Economy in Brief: April 2008

The Institute for Supply Management reported that its Business Activity Index for the non-manufacturing sector improved again in March to 52.2. That was up from 50.8 in February and from 41.9 in January. Consensus expectations had [...]

Initial unemployment insurance claims surged 38,000 last week to 407,000. A dip of 6,000 during the prior week was revised slightly from the 9,000 worker decline reported initially. The latest was near the highest level since [...]

The Institute for Supply Management reported that its Business Activity Index for the non-manufacturing sector improved again in March to 52.2. That was up from 50.8 in February and from 41.9 in January. Consensus expectations had [...]

PPI trends are decidedly poor in the Euro Area. The core PPI excluding energy is on the rise with its three-month pace at 5.1% up from 3.9% over six months and from 3.6% over 12 months. This sort of acceleration in the ex-energy rate [...]

Factory inventories rose 0.5% in February, down from the 1.3% surge during January. Despite the lesser rate of monthly gain, the three month growth in inventories jumped to 11.3% (AR) which was near its strongest since early 2005. [...]

Job cut announcements in March fell to 53,579 from 72,091 during the prior month, according to the Challenger, Grey & Christmas survey. The three month average of announcements, however, has been stable since early last year. The [...]

The ADP National Employment Report, from the payroll processor, reported that private nonfarm payrolls rose 8,000 last month after a slightly revised decline of 18,000 during February. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment [...]

U.S. sales of light vehicles during March at a 15.11M unit annual selling rate were at the lowest level since October 2005 according to the Autodata Corporation. The 1.7% m/m decline from 15.38M followed an increase of just 0.3% [...]