After Office Hours with Puget Sound Economic Forecaster

The team discusses the troubles with forecasting in uncertain times and state of the economy in the region and nationally.  Touching on topics such as retail sales, labor marketing and housing. Creators & Guests Fouzia Awan - Guest Hart Hodges - Host James Mark Gbeda - Guest James McCafferty - Host McK Mollner - Guest

We rang in the new year in Seattle much like we are bringing you this podcast – with a lot of fog obscuring the show. If you think weather forecasts are unreliable, try predicting the economy with incomplete data, revised later, using assumptions that stop holding the moment you publish. But at least weather forecasters and economists have one thing in common: if their predictions were consistentl...

The team covers myriad hot topics, including the impact of the government shut down on economic statistics, the impact of AI on the job market and the economy, how tariffs are or are not impacting consumers and how all of this impacts the Puget Sound economy.

The team explores game theory and how it relates to recent economic news.  

Hart and James bring in all of the research economists to discuss the latest data around unemployment, construction, rate cuts, water adjudication and what it all means for the Puget Sound economy.  

The team gets together to chat about the current forecast.  Are interest rates coming down? Inflation rates?

Grab your Coffee and Popcorn (it will make some sense later) and listen in on what the team has to say in this glorious summer of 2023.

Spring has sprung in our region – from Tulips in the Skagit Valley to a fresh dusting of pollen just about everywhere else.  There is always such a rush of optimism when the cold dark days of winter in the Pacific Northwest yield to the random weather days of Spring – will it be sunny, warm, cold, rainy, windy or some other adjective?  All we can say is our colleagues in meteorology truly help imp...

Creators & Guests James McCafferty - Host Hart Hodges - Host

The team starts the discussion with what they are currently understanding from the data, also how different outlooks can come from the same data.  Fun with data leads the team to discuss recession and inflation, worldwide, nation wide and right here in our Puget Sound region.  Cam will go over the retail numbers.  Hart and Bethany have insight on the Housing and Commercial real estate markets.  Fi...

James, Hart and Bethany get together once again to talk forecasting while faced with a global pandemic, global changes throughout the labor market, supply chain, and massive turmoil within the commodities market, and the introduction of a war.  Main topics of today's discussion are Inflation, Recession, Federal reserve and interest rate adjustments, Labor Market, Consumer Confidence, Retail spend,...

Join James, Hart, Bethany and newcomer Audrey as they discuss the current events of the economic day!  In this episode the team covers the current forecast of Covid impacts, Inflation and recession risk, how supply chain entanglements and what people are spending money on, impacts inflationary pressures. Hart will discuss Fed actions, projections and CPI vs PCE.  The team also covers the impact th...

Covid Impacts - Omicron  Inflation concerns Supply Chain updates - Imports are rising what does that mean? Employment - natural rate of unemployment, are wages actually rising?  Discussion of real wages and median wages. How is the Fed Reacting - or not reacting How do the Retail Numbers look?  The Holidays were a little different this year! Housing - shortage continues - how is that impacting the...

Hello and welcome to After Office Hours with the Puget Sound Economic Forecaster.  This is your home for discussion about the Puget Sound region’s economy.  The economy and what is affecting it continues to be in a high rate.  We are recording this on October 15th for those keeping score – depending on when you are listening there are going to likely be new developments to keep in mind.   We devel...

If rent is rising, what does that tell us? Listen to the full podcast for more information.

Are those crazy high truck prices a sign of inflation or a short term affect of supply chain issues?

Commercial Real Estate is seeing some changes.

When we say things like median and average, what does that really mean for individuals in the economy.

How do we go about counting people who are working, making money, but are not participating in the workforce in the traditional sense? Listen to the full podcast for more information.

Changing employee markets are impacting how companies find workers.