Economy in Brief

Overall retail sales including food services & drinking places during April were little-changed (+0.9% y/y) following a 1.1% March increase, revised from 0.9%. A 0.2% rise had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. [...]

The Federal Government reported a $156.7 billion budget surplus during April compared to a $106.9 billion surplus during April of 2014. A $141.0 billion surplus had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. For the first [...]

The job openings rate during March eased m/m to 3.4%. It remained up from the recession low of 1.6% but just below the series' high of 3.8% early in 2001. The job openings rate is the number of job openings on the last business day of [...]

The OECD leading indicators for March show slippage in the OECD, the U.S., the U.K., and China. The EMU gauge is unchanged in March while Japan's gauge has moved higher. The U.S. has been slipping since June 2014. Its reading of 99.6 [...]

The National Federation of Independent Business reported that its Small Business Optimism Index improved to 96.9 during April, making up most of its decline to an unrevised 95.2 in March. The figure remained down from the December [...]

Gasoline prices rose 3 cents last week to an average $2.69 per gallon (-26.6%) at the pump, the highest level since early-December and up nearly one-third versus the late-January low of $2.04. Haver Analytics constructs factors [...]

Dutch manufacturing and overall IP both fell in March. Overall IP fell for the first time in two months while manufacturing had fallen in two of the last three months. Trends for IP are not good. Utilities output and transportation [...]

The industrial commodity price index from the Foundation for International Business and Economic Research (FIBER) improved 4.0% since the middle of March reflecting improvement amongst several industrial sectors. Prices in the crude [...]