Economy in Brief

Initial claims for unemployment insurance declined to 278,000 (+5.3% y/y) during the week ended January 23 following 294,000 claims in the prior week, revised from 293,000. The four-week moving average now stands at 283,000, and has [...]

The comprehensive EU sentiment index and its counterpart for the EMU fell and each index fell to a five-month low in January. Happy New Year! The indices are out relatively late in the month, allowing for the month's activities to be [...]

New orders for durable goods tumbled 5.1% (-0.6% y/y) during December following a -0.5% decline in November, revised from little change in the advance report. A 0.2% decline had been expected in the Action Economics' Forecast Survey. [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its total Mortgage Market Volume Index gained 8.8% last week (-15.1% y/y), the third month of strong gain. Purchase applications increased 4.6% (22.5% y/y). Refinancing applications rose [...]

At today's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed funds rate was left unchanged in the range of 0.25% - 0.50%. Adding caution to the economic outlook, the Fed indicated that it "is closely monitoring global economic and [...]

The overall U.S. unemployment rate held steady during December at 5.0% for the third straight month, half its late-2009 peak. For all of last year, the 5.3% jobless rate was down roughly two percentage points from 2014. Falling [...]

Sales of new single-family homes strengthened 10.8% during December to 544,000 from 491,000 in November, revised from 490,000. The increase was helped by new closing procedures which shifted sales out of November. The gain left sales [...]

Germany's GfK consumer confidence index, a forward-looking measure, predicts a flattening of confidence for Germany in February. The GfK measure has slowed markedly in recent months but has continued to make some hard-fought gains. As [...]