Location Strategy Chartbook 08.15.2026

Headline PPI was roughly flat after rounding in July, driven by falling energy prices. Core PPI rose 0.2%, tamer than expected, although the June reading was revised up from 0.2% to 0.4%.

Retails sales dropped in July, however Amazon Prime day was in June this year instead of July

Kyla Scanlon: As Greg Ip wrote in the Wall Street Journal, labor received about 58% of total proceeds of economic output, as measured by gross domestic income, in 1980, a number that has since dropped to about 51% as of late last year. Over the same time frame, corporate profits’ share of the economy rose from 7% to 11.7%. Ip writes:

[The economy’s] rewards are going disproportionately toward capital instead of labor. Profits have soared since the pandemic, and the market value attached to those profits even more. The result: Capital, which includes businesses, shareholders and superstar employees, is triumphant, while the average worker ekes out marginal gains.

Most Americans make most of their money from wages. According to the Minneapolis Fed, the median American pulls in $3,000 from nonwage income per year, but about $37k in wages. Part of the problem with wages is that inflation gnaws away at them, and has wiped out all wage gains over the past four months.

But some people make a lot of money in the nonwage income category - the very rich and the older population.

42% of the nonwage income for the top 1% comes purely from capital gains, from stocks. The second biggest component is S-corp income, which as the Fed researchers note, is “labor in the economic sense.” It’s definitely a form of what we would consider “work.”

As the Atlantic reported, “a 2024 Charles Schwab survey found that the average Zoomer started saving at age 19, younger than other generations had. (The typical Boomer, for comparison, began at 35.)”

Northwestern Mutual noted in a study that “80% and 75% of Gen Zers and millennials” are “drawn to speculative investments because they feel financially behind.”

• By 2030, 1 in 5 Americans will be over the age of 65. In 1920, it was 1 in 20.

• Almost half of Americans live in a county where those over 64 outnumber those under 15. This number was 5% in 1990, according to the Economist.

  And that’s showing up in how the economy operates:

• In 1989, Americans 55+ held a little over half of all wealth in the United States, now they hold 74%.

• At the same time, wealth held by those under 40 fell from 11% to 6.6%.

• People aged 70 and older are 12% of the population, which has grown from 7.5% in 1981.

• They now hold 32% of all household net worth, up from 20% two decades ago.

• Their share of household equities has nearly doubled since 2007, as has their share of real estate.

Jay Parsons: Here are the hottest 20 markets for apartment rent growth right now. It's an eclectic list with a common denominator: Chronically low supply or dramatically declining supply.

Biggest surprises: Look at the surges in Reno, Boise, Wilmington, Charleston. Rents were previously falling in all four due to high supply. But supply has dropped off dramatically, while demand has held strong/solid, and now rents are increasing again. We could see other n Belt / Mountain markets follow as supply drops further.

And, of course, the Bay Area continues to boom. In San Francisco, rents up 13.5%!

Also: Half the top 20 comes from the low-supplied Midwest or Northeast regions. Some of these MSAs lose more units to obsolescence than they build in a given year, so it doesn't take huge demand to push up rents.

Charleston leads the way in MF sunbelt recovery with annual growth in asking rents improving from negative 0.3% in the second quarter of 2025 to positive 2.2% one year later, while vacancy fell sharply from 12.3% to 8.1%.

Austin posted one of the most significant turnarounds despite remaining in negative territory. Annual rent growth improved from negative 4.1% to negative 2.3% year over year, while vacancy declined from 15.2% to 12.2%.

The weakest performers were Tampa, Florida, and San Antonio and Houston, Texas. Tampa recorded the largest deterioration in rent growth among the markets analyzed, falling from 0.9% annual growth in the second quarter of 2025 to negative 1.7% a year later.