Month: November 2022

It's been quite a while since we looked in on Sweden's COVID performance to see how they did compared to other countries. Here are the numbers:

Sweden is a little better than average, though still behind the other Nordic countries. In any case, this doesn't demonstrate that Sweden's loose approach to countermeasures was ideal, but it does suggest that it didn't do much harm.

Is anybody learning any lessons from this? Or just chalking it up to the famously levelheaded Swedish people, who voluntarily adopted solid, levelheaded behavior during the pandemic? Their vaccination rate is pretty average, so that's probably not it.

More generally, is there any agreement on how we should respond to a future pandemic similar to COVID? Masks or no masks? School or no school? Constant handwashing or no? Social distancing? Business shutdowns? Quarantines? Cleaning surfaces obsessively? Which things made a big enough difference that we'd do them again?

The New York Times tells us yet again that American education is in crisis:

A survey of National Education Association members at the beginning of the year revealed an unsettling truth: More than half of the respondents said they were looking for a way out. That’s an astounding number of unhappy teachers. If they all quit, it would leave millions of students in the lurch.

But were these just empty threats? At the start of this school year, we spoke to over 50 educators in almost 20 states to find out. The picture they painted was far bleaker than we could have imagined: Empty classrooms, kids in crisis, and teachers who can’t survive another day on the job — that’s the reality of American education today.

There is probably no force in the universe that can stop the Times and other big news outlets from publishing this drivel. But I can keep trying. Here's a chart that's different from others I've published on this subject, but amazingly says the exact same thing:

There is no tsunami of teachers quitting. The quit rate has been flat for the past few years and this year it's down. The average quit rate in 2022 is within a tenth of a point of the average rate in 2019.

Now this:

There is no massive outbreak of unfilled job openings. Over the past five years, total K-12 student enrollment has been absolutely flat and the number of new teacher hires has been precisely the same as total separations.

The number of unfilled job openings is higher than it used to be, but this is most likely due to an increase in indirect teaching jobs: diversity coordinators, special ed supervisors, senior mentors, etc.

I need to be very clear here: None of this means there are no problems in our schools. None of this means teachers don't have legitimate gripes. And none of it means there are no teacher shortages anywhere.

But it does mean that the story is not the catastrophic, pandemic-fueled one that news outlets are so fond of. Teachers are not quitting en masse. They are probably no less happy than ever. And staffing levels are about the same as they've been for the past five years. Whatever problems we have are mostly of long standing.

I'm visiting my sister-in-law, Virginia, in Virginia, at the moment, so this week you get a picture of her dog, who is not named Virginia. Say hello to Watson.

The BLS released 2021 figures for total factor productivity today:

I'm on vacation, so I don't feel like diving too deeply into this, but TFP is generally taken to measure productivity improvements from the adoption of improved technology. This means that the two industries that drove most of the efficiency gains from technology during the pandemic year of 2021 were Entertainment & Recreation and Accommodations & Food Service. Those would not have been my first guesses, but this might explain why both these industries (a) have been slow to return to pre-pandemic staffing levels (they didn't need to), and (b) are pretty profitable right now.

It's finally official. Villanueva lost. Baugh lost. Lake lost. Oz lost. Of my five shitlisters, only Ron Johnson won. I'm satisfied.

I'm on another of my short photography vacations this week. Can you figure out where—

Oh forget it. I'm in Virginia, and tomorrow is catblogging day and then I'll be home. So I won't have time to post any more pictures immediately. Wednesday was "wander around DC like a tourist" day, and this is a picture of the Washington Monument at sunset. It cost me a pretty sore ankle, so you'd better appreciate it.

Thursday is Chesapeake Bay day!

I see that Nancy Pelosi has decided to step down from Democratic leadership in the House. Good. I have nothing but immense respect for Pelosi, one of the most effective speakers in history. But it's time for younger leadership. Steny Hoyer is also stepping down, and I hope Jim Clyburn does the same (or stays on as whip).

We don't need a set of "Young Guns," as the Republicans had a decade ago. Just a few responsible and experienced folks from an earlier generation.

In the meantime, best wishes to Pelosi. She has been a magnificent force for good, and we can only hope we see her likes again.

I've mentioned before that the official definition of rent inflation is all but useless since (a) it's always about six months behind and (b) it uses figures for all rents, not just new rentals, which are all that really matter. So what happens if you take core inflation but then swap out the official rent numbers for better ones? Jason Furman has the answer:

Updated core CPI swapping in spot rents on new leases for all rent on existing leases.

Core CPI w/ spot rents up at a 2.8% annual rate over the last three months (and actually 0.0% in October). That compares to a 5.8% annual rate for actual core CPI. pic.twitter.com/hA6xnyN4zJ

— Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) November 16, 2022

What this tells us is that not only has core inflation been steadily dropping for the past year, it's now below 3%. That's only barely above the Fed's target.

Core inflation is now at pretty normal levels, and there's really nothing much we can do about non-core inflation (food and energy). It's long past time for the Fed to see the light on this.

 

This is a picture of feet. In particular, these feet are crossing a glass footbridge that connects two galleries in our new Orange County Museum of Art.

Perhaps you think I should have been paying more attention to the art itself? No worries. I've got some pictures of that too. You just have to be patient.

Everywhere we went in Paris, Marian was greeted by a giant M. Such a friendly folk, those Parisians.

(This one is for the Dugommier metro station on Line 6.)