Big drop in housing starts for May doesn't translate into something bigger...yet

As US interest rates seem more likely to be headed up than down, and home prices remain high to outright unaffordable for many Americans, let's take a look at the recent release of home building activity from US Census Bureau.

Building Permits
Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in May were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,413,000. This is 0.7 percent below the revised April rate of 1,423,000 and is 0.2 percent below the May 2025 rate of 1,416,000. Single-family authorizations in May were at a rate of 886,000; this is 0.6 percent above the revised April figure of 881,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 474,000 in May.

Housing Starts
Privately-owned housing starts in May were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,177,000. This is 15.4 percent (±9.8 percent) below the revised April estimate of 1,392,000 and is 8.7 percent (±8.2 percent) below the May 2025 rate of 1,289,000. Single-family housing starts in May were at a rate of 882,000; this is 1.9 percent (±10.8 percent)* below the revised April figure of 899,000. The May rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 284,000.

Housing starts down more than 15% in May??? That seems like something to worry about. Among non-COVID months, it's the lowest annualized, seasonally adjusted rate of housing starts in more than 7 years.

But as you will see, one month does not a trend make, and it comes on the heels of March having the highest (seasonally adjusted) level of housing starts in more than 2 years.

So that may mean housing starts got pushed forward due to a warmer winter, and this "decline" may just be a leveling out. Permits for home construction indicate have been less volatile over the last year, although I will note a large increase in February - before war expanded in the Middle East, leading to higher inflation and higher mortgage rates.

And those 4 years of reversion to a post-COVID "normal" in permits also shows in the number of homes being completed drifting back down to 2023 levels.

These numbers aren't conducive to increased hiring in the construction sector for the future. That would be a change from what we've been seeing since October, where jobs have resumed a trend of impressive post-COVID gains after declining for much of 2025.

Now, there are other forms of construction beyond homebuilding, and we will have to wait another 10 days to see what the rest of the sector might have done in activity as the construfction season peaks. There isn't any indication of a major slowdown yet, even as costs and interest rates go on the rise, and it'll take more than 1 seasonally adjusted drop in housing starts before we can say we are going on a slide.

Social Security, Disability, and Medicare funds only "go broke" if we choose it

"Social Security is on a collision course toward insolvency"???? You may have seen an uptick in this type of talk in the last couple of weeks. So what's it all about?

Social Security is hurtling toward a fiscal cliff that, if left unaddressed, will force an automatic 22% benefit cut for tens of millions of retirees, survivors, and their dependents in just six years.

That's the stark warning from the release last week of the 2026 Social Security Trustees' Report. A nonpartisan fiscal watchdog, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), found the program's financial imbalance has reached its most severe point in nearly 50 years—and that inaction by lawmakers is making a bad situation measurably worse.

So let's go into the summary of the Social Security Trustees report, which is sparking this discussion, and talk about what these findings are, and what can be done.

Let’s first talk about the four main trust funds that Social Security trustees look at. OASI is what we generally know as Social Security, money paid to older Americans and/or dependents of those who have died. DI is basically what we would know as Disability, HI is Medicare’s Hospital Insurance program (Part A), and SMI is Medicare Part B (regular services) and Part D (drugs).

Social Security and Disability comes out of your paycheck via FICA taxes, and also taxes that current recipients pay on their benefits. Medicare Hospital Insurance is another payroll tax that takes 1.45% out of paychecks, and a slight bit more kicks in once you make over $200,000 for individuals or $250,000 for joint filers. Medicare Part B and Part D gets most of its money from “government contributions” – aka tax dollars that the US Treasury uses for this part of Medicare and also a lot of other government programs, but also through premiums paid by Medicare recipients, and a small amount from states on drug payments that Medicaid would have owed.

Now let’s look at the numbers, which show that Social Security paid out $200 billion more than they took in taxes for 2025, while Disability took in nearly $40 billion more than it spent. Medicare Hospital Insurance also had more than $18 billion in surplus, and Medicare Parts B and D basically broke even.

And those “reserves” are the trust funds that are supposed to be able to pay for any overage of expenses vs revenues. As you can see, OASI/Social Security is seeing the amount of its trust fund decline. This will continue and that deficit is slated to grow under current law, which leads to this well-documented finding from the Social Security Trustees.

At that point, Social Security and Medicare Hospital benefits would not be able to be fully paid under current law. So in theory, something will need to be done in the next 6 years or else there would be a significant cut in benefits to make ends meet. The reason why is because under current law, few to no "outside funds" are supposed to pay for Social Security, Disability and Medicare Hospital benefits.

But Congress needs to find ways to fund and change a lot of things in the next 6 years, so why would Social Security and Medicare’s Hospital funding be any different? You already saw how Medicare B and D (aka SMI) gets most of its money from everyday taxes, so why wouldn’t the same be true for the rest of Medicare or Social Security, and keep disruptions for our seniors (and future seniors) to a minimum?

That can be done a number of ways, including, I dunno…..TAXING THE RICH just a fraction more than we are today? We also could possibly make everyone else under 65 buy into Medicare and pay premiums for their insurance (call it some kind of option for the public or something), or just be like any other civilized nation and use a few extra tax dollars to get a simple baseline of medical coverage for all Americans, which likely would cut some of the taxpayer costs that we currently have for medical services to older Americans. Maybe?

But if you don’t want to discuss solutions beyond the current payroll tax-based financing system, we can do that as well. Let’s start with the fact that Disability is running a sizable surplus while Social Security is running a deficit. Since both of those funds are paid for in the same FICA tax withholding from your paycheck, you may wonder if something can be switched up there.

The answer to that question is not only “yes”, but it has been changed numerous times over the years, including as recently as 2019, which was the sunset of a provision in the 2015 Budget Act that changed the allocations between the two funds for 3 years.

At the time, it was Disability that was running out of money, as recounted in this Congressional report in early 2016.

