Articles by: admin

“News heard,” red and blue

In early 2022, Richard Curtin, then director of the UMich confidence survey, wrote that partisan views are now, “unfortunately,”  completely dominating “rational assessments of ongoing economic trends,” which is encouraging “poor decisions by consumers and policy makers alike.”

Two years later, Joanne Hsu, who now directs the survey, took on how those views have changed during the inflationary period that followed the pandemic. She notes that Independents are toeing the line, their sentiment tracing the same line as overall sentiment, and although Democratic and Republican views are at very different levels, they move together too. All hit a trough in June 2022, and all have “surged” since November 2023, as we noted recently.

The gap increased “substantially” during the Trump administration, followed by a “slight narrowing” during Biden’s. Gaps by income have narrowed, which Hsu suggests reflects gains among lower-income workers in a tight labor market.

Overall, the “news heard” partisan gap tightened during the current administration, but widened considerably for news heard specifically on inflation. During both 2021 and 2022 everyone heard negative news, with news reaching Republicans, apparently, “notably worse,” than that reaching Democrats. Over the last year net favorable news improved “substantially” among Democrats, and only “gradually” for Republicans.

Concerning both short- and long-term inflation expectations, Independents’ run closer to those of the party not in power, an unusual divergence from the average. You can see from the graph above we snapped that short-run inflation expectations really bounced among Republicans, whereas those among Democrats were more stable or, as Hsu puts it, Republicans’ expectations for the year were “much less sensitive … to trends in realized inflation” than were those of Democrats.

As you might guess, impromptu mentions of the importance of the upcoming election on economic outcomes is growing, rising from 1.3% last January, to 17% this January.  Uncertainty gets a lot of ink but, as you can see in this graph, apparently those does nothing to outlooks: those who mention and those who don’t have never been so aligned. Hsu thinks this may change as the election gets closer—hang onto your hats.

Thanks to the team at UMich for permission to use graphs.

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A Letter to the Past

Professors Lusina Grigoryan, of York University, and Madalina Vlasceanu, of New York University, recently led a study on what works and what doesn’t in order to alter behaviors affecting climate change. The study included 60,000 participants in 63 countries, and 11 strategies, including gloom and doom, stressing the scientific consensus, and writing a letter from the future.

The large team was “quite surprised” to discover that 86% of the participants believe climate change to be a “serious issue,” that needs to be addressed, with 70% supporting “systemic/collective action,” something you might not think from reading the headlines.

That aside, the regional results were as skewed as you might guess. For example, stressing the 99% consensus among climate experts lifted support for climate-friendly policies by 9% in Romania, but lowered it by 5% in Canada.

A gloom and doom bombardment produced a 12% increase, the largest change, in the share of social-media enthusiasts willing to post pro-environmental messages, which seems to go with the territory, and may be part of the problem: Do those posts really do much?

Overall, the most effective strategy was devised by Grigoryan, lifting support for green policies by 9% overall, with a range of 10% in the US and in Brazil to very modest declines in the UAE, Serbia and India. Grigoryan asked participants to imagine their future selves writing a letter to a child close to them today, outlining what they would have done differently.

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2023Q2 Hard Employment Data Confirms BLS Estimates

There’s been a lot of controversy about the accuracy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ recent job projections, but hard employment data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Earnings released this morning show employment rose over the year in 2023’s second quarter by 2.4%, exactly what the QCEW’s sibling, the Current Employment Statistics, CES, or Establishment Survey is showing. As we know, the QCEW and the CES had been trading places for a few quarters. In the first quarter, the CES was ahead of the QCEW, resulting in the negative annual benchmark, -0.2% overall, and -0.3% private, announced in August.

Average weekly wages, which are notoriously not comparable to average hourly earnings, were up 3.2% year over year, compared to 4.4% gain currently estimated in the Establishment Survey. The QCEW includes many extras in the wage number, and may indicate how much better those with full benefit packages are doing than are those without. That difference may be in line with what we’ve been seeing for some time in the average hourly numbers: production workers have been seeing larger wage gains than have their supervisors.

Nationally, strongest wage gains were reported among natural resources & mining, 6.0%, and construction, 5.6%; weakest gains in financial activities, 2.1%. In half of the ten largest counties weekly wages in finance slipped over the year.

Midland, Texas reported the largest employment increase, 7%, led by a 12% increase in natural resources & mining; Elkhart, Indiana the largest decrease, -7.7%, driven by a 14% decline in manufacturing.

