Economy in Brief

German IP rebounds but slows - The German industrial production index rose strongly in August after a modest rise in July and a drop in June. As a result of that pattern IP is in a bit of a slowdown mode in terms of its sequential [...]

Today came the indication that initial claims for unemployment insurance fell 11,000 to 445,000 in early October and reversed most of the prior week's gain. The latest was the lowest since the second week of July and the 4-week moving [...]

Intuit compiles data covering small businesses and employment conditions are moderately improved from last year. The 0.1% September rise from August in Intuit's Employment Index added to 0.2% increases during each of the prior five [...]

Growth scare is OVER! German factory orders spurted in August after giving growth a scare in July and dropping by 1.6% (revised and smaller drop than was first reported). While we know that within Germany retailing and consumer [...]

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Grey & Christmas indicated that the level of layoffs during September increased slightly to 37,151 but that was still near the smallest number since June of 2000. The level remains down by more [...]

Pressure continues on the ability of the U.S. market to grow. After seven consecutive months of modest recovery, the payroll processor ADP, in their latest National Employment Report, indicated that private nonfarm payroll levels fell [...]

Both the EMU and US services indices backtracked in September. For the US the backtracking was only in activity as the headline for the Non-MFG PMI (not only services') did rise. The level of both the US and EMU sector barometers [...]

The U.S. service sector last month recovered most of what it lost during August. The September Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) rose to 53.2 from 51.5 in August. [...]