Over the past few years, Congress has grown increasingly concerned with the financial outlook of the DI trust fund. Cost has exceeded total income since 2009, causing the balance of the DI trust fund to shrink. In their July 2015 report, the Social Security trustees projected that the DI trust fund would be depleted in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2016. Upon depletion of its asset reserves, the DI trust fund was projected to have enough ongoing revenues to pay only about 80% of scheduled benefits. The trustees projected that the OASI trust fund would be depleted in 2035….

The decreasing solvency of the DI trust fund is the result of an increasing imbalance between the fund's income and cost. Over the past 20 years, tax revenues to the DI trust fund have remained relatively flat as a percentage of taxable payroll, whereas cost as a share of taxable payroll has grown markedly. The increase in cost stems largely from the growth in the number of beneficiaries in the program. Between 1995 and 2014, the number of disabled workers and their dependents in receipt of SSDI grew 85%, from 5.9 million to 10.9 million. Because benefit payments account for nearly all program spending, the growth in the SSDI rolls has contributed heavily to the financial difficulties of the DI trust fund….

The Social Security Administration's Office of the Chief Actuary (OACT) projects that the reallocation will extend the solvency of the DI trust fund from the fourth quarter of 2016 to the third quarter of 2022. Although the reallocation will reduce the solvency of the OASI trust fund slightly, OACT estimates that the depletion year for OASI will remain unchanged at 2035.

Needless to say, the DI trust fund is still around in 2026, and has been adding money in recent years. Why is it different now? Because the number of Americans on Disability (at least this form of Disability) stopped the steep rise that it had between 2000 and 2010, and declined from nearly 11 million in 2013 to less than 8.2 million in 2025.

Why is there such a drop? Here’s what the Social Security Administration said in its report on Disability Insurance last week.

…The drop in the 2011-13 period is concurrent with the recovery from the 2007-09 recession. Since 2013, incidence rates through 2025 have dropped to levels well below those expected over the long-term, and even below the levels that would be expected from the economic recovery alone. Contributing factors to the decline through 2019 in disability applications and awards include the changing nature of work in the economy, the improving economy indicated by the low unemployment rate, the greater availability of health care, and increasing job flexibility and accommodation by many employers in a competitive labor market. Incidence rates declined to an extraordinarily low level in 2019, at the end of an extended period of economic recovery, resulting in the lowest disabled-worker prevalence rate for men since 2001, and a similarly low level for women. Incidence rates dropped even further in 2020 and 2021, and to an all-time low in 2022, partly due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Incidence rates have increased since 2022 but still remain near historically low levels. Future policy changes, technological advancements, shifts in the nature of work, and economic cycles will undoubtedly continue to cause fluctuations in disabled-worker incidence rates.

With that in mind, Congress should at least reallocate the taxes paid in FICA so that Social Security gets more funding and Disability gets less, to get both funds closer to balance. But because Disability collects much less money (just over $191 billion in payroll taxes in 2025), that isn’t going to do much to slow down the depletion of the Social Security fund, as the annual deficit in that program (before interest earnings) is projected to go from $262 billion in 2025 to more than $400 billion in 2030. So a $30 billion shift in allocations would only hold back the depletion date by 1 year, to 2034.

That means there is going to have to be adjustments to how the Social Secuirty system is funded and paid out to keep it fully funded by the time my Xer self is eligible And on the revenue side, the answer is obvious - by raising the limit on the amount of income that Social Security and Disability are taxed on.

Currently, anything past $184,500 in wages doesn't get taxed another dime for Social Security. This situation means that someone making a $1 million income stopped paying for Social Security on March 9. Yes, that date gets moved back every year as the cap is indexed for inflation (so if 2026's inflation ends up at 4% for example, next year's cap would be near $192,000), but it still makes for yet another tax advantage the rich get that everyday people don't.

Because the ultra-rich have gotten much larger gains than the workers who pay the full Social Security/Disability tax, there is a lot of income in 2026 that avoids the Social Security tax compared to 40+ years ago.

Earnings inequality has contributed to Social Security’s current trust fund shortfall, according to recent research from the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank, student network and nonprofit partner to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. The share of earnings subject to Social Security payroll taxes was 90% in 1983. Yet the payroll tax did not rise fast enough to maintain that 90% coverage, according to the Roosevelt Institute. In 2000, it was approximately 82.5% and has since stayed at about that level, with some fluctuations, Roosevelt Institute research found. About 6% of workers have earnings above the cap, a share that has held steady. But those workers’ real earnings grew by an “unexpectedly large” average of 62% from 1983 through 2000, according to the Roosevelt Institute. Meanwhile, the remaining 94% of workers with earnings below the cap saw their average real earnings go up just 17% during those years.

Back in April, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget ran some numbers on what to do with Social Security now, as well as lamenting the delay in action that makes it harder to keep the current trust funds from going dry.

Had policymakers eliminated the cap and applied the payroll tax to all wages starting in 1995, without crediting additional benefits, it would have generated enough revenue to extend solvency by 60 years to 2094. This would have achieved 75-year solvency at the time (through 2069) and closed 90% of the current solvency gap through 2099.

By comparison, eliminating the tax cap today would extend solvency by just 21 years – one-third as long as back in the 1990s – and close 65% of the solvency gap.

Another option CRFB brings up is “progressive price indexing”, which would keep benefits the same for all current elders on Social Security and won’t change future benefits for the lowest 30% of wage earners. But for other American workers, it reduces future benefits to the increases in prices vs that increase in wages.

The CRFB says that while progressive price indexing wouldn’t do anything to stop annual Social Security deficits today like scrapping the cap would, it would reduce costs for the future to help keep the trust fund in balance down the road.

….while progressive price indexing would no longer delay insolvency whereas eliminating the tax cap would, progressive price indexing would still do more to close Social Security’s long-term structural gap. By 2099, progressive price indexing would almost eliminate Social Security’s cash deficit, while eliminating the tax cap would only reduce it by half – or by less than one-third if new benefits were paid on wages newly subject to the tax.

You can see where the two ideas could be combined, with an immediate scrapping of the cap to avoid any cuts in benefits in the near future, and something like progressive price indexing to keep things relatively stable as Xers and Millenials get old.