A 24% increase in trade, transportation and utilities wages lifted wages in Clayton, Georgia by 17%, while a 17% loss in earnings in manufacturing drove wages in Elkhart down by 13%. Elkhart has tended to lead national manufacturing over the years.

Jobs rose over the year in all states, with growth ranging from California’s 0.9% to to 3.6% in noisy Alaska, and 3.7% in Florida, 3.8% in New Mexico, and 3.9% in Texas. Alaska, New Mexico and Texas all have large resource extraction operations.

Largest wage gains included 6.1% in West Virginia, 6.5% in New Mexico, and 4.9% in North Dakota, 4.8% in Colorado, and 4.6% in Wyoming, all states with large extraction sectors. Those last three are the only states where wage growth rounds up to five, with growth in Indiana and Pennsylvania lagging at 2.0%, Maryland and Minnesota at 2.2%, and wages actually down over the year in Rhode Island.

 

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Eagles, Eels, and Forever Chemicals

Wildlife ranges are forever changing. As is becoming more widely understood, species most now migrate to find appropriate new habitats in our changing world, not just to find food and shelter as the seasons change. These days, with the climate changing more quickly than species are able to migrate, they need our support through scientifically planned wildlife corridors, overpasses, and breeding refuges.

Citizen scientists have long assisted in tracking changes in migration patterns and ranges, a crucial role as field science is notoriously under-valued and underfunded. If you ever see a truly distinctive bird, like a swallow-tailed kite, out of its usual range, you need to discipline yourself to trust your eyes, even if your bird book suggests the bird is 1,000 miles too far to the north. In the old days you then had to search around for print reports confirming such sightings, but now we have eBird.org, a wonderful example of how citizen scientists can support conservationists. In recent years black vultures, glossy ibises, and Mississippi kites have all extended their breeding ranges far northward, and eBird has been tracking their progress. A vibrant roseate spoonbill showed up in New York last week—its official range extends from South American into the coastal waters along the Gulf of Mexico.

eBird also tracks dramatic cases that excite some birders eager to see a distant species, and trouble others because a vagrant of a vulnerable species is clearly lost. In August of 2020, a Steller’s Sea Eagle showed up near Alaska’s Denali Park. A bird presumed to be the same eagle was spotted in March of 2021 along Route 59 in Goliad, Texas, perhaps blown off course by a winter storm. In December the eagle again believed to be the same (we have to keep saying that because we don’t actually know) was seen around Taunton, Massachusetts, before passing through Nova Scotia, and landing in Maine in early 2022. Sightings a few weeks ago put it in Spaniard’s Bay in Eastern Newfoundland. The usual range of this vagrant runs from Korea up through the Kamchatka Peninsula, home to a large breeding population. Sometimes the raptors, with a wing span of 8 feet, show up in the Aleutian Islands and even Juneau, but this trip is clearly stunning.

The Texas sighting included a photograph—there is close to zero chance such a sighting would get past the eBird.org proctors without digital evidence—and to confirm the accuracy, a team from the Texas Bird Records Committee went out into the field and found the exact post where the eagle had perched. One birder reported that the unexpected appearance of hundreds of birders at a working wharf in Maine could have caused an ugly scene, but instead the mood was “bemused, pleasant, and happy.” Although these days science often drives a wedge between us, that’s an example of how it can bring us together.

Citizen scientists can also take a lead in the health of their own communities. Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory introduced such a project in one of their ongoing Science Cafés, informal open-floor events intended to advance ground-breaking biomedical research.

Jane Disney who, among other things, oversees the Community Environmental Health Laboratory at MDI labs, has been working with hundreds of citizen scientists testing for toxins like arsenic, a crew that has now turned their sights to PFAS as well. Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS, are manufactured chemicals used to make products water- and oil-repellent. But they also contain carbon-fluoride bonds that do not break down naturally, hence the moniker “forever chemicals,” and have been linked to many serious diseases generally associated with aging. In 2021 Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection released a list of priority towns where contamination is linked to the use of sludge, septic-tank sewage, and industrial waste as fertilizer, often on dairy farms.  To give you an idea of the complexity of the work, the DEP staff compiled lists of sites they suspected had received 10,000 cubic yards of sludge that was likely contaminated with PFAS, in small rural communities in both Aroostook and Waldo counties, and in cities like Lewiston. These all fall within a half-mile of people’s homes and include a dairy farm where PFAS levels in milk were 150 times the state standard, with some sites perhaps cross-contaminated.

