Economy in Brief

German IP drops for the second consecutive month in September. That pairs with a string of declines in real manufacturing orders to create a poor performance in September and a weak outlook ahead. This is not what the ECB had wanted [...]

The labor market exhibited unexpected strength last month. Nonfarm payroll employment increased 271,000 following revised gains of 137,000 and 153,000 during the prior two months. Together, revisions added 12,000 jobs. The latest [...]

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that job cut announcements during October declined to 50,504 (-1.3% y/y) following the prior month's sharp decline to 58,877. Layoffs fell in the aerospace/defense, [...]

Initial claims for unemployment insurance increased by 16,000 during the week ended October 31 to 276,000 (-3.1% y/y). The prior week's level of 260,000 was unrevised. The latest was the highest level of claims since the last week of [...]

German orders send ominous signals as they drop for the third consecutive month in September. Orders are not just falling; they are decelerating with successively larger annualized negative rates of growth from 12-month to six-month [...]

Nonfarm productivity during Q3'15 grew 1.6% at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (0.4% y/y) following a 3.5% rise in Q2, earlier reported as 3.3%. Zero change in Q3 productivity was expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. [...]

These foreign trade figures add to the preliminary numbers released one week ago by including trade in services and data by country. The U.S. foreign trade deficit in goods and services during September declined to $40.8 billion [...]

The PMI total indices add new observations on services to the revised manufacturing readings issued earlier this week. The new total private sector index is the result. We see a slight downward revision to the EMU overall gauge and to [...]