Yes, younger generations might not get the amount of Social Security that the Boomers got, but these are also benefits that they wouldn’t have gotten for 20-30 years, and giving them time to adjust allows for a better way to prepare for what they will need in the post-retirement world. Also, if you combined something like A BASELINE OF PAID-FOR HEALTH CARE FOR ALL to cut the out of pocket health insurance expenses for younger people (something that especially crushes lower-income workers), I think they'd accept a slightly smaller Social Security benefit in 2045-2065.

OR….we could just use general fund money to supplement any shortfall vs today. Just like we use general fund money (and borrowing) for shortfalls in highways or our military adventures or whatever it cost to do THIS.

It’s all a choice, folks. Whether it's how you want to pay for maintaining older Americans' quality of life, or in what you decide people of all ages should OR SHOULD NOT have to pay for out of pocket. Or in how many resources our government should have and who we should get those resources from to improve both our economy and the quality of life for Americans.

While there may be a need to change the way we finance Social Security, Disability, and Medicare Hospital Insurance to get the numbers more in balance for the future, we need to stop thinking these programs will “go broke”. Because like anything else involving government programs, nothing goes broke and benefits won’t get cut unless Congress and presidents allow it to happen, and unless the voters allow them to get away with it.

May is a second straight month of strong job growth in Wisconsin

The last three months of the US jobs market has shown a bounce upwards from the near-zero job growth we had for 2025 and the first two months of 2026. And for the last 2 months, Wisconsin has also been part of that positive trend, as this week's release of the state jobs report for May came in strong.

Employment – There were 3,024,100 people employed in Wisconsin, up 4,000 over the month and up 5,800 over the year.
• Labor Force – The state’s labor force participation rate remained unchanged at 64.4% which is 2.6 percentage points above the national rate of 61.8%.
• Nonfarm Jobs – The total nonfarm jobs in the state were 3,039,800, an increase of 8,700 over last month.
• Unemployment – The state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate ticked down to 3.4%, which is 0.9 percentage points below the national unemployment rate of 4.3%.

All of these four measures are good, and comes on the heels of a big gain in April of 11,300.

Put it together, and that's a gain of 20,000 in the last two months. And it means that the sizable job losses between last July and March in Wisconsin have now been regained, and we also have the first year-over-year increase in private sector jobs in our state in these reports since July 2025.

A main driver of May’s strong job growth in Wisconsin was construction (+2,900) and manufacturing (+2,300). For construction, it gets hiring back into the growth mode that it has been in for the last few years in Wisconsin, while for manufacturing, the last few months has been a welcome turnaround after losses between 2023 and 2025.

Even more impressive is that this reflects higher-than-normal warmer-weather hiring, although I’ll check back with June’s jobs report to see if that’s merely typical Summer hiring pulled forward.

Likewise, arts, entertainment and recreation had 2,000 jobs added on a seasonally adjusted basis and 10,000 in non-seasonally adjusted jobs. Given the early Memorial Day weekend (which came the week after jobs were surveyed), is that going to be reflected in a negative number in June because fewer people get hired in that one-month period?

It feels like it's bit too much too soon, to be honest, and I am interested to see if we get some kind of seasonal snapback in June. Still, the recent trend of job growth is good for Wisconsin, and unemployment also seems to have crested at a mid-3% level for our state for 2026. Overall, it's not a bad situation to be in.

Fed admits inflation is now higher due to war, and rates more likely to go up, not down

Today marked the first meeting of the Federal Reserve's Open Markets Committee (FOMC) since Kevin Warsh took over as Chair from Jerome Powell. That in itself would warrant attention, but there's also been quite a bit of economic upheaval since the Fed last met in late April, and it would also include the first release of the Fed's economic projections for the future in the last 3 months.

The Fed made its call at 2pm Eastern, and Warsh met the media soon after.

Did the Fed do a surprise rate hike? Nope, they kept the Fed Funds rate at the same 3.5%-3.75% range that it has been in for the last 6 months. So why did the market tank after the widely expected decision to keep rates the same? Because the outlook got tighter.

Pushing US equities to the downside was news that nine out of 18 FOMC members who submitted economic projections — with Warsh as the sole member sitting out — see a rate hike coming by the end of the year. The projections pushed traders to fully price in one quarter-point hike by year-end, per Bloomberg data.

Policymakers had projected one 2026 rate cut in March, but the job market has firmed, and inflation has risen to the highest level in three years, pushed up by higher energy prices from the conflict in the Middle East.

Investors are also debating whether the blocked oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz could be cleared quickly, as they weigh the US-Iran interim deal to end their conflict. After agreeing on a draft 14-point memorandum, the two sides aim to formally sign an agreement on Friday.

The FED's "dot plot" of FOMC opinions shows that half of those 18 members thought there would be at least one increase of the Fed Funds rate from current levels for the rest of the year, and almost all of the rest thought rates would stay at their current range.

And the FOMC’s new economic projections show how their inflation expectations went up over the 3 months that the US has stayed at war in Iran.

That's a serious slide to the right - nearly 1% higher than March's projections for this year, and inflation staying higher from a more expensive base in 2027.

Another reason for this afternoon's drop on Wall Street is that traders took positive talk from Warsh on the labor market as reason to think recession wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

"The [Federal Open Market Committee] thought that the labor markets were stable," Warsh said. "There were some people around the committee who thought that it was trending better than that."

"Trends matter more than data points," Warsh continued, adding that "the jobs data has been moving in a good direction." Fed officials now predict a 4.3% unemployment rate for the rest of the year, an improvement from earlier estimates.

And good news for the labor market is bad news if you're a coked-up, debt-laden bro that wants rate cuts. Now if workers start to get any kind of pay raise with those jobs? Those guys will lose it!

The next Fed meeting comes at the end of July. By then, we'll know what the effect of this panicked giveaway Memorandum of Understanding with Iran will have on oil supplies and gas prices....assuming it ever ends up being followed, of course. And we'll see if consumers and businesses have changed their habits as the Summer has dragged on.

