January, 2007 U.S. payroll #, Phoenix updates + weekend wine tip
Posted by admin under: Main Oct 31Everyone got today’s jobs number wrong — the median estimate of the 82 economists polled by Bloomberg, Global Insight, yours truly . . .
But in spite of January’s 110,000 net new jobs coming in so at the low end of the spectrum the report had a lot of other things to celebrate. Thanks to the Labor Department re-crunching its data, turns out the U.S. had roughly 400,000 more jobs than they were telling us about in 2006. Even our Bush-bashing friends at the Economic Policy Institute could find little bad news in the report to gloat over.
What hurt today’s jobs number? The usual suspects: the housing sector and manufacturing. What gave the biggest boost? Healthcare.
Hey, remember those 5 bankrupted subdivisions that were up for auction in Phoenix?
Our AZ correspondent, Tracy Thompson, broke the news that they were picked up — presumably for $29 million — by a small developer based in California’s Inland Empire, Frontier Homes. Even at that price, it’s a high-risk play because dozens of units are damaged, or have liens against them by contractors who were stiffed by the developer who went bankrupt, or remain incomplete in spite of buyers having paid deposits. Talk about stigmatized inventory.
Meanwhile, our friend Debi at Housing Doom.com had her own scoop: embargoed numbers that show January, 2007 was the worst month for the Phoenix MSA’s housing market in six years. She adds that prominent local industry analyst, R.L. Brown, estimates that Phoenix currently has 25,000 spec properties out there, and that the vacancy rate of its resale listings is 48 percent. This is the housing equivalent of the nuclear winter Silicon Valley and San Francisco suffered after the 2001 tech bust.
Trader Joe wine alert update
See those stacks of Geyser Peak 2002 Shiraz at the end of the aisles for six bucks? Looks like a steal, right? Great appellation (Alexander Valley), four years of aging, premium producer. Run, don’t walk! Remember, Trader Joe’s acts as the industry’s delete bin — and no wine deserves to be dumped as badly as this one, straight down your kitchen drain. Okay, if you don’t mind the overblown tar and nicotine notes, you could use if for cooking.
Trader Joe’s isn’t all bad, right now, though. They’re starting to move up-market, adding cult labels like Caymus Special Selection and Opus One. Aim for the middle and pick up the Sanford pinot noir (from Sideways country), while the limited supply lasts. Yes, it’s 3 times the price of the Geyser Peak. But even at Trader Joe’s, you do get what you pay for.
Source: January, 2007 U.S. payroll #, Phoenix updates + weekend wine tip
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.