Economy in Brief

Overall industrial output fell across most categories last month. Total production slipped 0.1% after an unrevised 1.0% April increase. The decline compared to Consensus expectations for 0.1% uptick according to Action Economics. A [...]

The Empire State Factory Index of General Business Conditions for June retraced all of this year's improvement with a decline to 2.29 versus an unrevised 17.09 in May. Consensus expectations had been for improvement 14.0. Based on [...]

Japan's IP fell by 0.2% in April after surging by 1.3% in March. The industrial production growth rates have been progressively diminishing over more recent periods. Only transportation after slowing from an unsustainably strong pace [...]

The recent slow pace of labor market improvement has eased some more. That's the message from the rise in initial claims for unemployment insurance to 386,000 during the week of June 9 from 380,000 in the prior week, revised up from [...]

Consumer prices fell 0.3% last month versus an expected 0.2% decline. The figure pulled the y/y increase to 1.7%, down from its peak of 3.9% last September. Prices less food and energy increased a steady and expected 0.2%, for the [...]

EMU IP fell by 1.7% in April after rising by 1.1% in March. Over three months all the major IP categories show negative growth rates. Of the eight EU/EMU nations in the table six show decline in IP over three-months. Over six months [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association index of total mortgage applications surged 18.0% (62.4% y/y) last week to the highest level since early-2009. Applications to refinance jumped 19.2% (85.0% y/y) while home purchase applications [...]

The U.S. Commerce Department reported that business inventories rose 0.4% during April. The modest gain lowered the y/y rise to 6.0%, its least since July of 2010. Business sales again rose 0.2%, but the y/y increase nonetheless fell [...]