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate remains appropriate." 

4 comments:

  1. Either 0% or 0.25%(for showing confidence in economy, then adjust it back to 0% by Dec,2015).

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  2. You should really read shadowstats for a real look at unemployment stats. Great website run by a guy who used to do the statistics for the government. He calculates the same information, but uses the original formulas. Very insightful.

    As for Grandma Jan, she cannot risk raising rates. If she does, China cashes in the T-Bills followed by everyone else.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Looks like you called it. I bet there will be one before December 31, but I would not put a lot of money on it.

      Delete

looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20