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Economy in Brief
U.S. Consumer Credit Growth Surges in June
Consumer credit outstanding jumped $40.1 billion (7.7% y/y) in June...
Japan's LEI Waffles and Slows
Japan's leading economic index in June slipped to 100.6...
U.S. Foreign Trade Deficit Narrows in June
The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services (BOP basis) fell to $79.61 billion in June...
U.S. Unemployment Claims Remain on an Uptrend
Initial claims for unemployment insurance filed in the week ended July 30 rose 6,000 to 260,000...
RICS Survey Shows Weakening U.K. Housing Market
With the Bank of England hiking its key rate by 50 basis points and planning to squeeze its balance sheet...
Viewpoints
Commentaries are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the views of Haver Analytics.
Excess Demand for Goods Caused Supply Constraints
Q2 GDP Does Not Confirm Economic Recession, But It Does Confirm A Corporate Profit Recession
State Coincident Indexes in June 2022
State Labor Markets in June 2022
No Recession Call Can Be Made Before BEA Explains The Record Gap Between Income & Output
The overall chart on housing starts only hints at some sort of slowing in the process of housings decline (see chart above). But regional data show more clearly that a bottoming process is really in train (see table below). The annualized growth rates show that for the South and the West near term trends have turned up or gone flat compared to earlier trends that show declines still in play. Even over six months the West and South show little tendency to decline or only a small erosion. These are sharp contrasts to the data drawn from the bad weather regions of the Northeast and Midwest. The Midwest shows accelerating weakness - a result I am not really prepared to take at face value even though there is clear potential cause; in the industrial sector that is the core of jobs in that region is really being battered. The Northeast also shows accelerating declines but a milder deceleration is at work there than the Midwest.On balance, as mixed as the regional data are, they display differences that are understandable and logically offer weather up as the explanation. This is another reminder to be careful in taking other data from the period as representative. If weather has had this sort of impact on housing and could distort industrial production, too, its impact on exaggerating weakness might be even more pronounced in reports where attribution of weakness to weather is not so obvious. |
Feb 2007 | % Change at Ann Rate | ||
Regional Trends | 3-Mo | 6-Mo | 1-Yr |
Northeast | -47.1% | -31.3% | -27.4% |
Midwest | -116.3% | -73.7% | -50.6% |
South | -0.5% | -4.5% | -20.3% |
West | 50.4% | 2.0% | -30.9% |