New York’s Cuomo Increases Minimum Wage for State Workers New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans to give all state workers a minimum wage of $15 an hour, making New York the first state in the nation to set pay for its public-sector employees that high.
The wage increase will be phased in by the end of 2018 for state workers in New York City and by the end of 2021 for state workers elsewhere. (…)
Mr. Cuomo boosted minimum wages for fast-food workers earlier this year. The state’s minimum wage is $8.75 and is set to increase to $9 at the end of December.
Several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, have passed measures to increase their minimum wages to $15 an hour in the coming years, and California and Oregon are considering similar statewide measures.
(…) The prospects of building a bloc of voters around the push for a $15 minimum wage “are huge,†SEIU President Mary Kay Henry said in an interview Tuesday morning. “I think it’s quite possible to inspire the 64 million workers earning under $15.â€
Low-wage workers could have a bearing on national politics, mostly because their numbers are so large. The SEIU’s estimate is roughly in line with Labor Departmentdata showing that 50% of U.S. workers earned less than $17.09 an hour last year.
More than 12 million Americans work in the food-service industry, according the Labor Department. Their median wage last year was $9.20 an hour. (…)
U.S. Import Price Decline Is Broad-Based
Import prices declined 0.5% during October (-10.5% y/y) following a 0.6% shortfall in September, revised from -0.1%. Nonpetroleum import prices fell 0.4% (-3.4% y/y). Prices have not risen m/m since March of last year.
Export prices fell 0.2% (-6.7% y/y) following a 0.6% drop. A 0.8% shortfall (-15.9% y/y) in industrial supplies & materials prices led the way lower. This decline reflected lower fuels & building materials prices, without which prices fell 0.5% (-8.4% y/y).
Non-petroleum import prices have dropped at a 4.1% annualized pace in the last 3 months.
China shoppers pick up economic baton Fixed-asset investment near 15-year low amid painful rebalancing
(…) Urban fixed-asset investment grew at an annual rate of 10.2 per cent in the first 10 months of the year, the slowest pace since 2000 and the 17th straight month of declines, according to the statistics bureau. Industrial production, a gauge of the manufacturing sector, matched the six-year low of 5.6 per cent annual growth touched in April. (…)
Retail sales grew 11 per cent in October, the swiftest annual rate this year. Passenger car sales also grew strongly, rising by 13.3 per cent to 1.9m units in October, the fastest pace in 17 months, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. (…)
Property was the biggest drag on fixed-asset investment, with real estate investment dipping to 2 per cent, the slowest pace since data began in 2004. Home sales and prices have begun to creep higher in recent months following a year of declines, but developers are delaying new construction in the face of unsold inventory gluts. (…)
Beijing has ramped up fiscal spending to fill the gap. Fixed-asset investment by local governments rose 10.6 per cent in the year to October. (…)
Bloomberg’s monthly GDP estimator has flattened out:
FYI: Numbers that Explain the World’s Largest Shopping Holiday
Below are 11 such numbers that help tell the story of Singles Day, the holiday that Jack Ma built.
11.11 The date Chinese university students selected back in the mid-1990s as a sort of anti-Valentine’s Day for single people. What started as a joke has become the world’s largest shopping holiday.
$1 Billion How much merchandise Alibaba sold last Singles Day within the first three minutes of the sale.
Over $9.3 Billion Total sales within 24 hours. This amount far exceeds the combined sales revenue of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the two largest American shopping holidays. (…)
$277 The average amount each shopper is expected to spend.
760 Million The number of packages China’s postal service estimates will be needed to ship Singles Day orders. This is up 40 percent from the 540 million used last year.
1.7 Million The estimated number of deliverymen and women that will be needed.
200 The estimated number of jets and airplanes that will be deployed to handle the sales volume in China alone.
French and Italian IP Show Fledgling Recovery
France and Italy are the second and third largest economies, respectively, in the EMU. Their recent trends in industrial output make a good summary of what is going on in the EMU as a whole. Neither is particularly strong and yet both are managing increases in output. Both Italy and France have two IP increases in the last two months; for France there are two increases in a row. Both show an IP increase in September and both show an IP increase of about 2% year-over-year (1.8% for France and 2.2% for Italy). Both show some recent weakness in IP growth in their respective consumer sectors.
U.S. Wholesale Inventory Accumulation Improves
Inventories at the wholesale level rose 0.5% during September (4.5% y/y) following a 0.3% August increase. The rise was paced by a 1.3% jump (8.4% y/y) in furniture and a 0.5% rise (12.8% y/y) in automotive inventories.. Computer & peripherals fell 1.7% (+1.8% y/y) and electrical goods inventories eased 0.3% (+5.4% y/y. Nondurable goods inventories increased 1.9% (7.5% y/y). The gain reflected a 2.3% rise (14.4% y/y) in apparel but petroleum inventories eased 0.6% (-18.2% y/y). Chemical inventories declined 1.6% (+4.0% y/y).
