Economy in Brief

The EMU area PPI surged by 1.1% in December, driving the three-month inflation rate to 10%, the six-month pace to 5.3% and raising the year-over-year pace to 1.6%. This is a sharp reversal from last year's 3% drop in the PPI. Price [...]

Initial filings for unemployment insurance declined to 246,000 (-14.0% y/y) during the week ended January 28 from 260,000 claims in the prior week, revised from 259,000. Expectations in the Action Economics Forecast Survey had been [...]

Growth in nonfarm output per hour during Q4'16 increased at a 1.3% rate (1.0% y/y) following a 3.5% rise in Q3, revised from 3.1%. A 1.0% increase had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. These latest two increase [...]

Total sales of light vehicles fell 4.4% (-1.6% y/y) to 17.61 million units (SAAR) during January from 18.43 million units sold in December, according to the Autodata Corporation. Leading the decline was a 9.3% drop (-11.8% y/y) in [...]

At today's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the targeted fed funds rate was left unchanged in a range between 0.50% and 0.75%. It remained the highest target since the end of 2008. The Fed continued to indicate that job [...]

The value of construction put-in-place slipped 0.2% during December following an unrevised 0.9% November increase. Construction was up 4.2% y/y following stronger growth from 2012 through 2015. The latest decline disappointed [...]

The ISM composite index of factory sector activity increased to 56.0 during January from 54.5 in December, initially reported as 54.7. It was highest reading since November 2014. Expectations called for 55.0 in the Action Economics [...]

The statistical variation among the values of the countries that have reported their manufacturing indices has widened again this month. The dispersion has been greater than it is in January only 6% of the time since 1991. The most [...]