But for now, it's wait and see for the Fed, and to figure out what they want to do in a time of cost-based inflation, but also with a President and his newly appointed Fed Chair who aren't likely to be OK with money being tightened up so much that we fall into recession by the time voters go to the polls in November.

WisGOP candidate puts up property tax relief that WisGOP legislators have rejected for years

A real concern in Wisconsin has been rising property taxes, especially for seniors who may have paid off their homes, but are seeing taxes rise beyond the rate of inflation. This has received extra emphasis in the last year, as school property taxes went up by the largest rates in over 30 years as costs rose in 2025 and schools were allowed to use more resources, but state aid was not increased.

Complicating this is that fewer Wisconsinites have been able to receive the state’s Homestead Tax Credit, which is intended to offset rent or property tax costs for lower-income and especially senior Wisconsinites. This credit has had its income levels stay the same since Scott Walker and the Wisconsin GOP took power in 2011, and look at the trend as a result.

In response to this, Republican candidate Jon Aleckson has a solution on how to help seniors pay for their rising property tax bills. Aleckson is running in the 50th Assembly district, which includes all of Green County and southern Dane County communities such as Oregon and Belleville,

The first part is relatively straightforward, and involves an expansion of the state’s Homestead Credit.

That’s quite a difference, doubling the maximum credit, and more than doubling the income levels that can get a writeoff.

And the Legislative Fiscal Bureau notes another reason that Wisconsin seniors have especially been susceptible to losing their Homestead Credits in recent years. And this reason isn't due to incomes not keeping up with property taxes, but because Social Security payments have gone up significantly to try to match higher inflation, while the income limits have remained at the same levels.

The continued decline in total claimants, and credits claimed, in 2021 and 2022 could be partially attributable to the significant cost-of-living adjustments applied to Social Security payments in those years. These adjustments were the result of high inflation during 2021 and 2022, mainly driven by pandemic-related economic factors. The adjustment for 2022 (8.7%) represented the largest inflation adjustment to Social Security payments since 1981. Under the homestead credit, household income increases as Social Security payments increase. To the extent household income increases above the income threshold of $8,060, claimants receive lower credit amounts or are disqualified altogether.

So it’s not a bad idea to expand the Homestead Credit to get back some of what has been lost. You know who else thought it was a good idea to expand the Homestead Credit? TONY EVERS, who has asked to expand the Homestead Credit in every budget he has submitted to the GOP Legislature. Including this proposal from last year.

Increase the income level at which the homestead tax credit begins to phase out (income threshold) to $19,000, increase the income level above which no credit is allowed (maximum income level) to $37,500, and reduce the rate at which the credit phases out (phase-out rate) to 7.891%. Specify that this provision would first apply beginning in tax year 2025. The maximum allowable property taxes or rent constituting property taxes would remain at $1,460, as under current law. The following formula factors of the credit would be indexed for inflation annually, beginning in tax year 2026: (a) the income threshold; (b) the maximum income level; and (c) the maximum allowable property taxes or rent constituting property taxes. The indexing adjustment would be calculated in each year based on the percentage change in the U.S. consumer price index for all urban consumers, U.S. city average (CPI-U), as determined by the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL). The percentage would be calculated as the change between the CPI-U for the month of August of the previous year and the CPI-U for August, 2024. The adjustment could not occur unless the percentage is a positive number. DOR would be required to annually adjust the phase-out rate (7.891% in tax year 2025) to reflect the indexed formula factors. Statutory modifications would be made to clarify the current law provisions under which a claimant cannot claim the credit if the claimant did not have earned income during the calendar year, unless the claimant or the claimant's spouse was disabled or was over the age of 61. The Administration estimates that state GPR expenditures would increase by $71,600,000 in 2025-26, $76,200,000 in 2026-27, and $83,200,000 in 2027-28.

For the visually inclined, here’s what would have happened to the Homestead Credit under the Aleckson and Evers proposals compared to what we are stuck with today.

So why are we still at these lower income levels that make so many Wisconsinites ineligible?

Provision not included. (Removed from budget consideration pursuant to Joint Finance Motion #4.)

And who is one of the co-chairs Joint Finance and made that decision to throw out Evers' expanson of the Homestead Credit? It’s Jon Aleckson’s own State Senator and fellow Republican, Howard Marklein!

Seems like you might wanna talk to the guy on the right and ask why he caused this bad situation, Jon. Maybe when you're campaigning together at the Green County Fair or something.

The second part of Aleckson's plans to help seniors with property taxes has some constitutional changes that I think are worthy of getting into.

Freeze the assessed value of a primary residence for any Wisconsin homeowner age 70 or older who has lived in their home for at least five years.
• Place a net worth ceiling of $200,000 on participating seniors
• Provide that the frozen assessed value remains in place for as long as the senior lives in their home as their primary residence.
• Require passage by two consecutive Wisconsin legislatures and approval by voters statewide — ensuring the protection is democratically ratified and constitutionally durable.

This sounds good on the surface, right? Seniors don’t end up paying higher property taxes due to higher assessments on homes they already own. And I'll credit Aleckson for admitting that you’d have to create a new constitutional amendment to give a tax break based entirely on age, since is why the current Homestead Credit doesn’t have an explicit age target, even though seniors are a main constituency that is intended to be helped by it.

However, that’s got a problem. Let me remind you that property taxes for Wisconsin communities are limited to a total AMOUNT LEVIED. Rising property assessments only affect your tax bill in relation to how much the other assessments in your taxing area go up. The LFB put out a chart last Summer which shows the property tax rates Wisconsinites pay have continued to go down, even as total taxes paid have gone up.

What would happen with a freeze on property assessments for seniors is that all other homeowners in a community would end up paying more, if those homeowners saw their assessments go up. That’s because the non-senior property owners would make up a larger percentage of the community’s tax base.

There’s a flip-side problem where property taxes could still go up even as property values go down, as they did in the late 2000s. The amount of taxes that could be levied could still be allowed to stay level or go up, if the community so chooses, and that’s regardless of what happens with the values underneath. That would be an increase in rates, which raises taxes even if property assessments have not changed.

