Our work speaks for itself, and here we've selected reports that cover a broad range of what we do. If you'd like to see how we did during stretches not included here, please contact us.

07/06/06
Withholding steady; states question job growth
In this report we outline our argument for a modest payroll increase in June, providing balance against market expectations ratchetting skyward in the wake of the ADP report released early Wednesday.
070606.pdf

06/12/06
Will corporations step up to the plate?
Oh those corporate profits!
061206.pdf

05/10/06
Edgy debtors and a history book
The title of Yale Economist Robert Schiller's bestselling "Irrational Exuberance" came from the infamous speech Greenspan delivered two days after a meeting with Schiller. Schiller didn't utter the words, but they did summarize his message to the then Fed chair. It's probably a good idea to know what Dr. Schiller has dug up recently on real estate prices. Read about it here:
051006.pdf

10/06/05
Storm May Mask Slowing Employment
Our familiarity with the Bureau of Labor Statistics's methodology allowed us to take the position that September's payroll report would likely surprise to the upside. Indeed. We noted that we all would have to wait until the regional data were released before concluding that Katrina caused all the damage. Indeed again. On October 21, the BLS released their report on state and local employment, which revealed that employment growth slowed significantly in many states far from those hit by the hurricanes.
100605.pdf

04/12/05
Leveraged, Squeezed, and Still Shopping
A portrait of the US consumer, supported by charts showing that recent jumps in monthly personal income tax receipts collected by the US Treasury (not seasonally adjusted, anchored to nothing, and hence treacherous), were likely based on capital gains and bonuses, not ordinary wages. (This was confirmed by the US Treasury in October 2005.)
041205.pdf

10/07/04
Withholding Weakness Spreads beyond Midwest
Here we call for a +80,000 gain in September's non-farm payroll, a +0.2% gain in hourly earnings, and a modest +0.2% benchmark revision to the March 2003-2004 payroll data.
100704.pdf

08/05/04
Withholding Collections Decelerate
In July the majority of our state contacts reported that the lofty gains they were seeing in Spring withholding collections have faltered, and they are currently clearing last year's levels by smaller margins and no longer accelerating.
080504.pdf

02/05/04
Withholding Tax Receipts in Line with "Modest" Payroll Growth
Our survey of state withholding tax receipts ran counter to market expectations of a strong payroll report for January; we projected the number would came in at 100,000, and that the unemployment rate was likely to fall to 5.6, as it did. We also pointed out that the Fed will be highly cautious in this anomolous labor market.
020504.pdf

11/13/2003
Mood at State Budget Offices Continues to Improve
Here we report that state tax officials are modestly encouraged by October sales tax collections. Nonetheless, given exceedingly poor collections in October of 2002 and hence easy year-over-year comparisons, we warned that the Advance Retail Sales print would likely come in weaker than expected, as it did. We also graphed the "hard to overestimate" effect of tax cuts on consumption, and updated charts of leading cyclical indicators in the current saw-tooth recovery against those of yesteryear.
111303.pdf

11/06/2003
Continued Improvement in State Withholding Taxes
All along we've said that we'll believe employment is picking up when we see a real improvement in state withholding tax collections, and here we report that collections are indeed picking up. Supported by mild weather (read strong construction) and double counting of California strikers and their replacements, this argues for the high range of consensus for October payrolls.

As far as we know, we were the only report to suggest the unemployment rate would fall to 6%. It did. We urged caution in getting too far ahead of the data, however. Employment gains continue to fall far short of "historically correct" in a recovery. And we included a synopsis of a NY Fed study on what moves bonds prices. Employment numbers ranked number one (does that rate a Duh?) and move them they did. Friday's employment report was ugly for the bond market.
110603.pdf

10/04/2003
Up to Zero
We called our September 4 report on August withholding tax receipts "Withholding Brightens--Employment Stabilizing?" and were shocked by the nasty decline initially reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In our October report on September payrolls we argued that there is no corroborating evidence for August's ugly drop in employment (it has since been revised into positive territory) and that there is also no support for market whispers that the benchmark revisions to employment levels will be positive and large. The revisions came in negative (!) putting to bed, at last, the argument that the household survey was giving a better reading of the labor market, something we never accepted.
100403.pdf

04/02/2003
Tax Officials Still Waiting
This issue argued against a bounce back from the preceding month's weak employment report, noted that our leading index of employment had hit the wall, and that some state contacts were grumbling about irresponsible legislators' efforts to ramp up revenues with vice taxes: "Drinkin', gamblin', we'll have them all." But we cautioned that Bureau of Labor Statistics' Employment Report (the number one market mover) was apt to have only fleeting significance as war reports were in the driver's seat, which is just what happened.
040203.pdf

05/02/2002
Muddy Waters
Five months into the recovery and no improvement in the labor market noted. (Although we often hear employment is a lagging indicator, it is not.) Many analysts were anticipating month by month by month that employment would show improvement, but we were waiting, as it turns out correctly, for our state contacts to give us the thumbs up. But in May 2002 tax estimators at "states of every stripe were singing the blues."
050202.pdf

03/25/2002
The Recession in Pictures
This report charts the performance of major cyclical indicators--employment, consumer confidence, real retail sales, manufacturing production, etc--of the current "recovery" against earlier cycles; they're all out of whack. This suggests a strong recovery is unlikely given that employment and production fell at only half their normal recessionary rates. (These indicators revisited in our November 13, 2003 report.)
032502.pdf

02/01/2001
And Now a Structural Profit Warning
Old news now but the beginning of it all. Our sales tax index slumped in November 2000, the same month that we saw the first negative retail sales print of this cycle, and our withholding index was in freefall by December 2000. In this issue we were first to identify the third shoe to drop...corporate profits. (On February 27 The Financial Times identified a JP Morgan piece on the slide in corporate profits as a major market mover; our subscribers read about it on February 1.)
020101.pdf