Economy in Brief: November 2010

The UK service sector diffusion index has risen to 53.19 in October from 52.80 in September. The index is not particularly strong, standing only in the 64th percentile of its range. Earlier this month the EU indices showed that the [...]

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Grey & Christmas indicated that the level of layoffs during October increased slightly to 37,986 but that remained near the smallest number since June of 2000. The level remains down by more than [...]

In their latest National Employment Report, the payroll processor, Automatic Data Processing (ADP), indicated that the level of private nonfarm payrolls rose 43,000 m/m during October. The September report was revised to show a lesser [...]

The EMU MFG PMIs rose in much of the Zone in October. The weighted EMU reading advanced by nearly one point While the German index rose by 1.6 points, a rise that still failed to shake off the cumulative drops of the previous two [...]

Imbalances in world trade are scheduled to be on the agenda at the upcoming meeting of the G20* in Seoul, Korea on November 11 and 12. The Haver data bases, EMERGE and G10, are good places to find background data pertaining to the [...]

Consumers continue to shy away from the chain-store checkout counter. Last week, chain store sales ticked up all of 0.1% after a 0.3% gain the prior week. These increases, however, left the October average down 0.7%. The decline [...]

Sideways has typified the gasoline price trend for some time. The pump price for regular gasoline slipped to $2.81 per gallon last week, down one penny w/w. Prices have been slightly above or below the current level, but are close to [...]

The value of construction put-in-place recovered 0.5% during September following a downwardly-revised 0.2% August down-tick. The figure was slightly better than Consensus expectations for a 0.5% decline for last month. These recent [...]