The US economy has never been harder to track. There are parts of the economy in real trouble but others like AI that are booming. Conor Sen captures that today with a chart of spending on structures and residential investment contrasting with spending on tech equipment.
Workers aren’t doing that well but there is a cohort of retirees and near-retirees who have strong savings/pensions and a large potion of their net worth in equity markets that have boomed. They’re flush and spending.
Here is a post from Craig Fuller, who founded FreighWaves which is an analytics company for that industry:
Trucking has been in my family since the 1960’s. We’ve lived through multiple cycles:
Trucking deregulation, oil crisis, stagflation, the S&L collapse, Gulf War, Sept 11, and the financial crisis.
I’ve spoken to dozens of trucking veterans with 40+ years of experience – almost all agree.
This is the worst freight market in their lifetime.
It’s similar in residential housing — particularly lower and middle-class housing — where activity has dried up.
To some extent, the fragmentation has always been the case but I strongly suspect that an economy that leaves young workers behind while the old indulge in retirement based on inflated asset values leads to a dark place.
