The recent GF Herald article about housing prices brings to the forefront an issue with housing price calculations. The Herald used index numbers based on sales, which is problematic. What was the composition of sales in a given month? If there were only high value homes there could be sample issues. Also, when you attempt to make a comparison between two areas you have a double issue with the inconsistency of samples.
A recent report out by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (available as a pdf here) looks at the connection between state tax rates and migration between states. Or maybe it does not. They find little connection between changes in state tax rates and the migration between states.
I have not looked at oil production time series for North Dakota in a while so I thought it time to take a look. Oil production, in fact most commodity production, and certainly extractive production, has an interesting cost structure. There are significant fixed cost elements to cover in order to generate profit. Notice in the graph below that while price starts rising around 2000, it was not until around 2005 that production started to rise. As the price continues to rise we see production continue to increase too.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released data on employment and unemployment from the Current Employment Statistics survey. North Dakota was number one in the country with a 4.4% increase in total nonfarm employment from year ago levels. That is 12 consecutive months where the year-over-year percent change was at or above 3%, and something like 55 months in a row that the number was positive. This is a pretty stellar performance.
Continue reading North Dakota Labor Data ~ July 2014 Edition
Housing remains a frequent topic of discussion for people in North Dakota. Most of the discussion falls under the heading of “affordability”, a suitably vague term essentially guaranteeing little to no progress on the issue, if it is a problem at all. What is the affordability issue? My suspicion is that people are thinking of something similar to the following graph: