Economy in Brief

The price for a gallon of regular gasoline slipped 2 cents to $3.63 last week (-0.4% y/y). Nevertheless, it remained near the highest price since early-April. Prices remained down from the $3.78 per gallon peak reached late in [...]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its June Job Openings & Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) that the job openings rate remained steady m/m at 2.8% in June. May was revised up from 2.7%. The trend, however, has been sharply [...]

Germany is the strong economy of Europe. However, Germany is a strange strong economy. As the table above shows, in June, German orders are rebounding, rising by 3.8% after falling for two months in a row. Foreign orders have now [...]

The U.S. foreign trade deficit fell sharply during June to its shallowest level since October 2009. The $34.3 billion deficit compared to a revised $44.1 billion in May, initially reported as $45.0 billion. A $43.5 billion deficit had [...]

The chart plots the course of the services PMIs for the European monetary union versus three of the BRIC countries: India, China and Russia. It shows that the developing economy service sectors have tended to be stronger than Europe [...]

Personal income growth moderated in June, with a 0.3% rise (3.1% y/y) after May's 0.4%, which was revised from 0.5% reported before. Consensus forecasts had looked for 0.4% in June. This report is part of the BEA's comprehensive [...]

Sales of light vehicles remain on a firm footing. Unit sales of light motor vehicles slipped 1.8% during July versus June to 15.67 million (SAAR) according to the Autodata Corporation. Despite the dip, sales remained up 11.2% from [...]

There is a great deal of variation for countries among their manufacturing sectors over the recent time horizon. Indonesia, Vietnam, the US, the UK and Canada generally have the highest values when we evaluate the standing of their [...]