Sales in the wholesale sector improved 0.5% (-3.6% y/y) after two months of decline. Motor vehicle sales jumped 2.3% (5.9% y/y) though furniture purchases were off 2.7% (+4.6% y/y). Machinery equipment sales improved 0.2% (-3.6% y/y). Nondurable goods sales increased 0.3% (-6.1% y/y) as apparel sales gained 1.9% (6.3% y/y). Chemical sales improved 0.5% (-2.9% y/y) but petroleum sales declined 4.6% (-39.1% y/y).
Wholesale apparel sales are up 6.3% YoY. Apparel prices are down 1.4% YoY. Volume: +7.7%!! Retail sales of clothing stores were up 4.7% YoY in September. Which explains this:
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Deck the Halls…With Discounts? Unsold goods are piling up on retailers’ shelves ahead of the Black Friday kickoff to the holiday season.
(…) Nomura and Citi retail analysts on Monday forecast weak third-quarter results at Macy’sInc. and Kohl’s Corp. due to slower-than-expected sales that had left the pair awash in excess merchandise at the end of the period. Executives at Ltd.and Ralph Lauren Corp., which supply the chains with goods, earlier said there has been a buildup of inventory at big department stores.
Chris Peterson, president of global brands at Ralph Lauren, told analysts last week that inventory at department stores is “a little bit†elevated, referring to the broader retail industry.
Specialty stores and apparel manufacturers also are experiencing “a build-up in inventories beyond the natural increase ahead of the holidays,†according to a recent report from analysts at Macquarie Research. (…)
On Tuesday, Cowen and Co. published a report warning “inventory is above sales growth across retail,†and noting that merchandise levels were bloated at DSW Inc., Dicks Sporting Goods Inc. and Skechers U.S.A. Inc., among other chains. Under Armour said accelerated deliveries resulted in its higher inventory levels, but also aided sales. VF said it stocked up since it plans to open more retail stores. DSW said it made more purchases because hard to acquire brands had become available. The other companies weren’t available for immediate comment. On recent calls with investors, some retail executives cited the easing of congestion at West Coast ports, among other reasons. (…)
Retailers also are feeling the effects of a downturn in tourism to the U.S. as a result of the stronger dollar, and unusually warm weather across much of the country that has curbed shoppers’ appetite for sweaters, coats and other cold-weather goods. (…)
OPEC Challenges Shale Afresh as Iraq Crude Floods U.S. Market
Iraq, the fastest-growing producer within the 12-nation group, loaded as many as 10 tankers in the past several weeks to deliver crude to U.S. ports in November, ship-tracking and charters compiled by Bloomberg show. Assuming they arrive as scheduled, the 19 million barrels being hauled would mark the biggest monthly influx from Iraq since June 2012, according to Energy Information Administration figures. (…)
Iraq, pumping the most since at least 1962 amid competition among OPEC nations to find buyers, is discounting prices to woo customers. The U.S. may increasingly become one of them after its own output dropped by as much as 500,000 barrels a day since June. (…)
Iraq is among the least expensive places in the world to extract crude. Capital costs are about seven times cheaper than for light, tight oil suppliers in the U.S. when measured by fields’ daily plateau capacity, according to the International Energy Agency in Paris. (…)
Iraq sold its Heavy grade at a discount of $5.85 a barrel to the appropriate benchmark for November, the biggest discount since it split the grade from Iraqi Light in May. Saudi Arabia sold at $1.25 below benchmark for November, cutting by a further 20 cents in December. (…)
DEAL TRIVIA:
ISI calculates that over the past 21 months there have been 1,441 M&A deals totalling $8.2T. Incredible!
Fidelity Marks Down Value of Snapchat Stake by 25% Revised estimate comes amid growing uncertainty around the soaring valuations of private tech startups
The change was the first by Fidelity since it invested in Snapchat in May at a valuation of $16 billion. (…)
Snapchat expects to generate about $50 million in revenue this year, a person familiar with the matter said in August.
On Friday, payment processor Square Inc. proposed to value itself at $3.9 billion in a planned initial public offering, down from $6 billion last year. Startups including e-commerce site Jet.com Inc., local-services website Thumbtack Inc., secondhand-good marketplace OfferUp Inc. and used-car seller Beepi Inc. have scaled back their expected valuations from private investors. (…)
Earlier this year, BlackRock Inc., an investor in cloud-storage startup Dropbox Inc., cut its estimate of the company’s per-share value by 24%, securities filings show.