Economy in Brief

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Grey & Christmas reported that job cut announcements rose slightly during April to 40,559. However, they remained near the recovery's low. Announcements remained low in the apparel, construction, [...]

The Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) fell to 53.5 in April versus an unrevised 56.0 during March. Declines during the last two months pulled the figure to its [...]

The job market picture brightened significantly last week. Initial unemployment insurance claims fell sharply to 365,000 from an upwardly revised 392,000 during the prior week, earlier reported as 388,000. The latest figure reversed [...]

Last quarter, labor productivity posted an outright decline of 0.5% (AR) after having weakened considerably during all of last year. The Q1 figure matched expectations. The decline followed last year's notable deterioration in growth [...]

The EMU regions continue to give back ground as the April indices have settled into their final values with declines across the board in April with the minor exception of France. The EMU index may not seem to be so low as it is only [...]

Orders in the manufacturing sector dropped an expected 1.5% (+3.3% y/y) during March and reversed a little-revised 1.1% February jump. The decline reflected a 4.0% slump in orders for durable goods. That was little-changed from the [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its index of total mortgage applications nudged up 0.1% w/w to 698.2 (52.2% y/y). That left the average level in April down 0.9% from March and down 10.9% from the February high. [...]

Job growth hit a soft-spot last month. Private sector payrolls rose 119,000 as reported by the payroll processor Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and economic consultants Macroeconomic Advisers. A 180,000 gain had been expected. The [...]