Economy in Brief: 2017

Despite growing optimism about European growth and the prospects for the ECB to continue its easing scale back, output growth in Germany fell in September and has dropped in three of the last four months. This period of weakness was [...]

Recently improved economic growth has given strength to petroleum prices. Retail gasoline prices rose seven cents last week to $2.56 per gallon (14.7% y/y). Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal variation in [...]

Germany's new orders rose by 1% in September with foreign orders gaining 1.7% and domestic orders slipping by 0.1%. Even so, domestic real orders rose to a point approximately level with orders before the start of the financial crisis [...]

Manufacturing sector orders increased 1.4% during September (5.3% y/y) following an unrevised 1.2% August gain. Durable goods orders rose 2.0% (5.9% y/y), revised from the advance estimate of a 2.2% gain which followed a 2.1% August [...]

Asia PMIs are not doing as well as the PMIs of the economies in the West at the moment. Front and center is China with a total PMI that has slipped from a modest 51.4 reading in September to a 51.0 reading in October. China's [...]

The U.S. nonmanufacturing ISM index has moved even higher in October and this is one report that shows no impact whatsoever from hurricane damage. In fact, in September the nonmanufacturing index moved even more sharply higher from [...]

Nonfarm payrolls increased 261,000 (1.4% y/y) during October following an 18,000 September increase and a 208,000 August gain. Together these two figures were revised up by 90,000. A 318,000 increase in payrolls had been expected in [...]

The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services widened to $43.5 billion in September from a slightly upwardly revised $42.8 billion shortfall in August. A $43.2 billion deficit had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. [...]