Economy in Brief

Reporting later than most EMU nations, Italy released industrial output figures for November showing that IP fell by a sharp 0.7% one month after October's 0.8% gain. Despite the relatively sharp drop, Italian overall IP trends are [...]

The U.S. Treasury Department reported a $14.4 billion budget deficit during December, reversing the $1.9 billion surplus twelve months earlier. A $3.5 billion deficit had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. Overall [...]

EMU industrial production fell sharply in November, dropping for the third time in four months. Still, the year-over-year growth rate stands above 1% but the sequential path shows that IP growth is steadily decelerating in more recent [...]

The National Federation of Independent Business reported that its Small Business Optimism Index gained 0.4 points during December to a seasonally adjusted 95.2. It remained down, however, from 100.4 in December 2014. According to the [...]

The job openings rate increased to 3.7% during November from 3.6% in October. The latest figure compared to 3.4% one year earlier, but was down from the expansion high of 3.8% reached during July. The private sector job openings rate [...]

The pump price for a gallon of regular gasoline averaged $2.00 last week (-6.7% y/y) according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal variation in pump prices, and the adjusted [...]

U.K. manufacturing industrial production fell by 0.4% in November, falling for the second straight month. Manufacturing output is falling by 1.3% over 12 months and falling by 0.4% over six months. Over three months, output is still [...]

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, [...]