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That's looking fairly stagnant lately. Something clearly happened in 2002 though. Here's the story.
Labor dispute shuts down ports
LONG BEACH, California (CNN) -- The Pacific Maritime Association said Sunday it had reinstated its lockout of workers at all 29 West Coast ports at least until Monday because of a labor dispute with union workers.
President Takes Action to Protect America's Economy and Jobs
Here's the combined traffic into both ports through September, 2007 (still awaiting the October numbers from the Port of Los Angeles).
I think the combination paints a more reliable picture of what is going on. There's definitely a slowdown at these two ports.
See Also:
Another Look at Cargo Traffic
Source Data:
Port of Long Beach: Statistics
Port of Los Angeles: Statistics
The X-12-ARIMA Seasonal Adjustment Program
7 comments:
StagMark,
Awesome charts as always. While notoriously difficult to call, how do you say, "Gee, that looks like a turning point?"
Also, have you dug into the TIC data? Something about China and Japan holding less in September than they did in August, though the overall numbers went up very modestly (net foreign capital flow). One issue that may be clouding the numbers is that the purchases by hedgies in the Cayman's may be registering as foreign capital inflows...might be some interesting charts in there already if not real soon now.
Thanks again,
energyecon
While notoriously difficult to call, how do you say, "Gee, that looks like a turning point?"
Let's go for a musical tribute. :)
Digging into the TIC data is something that's now on my list.
I'm amazed at just how much information is out there. It really hit home yesterday when I stumbled upon the Census seasonal adjustment program and that it was publicly available.
On a tinfoil wavelength it may be a bit of 'hidden in plain sight' - though the efforts of yourself and others like CR, Tanta, et. al. are akin to 'Folding at Home' - massively parallel processing combing patterns from the sea of data to yield unfiltered (or at lease much less) information.
Thanks StagMark and keep up the phenom plots please!
energyecon
Nice post, Mark!
In particular, notice that since 1995, it has never happened that the peak of one year was lower than the peak of the previous year. Not even in the 2001 recession. Until now, that is, when theoretically we are not in a recession. It's extraordinarily hard to believe that we aren't when you look at freight and grocery data. We never, ever see the volume drops we are seeing now unless we are in recession. NEVER.
This is a turning point in many ways. You are correctly picking up a major turn in trade. The eastern ports are getting more traffic relatively, but most of their traffic comes from Europe.
energyecon,
I've never been a huge fan of filtering the data (seasonal adjustments) in the past, but it sure makes it easier to see the magnitude of the potential problem, doesn't it?
In other words, since this is supposedly the peak shipping season, it isn't good enough to simply get to the red line in the unadjusted data, we'd have to go well on the other side of it. We're coming up far short.
MaxedOutMama,
Yeah, things do appear to be breaking. You can see a similar break in the nonstore retail sales data.
http://illusionofprosperity.blogspot.com/2007/11/nonstore-retail-sales.html
The online retailers need the growth story to hold in order to once again justify their lofty valuations, yet online retailing includes the most discretionary purchases of all. Let's just say few people buy bags of rice and beans online.
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