I’d also add that lower property taxes up front from the lower assessments could reduce the expanded Homestead Credit, But for homeowners, that would be only if someone paid less than $2,336 in property taxes, and that’s well below the median Wisconsin tax bill of $3,466 for this upcoming year (per the LFB). So I wouldn’t be too concerned for that part (and it’s probably better to get the relief in December’s tax bill vs waiting for tax refunds 2-4 months later).

To Aleckson’s credit, he says that the higher burdens and property taxes that others may have to pay could require more legislation. He says the LFB should be asked “to look at the cost to local governments and find a way for the state to make up the difference so schools and towns don't take a hit”. What’s funny is that “schools and towns” wouldn’t be limited in raising taxes to come up with the revenue, the mix of who pays is the big difference with this proposed relief to seniors.

Which again means that the best way around this problem of rising property taxes is to remove the Republicans who have blocked additional state aid to schools and other communities that Governor Evers and other Democrats have asked for. This is why we have been in this cycle of increased property taxes to make up the difference, and/or referenda requiring these communities to go over their tax limits because costs of business kept going up well above what Scott Walker and his fellow WisGOPs in the Legislature allowed these communities to pay for.

So I appreciate the effort, and I think Dems should join with Republican Jon Aleckson in continuing the requests of Governor Evers, and ask for an expanded Homestead Credit to help low-income and/or senior Wisconsinites afford their property taxes. And maybe also ask for a constitutional change to allow for seniors to be property taxed in a different way.

But an even better idea would be to put Democrats in charge of the Legislature for the first time in 16 years, and make corporations and richer Sconnies pay more after a decade and a half of tax cuts. Then you can use the increased state resources to pay for more of the costs of local government, and stop the cycle of increased property taxes and referenda that are causing a strain for a lot of us.

That’s the real problem here, and Republicans have failed miserably in dealing with it in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan. And if Jon Aleckson became the 50th Republican in the Assembly to allow them to keep control, you can bet he won't be able to put his ideas of expanded Homestead Credits into law. That might get in the way of helping oligarchs and mediocre businessmen get even more tax breaks, and that's not something GOPs are going to trade off.

INFLATION WATCH shows prices up more in May, and they're likely to get higher

We knew that gasoline prices kept rising throughout May, and it led to a lot of anticipation of this week’s release of overall inflation data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This first shoe dropped on Tuesday.

The consumer price index, a broad gauge of goods and services costs across the U.S. economy, rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.5% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 4.2%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. Both numbers were in line with the Dow Jones consensus though the monthly number was 0.1 percentage point below the April reading.

Inflation climbed above 4% for the first time in three years, though the increase met expectations amid concerns over how much the surge in energy prices would impact the economy. The level was the highest since April 2023 and above the 3.8% reading from April.

However, stripping out volatile food and energy prices, the so-called core CPI accelerated 0.2% for the month and 2.9% from a year ago. While the annual rate was in line with the forecast, the monthly gain was below the 0.3% estimate and less than the 0.4% April increase.

“Americans are getting squeezed financially by inflation that’s back at a 3-year high,” said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “The frustration for many Americans is that so many of the basics are up in price right now -- gas, food, electricity, and medical care are all clear pain points that are above 3% inflation. Ending the war in Iran will help to moderate inflation, but the worst is likely still to come for rising food prices.”

A significant difference between now and April 2023 is that consumer inflation was on the way down 3 years ago instead of on the way up like it is today.

And in the shorter term, it looks worse. Since the end of 2022, prices have gone up more than 2% over 6-months exactly once, in February 2023. And then we started dropping bombs in the Middle East in February 2026.

Then combine the 0.5% increase of CPI with a smaller percentage increase in wages, and it means American workers fell further behind in May.

Real average hourly earnings for all employees decreased 0.1 percent from April to May, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This result stems from an increase of 0.3 percent in average hourly earnings combined with an increase of 0.5 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).

Real average weekly earnings decreased 0.2 percent over the month due to the change in real average hourly earnings combined with no change in the average workweek….

In fact, average hourly wages are no higher than they were when Trump came back into office over a year ago, once you adjust for inflation.

Trump's war has wiped out an entire year and a half of wage growth

[image or embed]

— Ben Zipperer (@benzipperer.org) June 10, 2026 at 7:41 AM

And line workers are falling back even more than Americans in general.

Real average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees decreased 0.3 percent from April to May, seasonally adjusted. This result stems from a 0.2-percent increase in average hourly earnings combined with an increase of 0.6 percent in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W).

Real average weekly earnings decreased 0.3 percent over the month due to the change in real average hourly earnings combined with no change in the average workweek.

But gas prices have fallen by around 10% over the last month, so maybe this rise in inflation is just a temporary thing. That's certainly what Trump/GOP is trying to sell to a public that so far isn’t buying it.

Which is why what came out today may be even worse news for Trump/GOP.

Wholesale prices rose more than expected in May, indicating that pipeline inflationary pressures are percolating higher, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.

The producer price index, a measure of final demand costs, increased a seasonally adjusted 1.1% on the month, putting the 12-month wholesale inflation rate at 6.5%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a monthly move of 0.7%.

The annual headline inflation rate was the highest since November 2022. The monthly gain matched the April increase….

Taking out food, energy and trade services, the PPI accelerated 0.8%, the biggest one-month move since March 2022. On a 12-month basis, the core excluding trade services rose 5.1%, the most since October 2022.

So that means costs of products are going up for businesses even more than they have been for consumers. Those firms sure as hell aren’t going to eat it and cut their profits by not pushing their cost increases to consumers.

Costs were rising even more “up the line” and closer to the source material, as shown through the intermediate PPI figures.

For example, Stage 4 foods were up 2.8% in May alone and Stage 3 foods were up 4.6%. In Stage 4, this includes a 10.2% increase in grains, and for Stage 3, it includes a 5.4% increase in slaughter cattle and a 9.0% increase in raw milk. That last item might be good news if you’re a dairy farmer, but it also means higher prices when those products get to the grocery stores in the next couple of months.

