Economy in Brief

Gasoline prices dipped a penny last week to $2.45 cents per gallon and remained down by roughly one-third versus a year ago. Prices remained well below the $3.70 per gallon peak last June. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting [...]

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reported that its March Composite index of factory sector activity deteriorated to -17.4, the third consecutive negative monthly reading. The figure reflected weakness amongst most of the component [...]

The just-released National Association for Business Economics forecast of 2.9% growth in U.S. real economic activity next year follows an expected 3.1% rise this year. Quarterly GDP growth is expected to hold fairly steady near 3.0%. [...]

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that pending sales of single-family homes improved another 3.1% during February following a 1.2% January rise, last month reported as a 1.7% increase. These sales are reported as an [...]

Personal income rose 0.4% during February (4.5% y/y) following a revised 0.4% January increase, last month reported as 0.3%. Expectations had been for a 0.3% rise in the Consensus Economics Forecast Survey. Wages & salaries improved [...]

The EU Commission indices for the EU and EMU showed improvement in both regions in March. For the broader EU regions, the index of sentiment gained 0.9 points mostly on the back of improved retail sentiment and improved consumer [...]

The French household confidence reading has been stuck in a range of mostly the mid- to high-80s from August 2012 through November 2014. In just the last four months, the household indicator has broken out. Its reading of 93 is the [...]

Real GDP growth of 2.2% during Q4 2014 was unrevised in the latest estimate (2.4% y/y). The increase compared to an expected 2.4% rise in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. During all of last year, real GDP expanded 2.4%, up from [...]