Sightlines is a consulting service. We provide businesspeople, long-term investors, and policy makers with concise data-driven analyses of the direction of the American economy so they can successfully formulate their business plans and fine-tune their resource allocations:

We have collected and analyzed  state-level tax receipts since the early mid-1990s, and are widely respected for our ability to parse the importance of trends in those revenue flows, and understand regional strengths and weaknesses;

We have built long-term databases, some going back into the 1880s, (!), to provide historical perspective;

Our proprietary databases are the basis for our analyses of economic turning points, growth and demographic trends,  correlations in historical trends, and forecasts for the nation, regions, and states.  In addition to guiding business planners and investors, including those who manage municipal debt portfolios, we believe the detail offered by these data series will help our clients create new jobs and better understand the advantages of returning jobs to the United States;

We have a broad understanding of how the Bureau of Labor Statistics produces data, the strengths and the quirks, and are dedicated to debunking the perennial conspiracy theories that cloud many analysts perceptions; and

We have long tracked economic disparity and demographics, again to push back on popular theories, and to support regional and policy efforts to build a more equitable economy.

We’d be happy to work with you! Please get in touch with us here.

Philippa and Doug

A new year: Our progress

After a shaky start, 2015 ended on a positive note, with payrolls up, unemployment down, and the long-term unemployed coming back into the labor force. Our updated spider, or radar, graphs spin an uneven, but encouraging tale; and the OECD recently ranked the U.S. pretty low on the financial vulnerability scale. Even so, we continue to face risks, both at homr and from abroad.

To read full report, click here: SL 1-15

Time to fret about corporate debt and stock prices?

While the job market looked strong in May, consumption seems to be slowing. Worrywarts to the contrary, the labor market is far from tight, but some other indicators are looking a bit late cycle-ish. The Federal Open Market Committee lowered their projections for 2014 in their June meeting, a smart move given the most recent downward revision to Q1 GDP. Diesel fuel sales rose 5.1% over the year for the November-January period, an encouraging signal for future job growth.

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Domestic regions

Diesel Fuel Update
The three BEA regions showing the strongest growth in diesel fuel usage, the Northeast, the Midwest, and the Southwest, were the same as in September. Weakness in the Great Lakes might be thought to reflect a slowdown in auto production, but on closer look, much of the sag comes from Wisconsin. The Plains are the laggard, but they did go positive.

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Special reports

How Much Has the Job Market Recovered?
We just updated our Jobs Spider, a graph taken from the work of James Bullard, President of the St. Louis Fed, who collected about a dozen takes on the health of the job market. The leading indicators are still a bit ahead of reality, but the distance has narrowed in recent months.

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