Episode 9 - For Pessimists, We Are Pretty Optimistic

After Office Hours with Puget Sound Economic Forecaster

Hello and welcome to After Office Hours with the Puget Sound Economic Forecaster. This is your home for discussion about the Puget Sound region’s economy. The economy and what is affecting it continues to be in a high rate. We are recording this on October 15th for those keeping score – depending on when you are listening there are going to likely be new developments to keep in mind.

We developed this podcast and our social media stream to give you the inside glimpse of what it is like to be sitting in our research center and overhearing all of our side conversations as we track what is going on in the economy. So please, have a seat, get comfortable but please, no flash photography.

Before diving into current economic thoughts let’s see who is here today. My name is James McCafferty and I serve as the general manager and publisher for the newsletter along with being cast into the role of host for this podcast.

Dr. Hart Hodges is an economics professor at Western Washington University. Hart writes the regional forecast article and will occasionally contribute other articles based on the topics. Hart and I both co-direct the Center for Economic and Business Research at Western.

Bethany King is our Research Economist and works with the switches and dials of many of our models while providing a wide array of insights into the forecasts. Bethany writes many of the articles each quarter as well as the monthly updates for our digital subscribers.

Rounding out this panel of super smart people today is Brianna Berkson who has been with our Research Center for many years and is currently completing her MBA here at Western.

With all of that, grab your beverage and snack of choice and let’s see if we can unpack all that is going on in the economy.

We should once again start with COVID itself. This week we have learned that Washington state has dropped in new cases across all the age bands which is great news. We have also heard from our State’s K-12 leaders that families should expect to see schools opening and closing around the state due to case counts but not at a state-wide level. Amazon took the surprising path of announcing that they would abandon their previously held statement of a return to the office in favor of a hybrid approach as long as employees committed to being in the office if they were needed for in-person activities.

Outside of Washington case counts are all over the place with Idaho and Montanna being two of the hottest places at the moment leading to Washington State pleading to not over run our hospitals.

In a nut shell – we are in the end game of a pandemic and the data is still all over the place as to what we should make of it all.

It appears that the indicators all show us making a gradual decent from pandemic to endemic as we move through the Winter with the largest threats being another variant or a serious flu season.

The real action has been in employment news in the weeks since we published the Forecaster. Bethany, runs down the latest and what it may mean for our next forecast.

· 3% left jobs in August. 30% are expected to change jobs in the next 12 months so this is not out of the box and we should expect this to become a near normal statistic for awhile

· New claims for unemployment last week at lowest level since March 2020

· 1/3 of unemployed are long-term unemployed

Hart spends some time talking about inflation covering the latest thinking about inflation concerns and Supply Chain problems and how it impacts thoughts about the forecast.

Brianna covers the retail numbers. Start your holiday shopping early! Multiple companies – Costco, Home Depot, Walmart and others – are resorting to private charters to move their inventories and inventories at stores are very low. Brianna covers how the team at the Forecaster thinks this plays out.

Bethany covers the Real Estate situation and the impact of a lot of work from home in the chatter. Is this impacting housing and migration? Bethany walks us through what is going on and how it may impact our modeling and expectations.

Hart covers the Market and the start of earnings reporting. We often will explain that the market is not the economy but it is still interesting to have a quick discussion on the market. Inflation fears are very real for far more people than seems warranted but earnings seem to be up overall and the market continues to move mostly forward. Hart covers his thoughts on the forward looking aspects of the market.

Don' forget we create monthly updates which are available to our online subscribers. Bethany covers what has been included in the most current update.

We encourage you to follow us on social media to have a front row seat of reading over our shoulders on a daily basis and to learn about other ways to connect with us.

We will be hosting a special 2 hour webinar on Friday October 29th that you may be interested in featuring a regional outlook and expanded conversations related to supply chain, inflation, the labor market, migration and real estate. We will be promoting that on our social media stream or contact us for more information!

You can always reach us via our website cebr.wwu.edu or by email [e-mail] with questions, comments or if you are interested in having us speak at an event.

After Office Hours with the Puget Sound Economic Forecaster is a production of the Center for Economic and Business Research at Western Washington University.

Thank you to our producer, Jill Poon with KDMC.

To learn more about the topics discussed today, please visit us at economicforecaster.com and subscribe to our quarterly newsletter. Subscribe to After Office Hours with the Puget Sound Economic Forecaster.