Chipmaker AMD had its best quarter ever in 1Q22, according to earnings released May 3rd. Revenue (pro forma for the recent Xilinx acquisition) was over 3x typical pre-COVID levels. Management is guiding to an even better quarter in 2Q, extending a performance trend that stretches back to the beginning of the pandemic.

Citizens of richer countries tend to live longer lives. However, this relationship is much less reliable in Sub-Saharan Africa than in the rest of the world.

Internet access quality differs dramatically across (and within) regions of the U.S. In the South and the West especially, individual counties tend to either have widespread access, or very little.

The biggest caffeine-drinking countries in the world also tend to be some of the coldest.

More and more Americans are recycling their clothes, but most used clothing still ends up in landfill graves.

If you’re watching the NFL draft this weekend, you might be interested to know how scoring in the league has developed over time. It’s no secret that the development of the forward pass in 1933 changed the game, but how did this change the way teams score?

First of all, games became a lot higher-scoring. the 1940s and 1950s saw a boom in touchdown frequency thanks to the new rules of the game.

Second, the passing game played a much bigger role in point generation, and it still does today.

In the chart above, we show average receiving touchdowns per team per game (in red) and average rushing touchdowns per team per game (in blue) over time since 1922. While the 1920s and 1930s show that football was a ground game in the early years, passing has dominated ever since. Differentials in receiving touchdowns versus rushing touchdowns are now at the highest levels they’ve ever been.

Search data from Google helps tell the story of shifting brand preferences in the hot sauce marketplace. Tapatío and Cholula, both Mexican-style sauces, have gained significant popularity among consumers since 2016. Tapatío in particular has taken off over the last two years, around the same time that McCormick agreed to acquire Cholula for $800 million. Interestingly, McCormick already owns Frank’s Red Hot in its portfolio of brands.

Sriracha, which is still the most popular brand of these five in relative search popularity, has started to see this lead eroded over the last several years.

You’re hungry now, aren’t you? Check out our recent post on Chipotle’s store openings for more charts on the food industry.

We’re not the first outlet to take note of the ongoing Great Resignation. But, we did think it was interesting to parse this data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. They track hire rate (the portion of the workforce that takes a new job) and quit rate on a monthly basis, and the increasing trend in both has been happening ever since the financial crisis of 2008-2009.

What seems to be new is the pace of the hiring and quitting, which has accelerated significantly since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the chart above, you can see this play out with the initial drop in hiring and quitting in March and April 2020, followed by a quick ramp up in both up to current levels, which are the highest they’ve been in 15+ years.

If you’re interested in labor statistics in the United States, check out our recent post on employment rates by English-speaking ability.

Gasoline prices are up across the United States. According to GasBuddy, the average price for gasoline is now $4.11 per gallon at stations in the U.S.

In this analysis, we take a look at weekly gas prices (in both California and Florida, measured by data from the EIA) and compare them to historical averages for over the last five years.

After falling below seasonally-typical prices in early 2020 during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (see the red shaded portion of the graph above), prices have rallied back in an unrelenting way. In California, gas now costs an average of $5.51 per gallon, about $2.10 higher than normal for late April. In Florida, where the situation is (slightly) better, the price is $4.05 per gallon, which is around $1.58 higher than normal for the season.

Below, we show the seasonal premium (the same graph as above, just extended back to the beginning of 2013) to illustrate just how bad things have gotten. After trending below normal in the 2015-2017 oil price crash, gas prices are now the highest they’ve been (relative to the last five years) in almost ten years.

Our analysis at the top of the page also looks at total vehicle mileage in the U.S. (using data from FRED), illustrated by the road-colored line at the bottom of the chart that corresponds to the right-hand axis. Vehicle mileage is a good indicator of near-term demand for gasoline, and recovering travel volumes may be helping drive the gas market tightness (so-called demand-led inflation).

After bottoming out in the middle of the pandemic, mileage is gradually starting to recover, and is approaching pre-COVID levels.

Pet health insurance is a booming industry in North America, as shown here using data provided by the North American Pet Health Insurance Association. The number of insured pets nearly doubled from 2016 to 2020, and now totals almost 3.5 million pets. Most of these are dogs (about 83% of insured pets are dogs in the United States and 75% are dogs in Canada).

While the growth in number of insured pets has been impressive, the growth rate of the pet health insurance market in dollar terms has been even higher. Total premiums in North America have increased by at least 20% year-over-year since 2016. Compound annual growth rates (CAGR) in number of insured pets have been lower, at ~19% in the United States and ~13% in Canada.

The growth in this market is not just attributable to growth in the human or pet population. From 2012 to 2022, the United States human population grew at a +0.6% CAGR, while the cat population grew at a +1.5% CAGR and the dog population grew at a +4.1% CAGR.