Dr. Disney is working with local homeowners who do find PFAS in their wells to come up with a strategy. Here the divide between wealthy and poor communities is pretty stark. Filtration systems are beyond the reach of some households, and concerns about PFAS are coming up “a lot” in discussions with the residents. A poorly maintained filtration system can be worse than no system, and one participant made the point that since people who rely on municipal water supplies are guaranteed water free of dangerous pollutants, provisions should be made for those without access to such commodities who rely on their own resources. Some scientists are working on ways to break down those carbon-fluoride bonds, but citizens need protections now.

Fred Bever, the Chief Communications Officer at MDI, and he really is an excellent communicator, invited everyone to the upcoming Science Café, the Science of Beer, that will be held at Fogtown Brewing in Ellsworth. If you’re in the region, be there or be square.

Birds, bright and beautiful as they are, tend to get more attention than other species critical to our habitats, like small solitary pollinators, and grubby bugs. A species that really needs our help is the American eel, a critically endangered creature whose life cycle remains an ongoing mystery. Homer’s mentions “eels and fish” in the Iliad, which caused ancient Homeric scholars to question the passage, noting that Homer would surely have known eels are in fact fish. Aristotle was puzzled by their life cycle, and even young Sigmund Freud tried to figure out how they reproduce.

Their spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea weren’t discovered until 1920, and even now no one has seen an eel breed. Damming of rivers, over-fishing, and pollution have devastated eel populations. In 2003, Bob Schmidt, a founding biologist Hudsonia, an ecological research firm in the Hudson Valley, set up nets at the mouth of the Sawkill on the Hudson River to track their population levels. (If you are in the area, please get in touch with Philippa if you want to join us on the water next spring. Your fingers and toes get cold, but on sunny days the elvers shimmer as they briefly pass through your hands.)

Newly born elvers are transparent, making it hard for fish finning beneath them to see them, and soon after birth drift up from the Sargasso on the currents, a voyage that takes a year. Upon reaching our tributaries, they begin the next stage of their lives, swimming up over waterfalls and human structures, getting further and further inland as, in the words of one researcher, they become larger and more experienced at negotiating the waters. After twenty or so years they swim back to the Sargasso, now they are dark above and white below, camouflaged against both predatory birds and fish, to breed and die.

Science communities are international, and it’s pretty certain that the many individuals contributing to these efforts do not vote along the same party lines. We’ve highlighted research in the past underscoring the importance of volunteer work and social interaction to ameliorate the isolation and depression so often in the headlines these days. Nature provides us with everything we need to stay alive for free. In the three instances outlined above, cooperation not only benefits those working together, it improves the chances that the natural world can continue to labor on our behalf.

Philippa Dunne & Doug Henwood

Photograph: Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation

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Tech Construction Boom

The Biden administration’s industrial policy, specifically the CHIPS and Science Act, appears to be having a serious real-world effect. Construction in the computers and electronics sector is setting records, and by a wide margin.

The CHIPS (“Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors”—why do they find acronyms so irresistible?) Act was designed to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the US. It was inspired by supply chain lessons from the pandemic—maybe having to source crucial industrial supplies from halfway around the world isn’t as brilliant an idea as it seemed at first—and to wean American industry from Chinese component makers as tensions between the two countries mount. According to a McKinsey summary, the law “directs” about $280 billion in new investments and R&D in the sector over the next ten years, via a mix of direct spending and tax breaks. Some $24 billion of that is devoted to tax credits designed to stimulate investment in semiconductor manufacturing.

If you look at the Census Bureau’s construction spending numbers, the bipartisan Act is already stimulating such investment. Graphed below are quarterly averages of monthly spending numbers (which are expressed as a seasonally adjusted annual rate) as a percent of GDP. The top graph shows the total and major aggregates, which fall well short of the “eye-popping” modifier. Residential construction has risen, first with the recovery from the 2006–2012 housing bust, and then accelerating with the 2020–2022 boom—though the 2022Q2 peak, 3.8% of GDP, was no match for 2005Q4’s 5.0%. Nonresidential has been pretty flat for almost a decade, only recently returning to its pre-pandemic levels.

But the second graph tells a very different story: a surge in manufacturing, largely accounted for by computers and electronics. The slope of the lines does qualify for the “eye-popping” modifier, as do the numbers behind the picture. Between 2021Q4 and 2023Q2, construction spending in manufacturing is up 114%, with 86% of the dollar increase coming from the computers and electronics subsector, where spending is up 441%. That surge took construction spending in computers and electronics from 0.1% of GDP to 0.4%. That may not sound like much, but it never got above 0.1% until 2022Q3. No other manufacturing subsector reported by Census shows an increase unless you take it out to two decimal places.

What will come of this spending won’t be known for some time. But something is happening now.

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