As Elizabeth Large notes on her blog, restaurants continue to bite the sawdust. This suggests larger economic weakness. Restaurants are highly visible indicators of economic health or distress. They multiply or fold according to what's going on in the economy as a whole -- only in exaggerated movements. Because restaurants get discretionary spending, they're often the first to perk up when the economy is improving and the first to feel pain when things go bad.

But when you look up the accounts at the Labor Department, restaurants seem to be doing fine. There were 1,700 more restaurant and bar jobs in metro Baltimore in June than there were a year previously. And there were 3,800 more restaurant and bar jobs statewide. The graph below of metro Baltimore restaurant/bar employment shows what's going on -- peaks and dips according to season (restaurants staff up for the summer tourism business) but progressively higher peaks each year. I have no doubt that restaurant profits are getting killed by soaring food prices. But this is not a picture of an economy in serious trouble.