Welcome back to Home Economics, a newsletter about the American housing market. This is The Week in Review, my weekly recap of macro and real estate news. Articles with a ◎ are free. Those with a ◉ have free previews but are only accessible in full for paying subscribers. Upgrade your subscription here:

Here’s what I’ve been struggling with this week: how much time should I be spending building systems? By “systems”, I mean everything from API calls to Adobe Illustrator scripts to home price models.

There is a steep cost to this kind of investment. Even if it holds the promise of boosting my productivity in the future, it comes at the expense of current output.

I’m not sure I have an answer, but let me know if you’ve figured it out. In the meantime, I am looking for a developer (the web kind, not the real estate kind)—if you know someone who can build clean, fast websites, and interactive maps and models (I’ve been meaning to put my surprisingly popular buy-or-rent tool, here ◉, online), please send them my way by hitting reply to this email.

This week I published an analysis about home affordability, here ◎. I was interested in figuring out the intersection between the size of the place people live in, their household income, and how much of that income they spend on housing. My conclusion: I don’t think we have a national home affordability crisis. I think we have an urban, lower income housing crisis.

Read the full analysis, and see the complete table, here ◎.

The main macroeconomic data next week is CPI, on Thursday at 8:30am. It’s reasonable to assume inflation is on a bumpy path lower, because shelter inflation (the main driver of elevated inflation recently) is subsiding as rents fall, and wages are declining, pulling down the price of services. I talked a lot of about this here ◎.

There are two other data releases next week. Realtor.com monthly metrics (inventory, etc) on Tuesday, and Zillow home prices on Friday. Zillow remains my favorite real estate data provider for the reasons I outlined here ◉.

Subscribers can download the housing economic data calendar here ◉

News: The employment situation report mostly disappointed expectations
Views: Construction industry employment remains surprisingly strong

Last week’s widely watched employment situation (“nonfarm payrolls”) report showed a rise in the unemployment rate. This was at least partly due to more people entering the labor force and seeking work—a good thing. Nevertheless, unemployment has risen steadily over the past year, and now stands at 4.1%—a hair away from triggering the Sahm rule (a widely followed recession predictor). The question is whether the recent slowing in employment growth is a return to the trend, or the beginning of a slowdown that pushes us right through and below the trend, into recession.

What’s maybe most surprising is that construction employment—supposedly highly sensitive to interest rates—hasn’t slowed much at all. This is true for both residential and nonresidential parts of the industry. In fact, employment in residential building construction has actually accelerated recently. The construction industry is 0.5% larger than it was 3 months ago—a larger increase than for most industries. I’ll have a deep dive into construction employment early next week.

Baby Reindeer. Yes, the UK is a shambles. Sir Keir Starmer won the Labour party the biggest bounty of seats since the days of Tony Blair, but we are a long ways from Cool Brittania. Still, there are some things I can’t deny the Brits just do so well. Oddly flavored potato chip flavors (prawn cocktail crisps, anyone?). A neighborhood pub (always carpeted!). And—dark comedy. Though I’m not sure I’d even call this new Netflix show dark. Maybe just, weird? In any case, I am one episode in but can already see what all the hype is about. Baby Reindeer, on Netflix, here ◉.

Wimbledon (ok I guess this is a UK edition). The world’s greatest tennis tournament is back. To me, Wimbledon has always signaled the start of summer (even if it’s been hot as balls in New York for weeks). I am eagerly looking forward to Djokovic’s defeat at the hands of Alcaraz or Sinner (I’d be happy with either). The best way to watch Wimbledon is by streaming it from BBC 2, using ExpressVPN to dial into London. BBC coverage here ◎, Express VPN here ◉.

Thanks for reading—have a great weekend!