Economy in Brief

German orders recorded a sharp snap back in October, rising by 3.9% after falling by 2.4% in September, The jump still leaves overall orders lower by 2% year-on-year but the profile is now sharply different with foreign-sourced orders [...]

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that 57,081 job cuts were announced during November, up 19.6% from October and by more than one-third y/y. Job cut announcements rose in the aerospace/defense, apparel, [...]

Initial jobless insurance claims fell again last week after filings were raised sharply in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Claims fell during the week ended December 1 to 370,000 from 395,000 in the prior period, initially reported as [...]

Orders in the factory sector are still rising, but the slower trend rate of growth mirrors other indications of slowing activity in manufacturing. Factory sector orders in October rose 0.8% following a 4.5% September gain. The [...]

Nonfarm business sector productivity for Q3'12 was revised up to 2.9% (1.7% y/y) from last month's estimate of a 1.9% gain which matched the Q2 rise. Growth was its fastest in two years. The latest increase reflected a 4.2% (3.5% y/y) [...]

Among the original EMU members reporting service sector PMI details, Ireland and Italy were the only reporters with slippage posted in November. The overall EMU reading advanced to 46.74 from 46.04 a metric still pointing to declines [...]

The Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) improved to 54.7 last month from an unrevised 54.2 during October. The figure compared to Consensus expectations for a decline [...]

The Automatic Data Processing (ADP) payroll survey indicated that private sector payrolls rose 118,000 last month after a little-revised 157,000 gain, although September's gain was revised lower. The latest increase was short of the [...]