Intermediate services are also costing more, as truck transportation of freight jumped by 3.4% in May (and is up 17.3% in the last 12 months), and airline passenger services went up another 2.5% (and has risen 14.4% in the last year). And in Stage 3, there were sizable May increases in wholesaling costs for metals, minerals and ores (+7.4%), chemicals and allied products (+6.0%), and food (+3.4%). So tough times for businesses as they try to get things out for sale to the public.

And if you think that June’s slight retracement at the pump is going to drop the elevated prices that are all over the US economy, well, you might be as dumb as Donald Trump in the middle of rambling about how he “loves the inflation”.

The higher PPI also tells me that the gap between wage growth and price growth will likely get larger in the coming months. Not what you want if you’re Trump/GOP and you want lower interest rates and happier workers as November approaches.

So no matter what kind of "relief rally" you see on Wall Street when Trump tries to BS about what'll happen in Iran, know that in the real America, INFLATION WATCH is going to be a thing in the US for the rest of 2026, and likely beyond. Much of the price increase is already baked in, no matter what desperate measures and speculations come.

May jobs report shows good (if uneven) gains. Wall Street hated it.

Been a busy last week, but I wanted to give a note on the recent jobs report for May, which turned out to be surprisingly strong in the face of rising prices.

The US labor market appears to have found its footing: The economy added 172,000 jobs in May, shattering expectations, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed Friday.

The latest jobs report provided some reassurance that the US labor market may be stabilizing after a year of weak and stilted job growth: Unemployment held steady at 4.3%, while employment gains topped 100,000 for the third consecutive month, a pattern not seen since early 2024.

Job growth was also far stronger than initially thought in recent months. March’s payroll gains were revised up by 29,000 to 214,000, while April’s tally was revised higher by 64,000 to 179,000 jobs added.

Following those upward revisions, employment gains ran at a 188,000-job clip for the past three months and a nearly 114,000-job monthly pace year to date – a far and welcome cry from last year, when fewer than 10,000 jobs were added each month.

It is indeed quite a change in momentum, at least since February.

However, when you dig into the actual jobs report, it turns out that three areas had most of the job growth.

Leisure and hospitality added 70,000 jobs in May, well above the average monthly gain of 14,000 over the prior 12 months. Over the month, food services and drinking places added 48,000 jobs.

In May, employment in local government rose by 55,000, largely reflecting a gain in local government, excluding education (+44,000).

Health care added 35,000 jobs in May, in line with the average monthly gain of 38,000 over the prior 12 months. Over the month, ambulatory health care services added 26,000 jobs, including a gain of 11,000 in home health care services. Employment continued to trend up in hospitals (+6,000).

Take out those three areas, and the other 68% of the US economy added only 12,000 jobs in May, continuing a trend of uneven job growth across sectors.

There was a positive in that manufacturing employment got a gain of 7,000 for May, and up 25,000 since end of 2025. Might we finally be seeing a bottom for job losses after a loss of 295,000 jobs from the start of 2024 to the end of last year?

Or is the 2026 boost in manufacturing jobs a mere blip that’ll reverse as soon as the higher input costs and/or higher interest rates work their way through.

The household survey in the jobs report wasn't as impressive, even though unemployment stayed at a relatively low 4.3%. Yes, there were increases of 149,000 Americans saying they were employed and the labor force rose by 83,000. But that comes after several months of declines in both employment and labor force earlier in 2026, and the trend since April 2025 is still negative.

The household survey for May did feature a decline in the wider U-6 unemployment rate, from 8.2% to 8.1%, after increases in March and April, due to a drop in Americans who could only find part-time work (a measure that had jumped by quite a bit in the previous two months).

But these mostly good signs for the employment market were bad news for the stock market, as a good jobs market gives no reason to lower interest rates, especially as inflation continues to rise. So take a look at what the market has done since the jobs report came out Friday morning, June 5.

And while the growth of jobs has turned upward, wage growth is going the other way. From the BLS's jobs report release:

In May, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 12 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $37.53. Over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.4 percent. In May, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose by 8 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $32.31.

And Trump/GOP doesn't want to see wage growth continue to suck as 12-month consumer inflation zooms past 4%, with wages barely growing at half the rate they were when we had our last bout of rising inflation in 2022.

The stock market decline and lousy wage growth is why I think the jobs numbers aren't likely to be souped up by the Trump Administration. Because what TrumpWorld doesn't want is for interest rates to go back up, given how strung out on debt they and the tech oligarchs are. And that outweighs whatever good they can spin about a few months where job growth has gone back up to the levels of early 2024 - when many Americans were grumpy about a "Biden economy" that had prices going up at half the rate they are today.

Despite inflation and low wage growth, US jobs market somehow getting stronger in early 2026?

Today, we got more indications that maybe the US jobs market is showing signs of life this Spring?

US private employers added 122,000 jobs in May, payroll processor ADP said Wednesday.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected an increase of 120,000 roles, an increase from April’s revised level of 105,000, in a further sign of labor market stabilization. Gains were led by education and health services, though eight of the 10 supersectors ADP tracks posted positive movement.

"Hiring was more broad-based in May than we've seen in the last few years,” ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said in a statement. “The labor market continues to show sustained momentum going into the summer hiring season."…

Meanwhile, Tuesday’s job openings and labor turnover report from the federal government offered mixed signals for job-seekers. Though job openings surged in April to their highest level since May 2024, helping nudge the ratio of vacancies to unemployed workers to its best level since the beginning of last year, the openings were largely concentrated in just one sector: professional and business services.

Hiring, on the other hand, slid. And the quits rate, which is often seen as a barometer of workers’ confidence in the job market, also decreased slightly.

The ADP report has generally had good news for jobs in recent months, with private sector job growth averaging nearly 100,000 a month in that survey since January.

If there are solid job gains going on in 2026, that’s an improvement over what we had in 2025. The “gold standard” Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) had its latest release this week, which went through the end of 2025 and uses records from over 90% of payroll-listed employers.

