Recent Updates
- Norway: Earnings (2017)
- Austria: Industrial Production, New Orders (Feb)
- Spain: PPI (Mar)
- Kazakhstan: Labor Productivity Index (Q4); Czech Republic: CPI (Mar); Tajikistan: Real Effective Exchange Rate (Mar); Russia: Foreign Cash Flow through Authorized Banks, Foreign Cash Purchase and Sale (Feb)
- Japan: Help Wanted Advertisements (Mar), All Industry Activity Indexes, Labor Productivity (Feb)
- more updates...
Economy in Brief
U.S. New Home Sales and Prices Strengthen
Sales of new single-family homes during March increased 4.0% (8.8% y/y) to 694,000 (SAAR)...
U.S. FHFA House Price Index Continues to Strengthen
The FHFA index of U.S. house prices rose 0.6% during February...
U.S. Energy Prices Rise Further
Retail gasoline prices increased to $2.80 per gallon last week (14.3% y/y)...
Italian Confidence Backtracks But Remains High-Valued As It Is for France and Germany
From Q1 2008 to date, Italian GDP actually has failed to grow and has declined by 5.8%...
U.S. Existing Home Sales & Prices Rise Again
The NAR reported that sales of existing homes increased 1.1% during March (-1.2% y/y) to 5.600 million units (AR)...
by Tom Moeller May 3, 2005
Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that job cut announcements in April fell 33.0% to the lowest level since November 2000. The three month average of job cut announcements fell to the lowest level since last September.
During the last ten years there has been an 84% (inverse) correlation between the three month moving average of announced job cuts and the three month change payroll employment.
Job cut announcements fell sharply m/m in the consumer goods (-18.2% y/y), industrial goods (-27.1% y/y), telecommunication (-96.1% y/y) and transportation industries but declines elsewhere were limited.
Job cut announcements differ from layoffs. Many are achieved through attrition, early retirement or just never occur.
Challenger also reported that announced hiring plans recovered some of the prior month's decline with a 21.3% rise.
| Challenger, Gray & Christmas | April | Mar | Y/Y | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Announced Job Cuts | 57,861 | 86,396 | -19.8% | 1,039,175 | 1,236,426 | 1,431,052 |
