Today’s jobs report indicated that total non-farm payrolls rose 272,000 in May, easily beating the consensus pre-report expectation of 180,000. Total hours worked in May rose 0.2 percent and are up 1.3 percent from a year ago. Average hourly earnings increased 0.4 percent and are up 4.1 percent. The significant point is that both monthly and year-over-year earnings are ahead of inflation. Employment grew in healthcare, government, and leisure and hospitality. Those are the categories that don’t show underlying growth in the economy. Government jobs, up 43,000, aren’t private sector. Healthcare is driven in part by government spending and the sector expands for structural and demographic reasons, and usually doesn’t...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
From WPI Consulting
Forecasting developments in production agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.