The QCEW says that less than 300,000 jobs were added for all of last year, and more than half of US states lost jobs in 2025.

To be fair, the QCEW number is slightly above the monthly reports that had total job growth at only 116,000 for last year. So if anything, we would be likely to see slightly upward revisions for jobs when the preliminary benchmarks are released in a couple of months.

But notice how the Midwest wasn’t part of that job growth, and Wisconsin was part of that, with a loss of 4,157 jobs in the QCEW for 2025. That’s still quite a bit better than the loss of 19,000 (!) jobs in the monthly reports we have had for Wisconsin, so those numbers seem certain to be revised up for last year.

However, even if the US jobs market has picked up, wage growth hasn’t. ADP reports that 12-month wage growth is stuck at the lowest levels in 5 years. That is much less than workers were getting during the inflation spikes of 2022, with the premium for job leavers going down significantly.

While it is a good thing for the economy that large numbers of Americans aren’t out of work, it’s also more reason that the Federal Reserve might need to raise rates in the near future. If we aren’t in recession, but inflation keeps rising and the stock market in a speculation Bubble, tightening money is an obvious way to get back toward balance.

It sure makes me wonder why we would continue at 170 basis points below where we were 2 years ago - a time when inflation had been at lower rates than today for well over a year.

Our current level isn't cutting off these rising prices in both products and stocks. Which illustrates why times of stagflation are confounding for policymakers. When you have any growth (speculative or otherwise), prices spike up, wage growth often falls behind, and responsible banks tighten up. This inevitably slows down the economy, although the 2020s version doesn’t seem to have as much hiring or firing as we had 50 years ago (at least so far).

There’s also got to be a point where the higher costs and lack of wage growth leads to a lack of demand for other products. We haven’t seen a lot of it yet in 2026, but if Americans can’t get ahead of their bills, it may explain why consumer sentiment is so bad in a time when jobs are still getting added and unemployment appears to stay low.

We get a new monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday. We'll see if that also shows decent job growth, if unemployment remains in the low 4%s, and if wage growth continues to struggle. I can't think that all of these trends continue, and at least one of them breaks soon. But despite 3 months of war-induced price spikes, the US job market has yet to get hit.

Budget deal Pt. 2- Trump/GOP cutbacks from DC, and Wisconsin's other land mines for 2027

We ended Part 1 by saying that we could pass the "blockbuster" $1.8 billion school funding and tax cut/rebate package in Wisconsin, keep it for the next budget at a cost of $1.6 billion, and still balance the 2027-29 budget if state tax revenues increased by a (very feasible) 4% in each year.

But that number also assumes no increases in costs for the same amount of services from July 1, 2027 through June 30, 2029, and we are already seeing some costs go up for state services in June 2026 . For example, Wisconsin’s Medicaid budget is already projecting a $263.6 million deficit by June 30 of next year, as the Department of Health Services says “costs are trending higher than assumed in [the 2025-27 budget] for several essential healthcare services.” Oops.

Given that the 2025-27 budget was built on a projection of 2.9% inflation for 2026 and 2.2% in 2027 but PCE inflation is running at 3.8% over the last year, so not only have base costs gone up well beyond the 2.9% projection for 2026, but what reason to think that this figure will get back toward 2% for the 2027 Fiscal Year? Higher costs (both fuel and nonfuel) are soon to be passed ahead by businesses for their products, and there absolutely will be an attempt by companies to “re-set” prices at the start of next year to make sure the profit numbers stay strong in 2027.

So the base costs are likely to be higher in 2027 than what you're seeing in the structural budget.

There are also a couple of significant items that aren’t included in that structural deficit calculation that may require more money in the bank to pay for from July 1, 2027 to June 30, 2029. One is the possibility of an explosion in amount of the state’s writeoff for costs associated with the construction of data centers. As the Legislative Fiscal Bureau noted back in March:

The announcements and planned investments from these four certified companies combine for a total investment of more than $36.9 billion, spread over the life of each project (currently planned to occur between 2024 and 2028). It is estimated that an investment this size would result in $1.5 billion in initial foregone state sales tax revenue. Additional foregone state sales tax revenue of $369 million on an annual basis is estimated once these projects are completed. Expenditures eligible for the state tax exemption would also be exempt from local sales and use taxes, resulting in forgone county, city, and premier resort area tax collections, if applicable.

Almost all of that $1.5 billion in reduced sales tax revenue has yet to happen, as many of these projects aren’t didn’t start construction or have to send the information to WEDC until this year or later.

Sure, we also see revenue positives from the boosts in construction activity when it happens, but also note the “$369 million on an annual (aka – “ongoing”) basis is estimated once these projects are completed,” which should show up in the 2027-29 revenue estimates as well as future budgets. And if there’s a cutback in data center activity in 2027-29 (sure seems likely given how these things are hated across Wisconsin), then these facilities start being a drag on state revenues.

Another concern that could lurk over the next budget is the lack of help coming from DC under Trump/GOP, and how the Big Bunch of Bollocks that they made into law (including the votes of likely GOP Guv candidate Tom Tiffany) is going to shove costs down to the state level. That was illustrated again in a large Politico article over the weekend.

The Trump administration is counting on Medicaid work requirements to save the government billions of dollars. But well before the rules formally go into effect Jan. 1, they’re costing already-strapped states millions or tens of millions to implement.

State health departments are having to funnel resources into hiring more staff, paying for overtime, and upgrading their aging technology systems so they can determine which low-income residents are working, volunteering, caregiving, or studying enough hours to keep their Medicaid coverage. They are also building new systems to determine who is sick enough to qualify for an exemption…..

