Will the strength of the consumer sector be enough to provide a soft landing for the industrial sector? Or will the decline in business investment gain momentum and ultimately pull the consumer sector down with it. To put it more succinctly, will we have an overall economic recession next year or not?

Consumers are fully employed with rising incomes. They also have relatively low levels of household debt, which has been accrued at low interest rates. And most importantly, they account for over two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity.

The demand for molds can be extremely volatile, but even moderate swings in the overall totals can represent huge hardships for some shops.

It is stating the obvious to say the U.S. plastics industry changed substantially in the past 30 years. But if we want to manage, or even benefit, from future changes, it is necessary to glean an understanding of the lessons from the past.

The base-case outlook for the film and sheet segments of the plastics industry in the coming months is mixed. But a forecast of "mostly flat" is not too bad considering we have been trending mostly higher for the past 10 years.

"I am not arguing with the confidence data; I am trying to interpret it. Historical analysis shows that confidence surveys are not always accurate predictors of the future. But that does not mean they should be ignored."

"I am not sure what sparked such a vigorous interest in recessions this month, but I am increasingly concerned that we might just be talking our way into one."

The always-challenging task of analyzing and forecasting the business cycle has been more difficult than usual in recent years.

Housing starts are being suppressed by supply constraints rather than waning demand for new houses. The problem continues to be a tight labor market for residential construction workers.

I do not think conditions will change overnight, but could be substantially different by the end of the year. Consider yourselves warned.

Overall business conditions for the auto industry in the first half of 2019 were better than I expected. Things could get worse, for sure. But some upside risks are also emerging.

While the National Association of Business Economists may express concerns about trade issues, Bill Wood, economic editor, notes the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are driven more by nonpolitically motivated forces.

As anybody in the plastics industry can attest, the mainstream press is not always good with coverage of complicated issues.

This increase surprised most analysts, and while practitioners of the dismal science rarely get excited, this certainly caught our attention. It is not an exaggeration to say that the rate of change in productivity levels is the most important statistic in macroeconomics.

It is no secret that the labor market across all sectors of the U.S. economy is tight. The total number of job openings is at a historically high level. It is so high that there is less than one unemployed person per job opening. This gap is the widest for jobs in the high-wage industries. So it is no surprise that total wages are rising at an accelerating rate.