Assorted Links Friday
Happy Friday. Lots of charts: labor force participation, average hourly earnings, inflation, and more.
Table of Contents
Homebuyers hit with another blow: The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage -- the most common type of mortgage in the US -- has surged an incredible 24% in the past four weeks alone.
Labor force participation: The labor-force participation rate ticked up to 62.4% in March and is now up 0.7 ppt over the past six months.
![](https://econdevshow.com/content/images/2022/04/040122chart.jpg)
Big cities are in their prime. In fact, their best days may be yet to come.
STEM immigration is critical to American national security:
![](https://econdevshow.com/content/images/2022/04/https---bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-public-images-18a204cc-c5fa-4b63-a727-790ebcac0881_628x325.jpeg.webp)
Average hourly earnings, 2000-February 2022:
Real average hourly earnings in private nonfarm payroll sector, production and nonsupervisory workers, in 2020$, deflated by CPI (blue), by PCE deflator (brown), both on log scale.
![](https://econdevshow.com/content/images/2022/04/real_ahetpi.png)
![](https://econdevshow.com/content/images/2022/04/inflationpix_feb22.png)
Employment in six of fourteen supersectors have surpassed pre-pandemic levels as of March:
![](https://econdevshow.com/content/images/2022/04/image-3.png)
50% of Canadians live south of the red line:
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