Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Here's the latest US data blind spots weighing on economic forecasts in the new year. Data Peterson of the Conference Board, writing twenty twenty five, is ending on a confusing note for markets, economists, and central bankers alike. So we should not completely ignore the data data joins us now, Happy New York. Thank you so much for being with US data. Let's start with the data that we have gotten. Why is it so noisy?
How should people look at it? Considering that people do view it as somewhat noisy, but also they can't ignore.
It exactly, you can't ignore these data. We did have data for the third quarter. Certainly, the GDP came in a lot stronger than expected, and certainly consumption was a lot stronger. Even though we did have data, it shows that the Fed, I mean the Federal Reserve. Sorry, it shows that the federal government probably had more data in between releases and certainly after the shutdown. But I think the key thing is that inventories and trade we're very confusing.
And indeed, when you add up the inventories, well, when you add up the imports plus the consumption, the inventory's numbers just don't make sense. So we really need to get data next week on inventories as well as international trade, business sentiment, and also employment. I think we really need to see more data to get a handle on what happened in the third quarter and also what happened in the fourth quarter data.
We are going to get some data come next week that is going to be important, including the non farm pails as well as some of the manufacturing aspects that you're talking about. Nonetheless, we have a host of other information out there that people keep pointing to. Whether it's ADP, whether it's earnings, whether it's the ruttoric coming out of a lot of companies, or whether it's retail sales. I mean, is there some sort of conclusion that you can take even amid the noise.
Well, I think you know, certainly the stock market does not really like the real economy, so we can't look to that, and also people who most people don't own stocks, so they're not really benefiting from that. We do have
lots of sentiment data. Of course, our consumer sentiment data has shown that consumers are less sanguine about the current conditions as well as having some concerns about the future, you know, retail sales at all we have really is the end of the third quarter, and they were weaker. So I think that we just need more information, and you can't look at these things and try to estimate what the government data is going to tell us.
I'm looking at the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index and it hasn't been this low since the pandemic. So what does that tell us about, you know, inflation, growth, spending.
Well, I think the inflation did has yet to hit us. Remember, the tariffs that were implemented were delayed twice, and also they were raised and lowered several times, so many businesses are still waiting to see if there's any certainty with respect to tariffs. Yes, we've had a number of deals established, but there's still a lot that's unknown. And so with businesses uncertain, it doesn't mean that it just means that we're not going to see much hiring. We're not seeing layoffs,
which is good. Most people still are working, but those who do get laid off are finding it very difficult
to find jobs. And even though most consumers are working and they actually are spending, the type of spending that they're engaged with is very different they're buying things that they need, and when it comes to especially with goods and services, and when it does come to things that are entertaining, they're buying cheap things, right, cheap thrills like streaming instead of going to the movies and paying you know,
over our dollars for a family of four. And so I think we need to really get beyond the first quarter of this year to really see what's happening, because I think that's when we're going to see the bigger effects of tariffs on inflation and consumers really pull back.
Dan, I've been trying to pin down how workers' wages have kept up with inflation, as I've been saying. You know, Torsten Slock put out a six year average showing that wages are doing better than inflation. But Mark Chandler, whom we just spoke with from Vandenbrooks, says in his household that certainly isn't the case, and he doesn't think that it looks like a great picture for consumers. How do you see it?
Well, yes, wage growth and compensation have been slowing from the peaks that we saw during the pandemic. Certainly the later portion of the pandemic when we were trying to get everybody back into the labor market, and you need to entice them and also keep workers with compensation. But still, I mean, I would say that wages are still growing at a pace that's above where we were between the
Great Financial Crisis and the pandemic. But I would look at the last GDP data where we saw real disposable income grow at zero points zero percentage points annualized in the third quarter. That's not a good sign. And so we definitely do see slowing in wages, and for some people it may be faster than others.
Dana Peterson of the Conference Board, thank you so much for being with us this morning on the first trading day of the new year.