States and the federal government would theoretically save money if the requirements cause millions to drop off the Medicaid rolls, as predicted. However, state officials fear any state savings will be offset or even cancelled out by expenditures to enforce the rules, as well as other impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last summer. “I’m looking at the operational, I’m looking at the programmatic, and I’m looking at the fiscal challenges associated with the implementation of this bill, and it’s taking a significant amount of financial resources away from a system that people depend on,” said Marvin B. Figueroa, the Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Wisconsin was among the states that have shelled out more funds for these extra costs, giving $72 million over the next 2 years for personnel and technology upgrades to “increase oversight” on programs such as FoodShare and Medicaid (on top of the $263 million Medicaid deficit, by the way). It looks like these costs and positions are assumed as part of the LFB’s structural budget for 2027-29, but this seems far from the last of these items that’ll be cut from the Feds and Wisconsin will have to deal with and likely pay for.

There are also the extra funds Wisconsin has been able to take advantage of under the 2022 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, including $94.3 million of recently granted investments to remove lead from drinking water that Congressman Bryan Steil is taking credit for despite voting against the bill. The 2026 Fiscal Year is the last year for those boosts in investments, and do you think this dysfunctional GOP Congress or the Trump Administration is going to pass something else to keep those funds flowing? Especially with the US Highway Trust Fund expected to run out of money in 2 years? HAH!

That’ll add to the funding strains for a Wisconsin Transportation Fund that already is in need of more money. In the current state budget, there was a one-time transfer of $580 million sent from the General Fund in the 2026 Fiscal Year to pay for items in the Transportation Fund, in addition to ongoing transfers of just over $110 million from items such as a small portion of all sales taxes and specific sales taxes on electric vehicles, along with left-over funds from the state’s Petroleum Inspection Fee.

And without that one-time transfer of $580 million, the Wisconsin Transportation Fund is expected to spend $300 million more than it takes in for Fiscal Year 2027.

Since the Transportation Fund is projected to only have $28.5 million left over in it as the next budget begins, that means another $600 million is needed to make up the difference ($300 million each year). Plus whatever might be cut by Sean Duffy and company from US DOT for whatever stupid reason they make up.

Oh, and have I mentioned that a lot of highway construction cost is related to the costs of petroleum and other oil-related products? Those road projects sure won’t be cheaper when we’re debating the next budget this time next year.

And I haven't even figured in the effects of a recession caused by cutbacks in the face of these higher prices and/or reduced demand. If there is one, or of this inflated stock market ever falls back toward reality, then you likely don’t have that 4% increase in revenues that would at least give a chance of the next budget balancing.

So there are plenty of legitimate reasons why Legislative Democrats and others could voice concerns about using up our budget surplus in 2026 when things are likely to be much tougher in 2027. That doesn’t mean there isn’t merit to giving education-related property tax relief now, when so many Wisconsinites are struggling, and I still remain ambivalent on what's the best option. I get the WisDems wanting more money to be left for 2027, given the strong chances of them running all of state government at that time, but I also get taking care of some of the real strains for taxpayers and K-12 school districts today while we can.

But while you can question whether concerns over future costs should outweigh the need for relief today, you can't say the numbers are made up, because the 2027-29 budget in Wisconsin could be even tighter than the "structural deficit" calculations let on, after the Trump/GOP crew got back in power in 2025.

A few key budget things to understand in Wisconsin's scuttled schools/taxes deal pt.1

Two weeks after the rejection of the tax cut and school funding deal in Wisconsin, it's clear that a lot of people don't exactly know all of the numbers involved, or the difference between budgets of NOW and LATER.

For example, all of the following can be true.

1. If no more bills are passed and if state tax revenues remained in the positive trend we saw through April 2026, we'd likely have more than $3 billion in the bank as the biennium ends on June 30, 2027.

2. We could give back $1.8 billion of this in the form of income tax rebates, property tax relief for schools, some targeted tax cuts, and increases in funding for special education services, and still have a bit more than $1 billion left in the bank on June 30, 2027.

3. Passing that $1.8 billion package also means we are looking at a significant budget hole starting on July 1, 2027, where expenses would outnumber revenues by far more than the $1 billion+ in the bank at the start of the 2027-29 biennium.

And a big part of this is the issue of one-time vs ongoing, which is always something that should be central to taxing and spending policy analysis, but usually isn't looked at too much by the media. But what is affordable in one year may not be affordable in future years. Or these ongoing, continuing measures might be just fine and doable, depending on how the bigger picture looks.

Within a week of the school funding/tax cut deal's demise, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau released its breakdown of the bill's costs for now and in future years. Note that while the biggest cost would have been in the Fiscal Year that starts on July 1, it would still have more than $1.6 billion in commitments in the next state budget.

This is because while the $870 million income tax rebate and the $20 million in Disaster Assistance Grants are one-time expenses, all of the other items are ongoing, which means those tax cuts and spending will continue into the next budget until something is changed by a later law.

Likewise, Fiscal Year 2026 is slated to spend a significant amount of General Purpose tax dollars above revenues, even if the $300 million in extra revenue that the Evers Administration estimated last month for FY 26 were to come through (and revenue numbers through the end of April would agree that we are ahead of estimates). But if those added revenues were to hold up for the next Fiscal Year at the same 1.5% increase rate that LFB estimated earlier this year, we'd have a 2027 Fiscal Year that would nearly be in balance.

But that's assuming the $3.4 billion bill doesn't get passed. If it does, then the next fiscal year is projected to have a similar one-year deficit to this current one, even if the extra $300 million in revenues come in for both fiscal years.

And that's where we have the "$2.9 billion structural deficit" argument come in, as the LFB put together the $0.5 billion left in the bank to start the next budget if this bill were to pass, then looked at the 2027-29 budget commitments under the base budgets of 2027, and added in the extra spending/tax cuts that would be ongoing. That means expenses exceed revenues by $3.4 billion for the next budget, and $2.9 billion that has to be made up somehow.

However, one argument being made by the Howard Markleins of the world is that revenue growth is not part of those 2027-29 estimates. So let's throw in a 4% growth assumption (which has been attainable in recent years), and see what we get with this bill.

If a 4% increase in revenues does fill in the gap that appears in the “structural deficit”, then we should be able to get by, right?

Ahh, but there are a lot more obstacles to balancing things in a 2027-29 budget that seems likely to be the most difficult one in the 2020s. And we'll get into those in part 2.