Job gains averaged 186,000 a month in 2024. But 76% of the job growth in the past year has been in healthcare and education, leisure and hospitality, and government. In fields such as finance, information, and professional and business services, job growth has been far weaker.
Retail availability has fallen to record-low levels since the pandemic, thanks in part to a dearth in new store construction. Rent prices are climbing in many places.
The national vacancy rate for multifamily apartments reached 8% in the last quarter of 2024—higher than it was before the pandemic. Led by four and five star units over 11%, three star units above 7%, with one and two star units just over 5% vacant.
The spread between current coupon benchmark mortgage bonds and the yield of relevant Treasurys is currently between 1.3 to 1.4 percentage points. That gap has been unusually wide for a few years now, well above the sub-1 point gap seen back in 2019.
The national office-vacancy rate for primary markets ended 2024 at a record 20.4%. The delinquency rate of debt backed by office buildings converted into securities hit 11.01%—the highest since tracking began in 2000.
More than 1.6 million of those jobless workers had been job hunting for at least six months. The number of people searching for that long is up more than 50% since the end of 2022.
Spreads on 10-year, investment-grade corporate bonds, which make up the core of the market, stood at 86 basis points as of Thursday, down from 116 basis points a year earlier. Before this year, investment-grade spreads hadn’t been that low since 2005.
An estimated $18 trillion of household wealth was lost in China caused by the country’s property meltdown since 2021.
Total assets in U.S.-based ETFs reached a record $10.6 trillion at the end of November, an increase of more than 30% from the start of 2024.
