If we close the borders and have less undocumented workers, it would put some upward pressure on overall wages. It's no secret business will have to pay workers more money.
The pace of average hourly earnings continues to rise at just a tepid pace leading me to believe that this overall report is a very monetary policy-friendly report.
The overall weakness was so pervasive that it would be silly to completely dismiss the devastating weakness of this report.
The overall trend is that we're making progress,
The overall total of nominal sales is likely to remain somewhat weak.
While weather played a role in soft apparel sales, the high energy prices impacted overall sales. Net-net, the climate is likely to get better with improvements in the labor market.
These results suggest that the current low energy prices should serve as an important and positive boost to overall economic growth.
This is very good news. Workers may end up getting the purchasing power they've been lacking so far. While overall prices are still rising, we have good reason to believe energy prices will be going down.
It seems as though the inflation report provided a few component surprises but no overall surprises as apparel prices continued to drop despite the expectation that they would stabilize or rise slightly.
The lackluster change validates the Fed's view that inflation is not likely to be a major overall issue in 2004. Although this bodes well for policy, it is not a positive for corporate pricing power.