Economy in Brief

Japan continues as if cursed with a similar travail to that of Sisyphus. He was condemned to have to roll a huge boulder up a hill only to see it roll back over him to sit the floor of the hill so he was forever to commit the same [...]

Import prices notched 0.1% higher (-1.1% y/y) during September following an unrevised 0.2% August decline. The increase matched expectations in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. These figures are not seasonally adjusted. A 1.2% [...]

The total job openings rate declined to 3.6% in August, down from the record high of 3.9% in July. It was the lowest rate since December. The private sector job openings rate fell to 3.9%, a three month low. In the government sector, [...]

There has been a noticeable lull in manufacturing over the past year. It is not just Europe or just the United States. The Markit PMI data confirm a global slowdown with low PMI readings being endemic to the global economy. Global PMI [...]

Regular gasoline prices rose to $2.27 per gallon (-2.8% y/y) last week, the highest level since early July. Prices remained down, however, versus a 2014 high of $3.71 per gallon. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the [...]

The closely watched ZEW expectations index rose by nearly 6 points in October, rising to 6.2 from 0.5 in September. The current index advanced to 59.5 from 55.1, a gain of about four points. These are not large monthly gains and they [...]

The Labor Market Conditions Index from the Federal Reserve Board includes 19 indicators of labor market activity, covering the broad categories of unemployment and underemployment. These include jobs, workweeks, wages, vacancies, [...]

The National Federation of Independent Business reported that its Small Business Optimism Index eased 0.3% during September to 94.1 following an unrevised 0.2% August dip. Optimism remained down 6.2% versus its peak in December 2014. [...]