Economy in Brief

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Grey & Christmas reported that job cut announcements fell sharply during March to 37,880, near the recovery's low. Announcements were sharply lower in the transportation, consumer products, [...]

Initial claims for unemployment insurance fell six thousand to 357,000 during the week ended March 31 from 363,000 in the prior week, reported earlier as 359,000. The latest figure was the lowest since April of 2008. The weekly number [...]

Service sector activity backpedaled last month. The Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) fell to 56.0 in March versus an unrevised 57.3 during February and 56.8 in [...]

Employment growth is continuing at a moderate rate. That's indicated by the 209,000 increase in March private-sector payrolls reported by the payroll processor Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and economic consultants Macroeconomic [...]

Sales of light motor vehicles dipped m/m during March but remained near the four-year high. Unit vehicle sales fell 4.8% m/m to 14.37M (AR) during March according to Autodata Corporation. That sales rate was up 10.0% versus one year [...]

The Euro-Area is in a very tight spot. The ECB has a real policy quandary. It seems that more economists are coming to the inevitable conclusion that the Zone countries go together like oil and water. Only if you continue to 'agitate' [...]

The index of industrial production in Brazil rose 1.3% in February after having declined 1.5% in January. Although the index was still 3.3% below a year ago, the rise was greater than expected and a welcome reversal of trend that may [...]

Orders in the manufacturing sector recovered 1.3% (9.0% y/y) during February and reversed a little-revised 1.1% January slump. The rise reflected a 2.4% gain in orders for durable goods. That was little-changed from the advance report [...]