Economy in Brief

Retail sales in the Zone fell by 0.6% in December. They are lower over 12-months by 1% as well. German sales are lower Yr/Yr and UK sales are flat. Nonfood retail sales fell in December and are lower by 1.3% Yr/Yr in the Zone. The [...]

Like the factory sector, the U.S. service sector continued to improve last month. The January Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) rose to 59.4 from 57.1 in December. [...]

Labor productivity in the nonfarm business sector rose 2.6% (AR) and roughly repeated its Q3 increase. The rise exceeded Consensus expectations for a 2.0% increase. Nevertheless, y/y growth decelerated to 1.7% following its upward [...]

Initial claims for unemployment insurance last week fell back and retraced most of the prior week's jump. The decline to 415,000 from a revised 457,000, initially reported as 454,000, was greater than expectations for a decline to [...]

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Grey & Christmas reported that the level of layoffs during January picked up slightly to 38,519. The level still was near the lowest since June 2000. Despite the decline in layoffs, the [...]

As expected, unit sales of light vehicles were roughly unchanged last month versus December at 12.62M units (SAAR). (Seasonal adjustment of these figures is provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.) Nevertheless, sales were [...]

The job market continued to show improvement last month. In its latest National Employment Report, the payroll processor, Automatic Data Processing (ADP), indicated that the level of private nonfarm payrolls rose another 187,000 m/m [...]

Australia, barely recovering from the floods of the last two months, is now threatened with a devastating cyclone. The effects of the flooding are only beginning to be reflected in the country's statistics. The consumer price index, [...]