See the most popular content from 2017; the impact of hurricanes on the economy, infrastructure investment, encouraging diversity and inclusion in the workforce, the impacts of the GDPR, and the new language of digital.   

Definitions matter and they aren’t universal. In the digital landscape, we are each an interpreter navigating a brave new world. What is a digital strategy? Are we digitizing or digitalizing our business? Do those words mean the same thing or are they different? And what about digital transformation? Is this term a new business buzzword or a profound transformation on the horizon that requires significant preparation?

No one should be concerned that the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) pulled back from an unrealistic 60.8% in September to a still strong 58.7% in October. The September reading from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) has to be treated as an outlier and interpreted against the inevitable data distortions created by two devastating hurricanes. Hurricane Harvey, in particular, ravaged a manufacturing epicenter at a time when energy-related output is growing as a share of U.S. industrial output. ISM survey respondents in October noted weak business conditions and raw material shortages due to the hurricanes. The aftermath of these terrible storms is going to linger in the manufacturing picture for a while.

While serious threats to the economy have abated, no one is yet fully confident in the future. Again, the Fed punted on a chance to increase the target for its influential fed funds rate.

While the U.S. has seen two major hurricanes in the last two weeks, we are just halfway through hurricane season.

What went wrong? This is the question many people in the Equifax organization are asking today. How did hackers gain access to over 143 million U.S.

As the flood waters recede and the long rebuilding process begins, it is important to assess the impact on the U.S. economy and the U.S. manufacturing sector. Policymakers need to minimize the downstream negative impacts from an already destructive event. Manufacturing executives need to readjust their business plans to account for a significant disruption. 

Employment remains a star in an otherwise lackluster economic expansion. U.S. employer payrolls swelled by a strong 209,000 in July, and the unemployment rate fell a tick to 4.3 percent, remaining at a 16-year low.  Even with the sluggish GDP growth of recent quarters, it is clear that the U.S. economy is growing above its long-term, non-inflationary potential, creating a strong demand for labor even after eight years of economic recovery and expansion.   

In spite of the modest drop in the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) widely-followed Purchasing Managers’ (PMI) Index, U.S. manufacturing growth remains on a path of considerable improvement. After reaching 57.8% in June, more than 3 percentage points above the current 12-month average, the PMI index slipped by 1.5 percentage points in July to a still strong 56.3%. Key survey indices such as new orders, production, and the backlog of orders remain in solid growth territory although they all fell modestly last month. 

I anticipated that the historical U.S. GDP revisions, which accompany the initial release of the second quarter GDP report and currently extend back to the first quarter of 2014, would make for some interesting analysis. What’s remarkable, however, is just how small the revisions are on the whole. The revised data in no way change the qualitative narrative of growth for a frustrating period in which U.S. manufacturing was all but stagnant. Score one for the reliability and stability of the U.S. economic data system.