Economy in Brief: 2015

Inventories at the wholesale level rose 0.5% during September (4.5% y/y) following a 0.3% August increase. The rise was paced by a 1.3% jump (8.4% y/y) in furniture and a 0.5% rise (12.8% y/y) in automotive inventories.. Computer & [...]

Gasoline prices at the pump improved last week to $2.24 per gallon, up 2 cents from the prior week. Prices were down 24.0% y/y, they were 9.8% above the January low of $2.04. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the [...]

Import prices declined 0.5% during October (-10.5% y/y) following a 0.6% shortfall in September, revised from -0.1%. A 0.1% slip had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. Petroleum prices fell 2.1% (-48.0% y/y) after [...]

France and Italy are the second and third largest economies, respectively, in the EMU. Their recent trends in industrial output make a good summary of what is going on in the EMU as a whole. Neither is particularly strong and yet both [...]

The National Federation of Independent Business reported that its Small Business Optimism Index remained unchanged during October following a slight uptick in September. The latest figure remained below the high of 100.4 in December. [...]

Consumer credit outstanding surged $28.9 billion (7.1% y/y) during September following an unrevised $16.0 billion August rise. It was the largest increase in postwar history and lifted y/y growth to 7.1%. Expectations were for a $17.2 [...]

The Labor Market Conditions Index from the Federal Reserve Board includes 19 indicators of labor market activity, covering the broad categories of unemployment and underemployment. These include jobs, workweeks, wages, vacancies, [...]

The Bank of France indicator moved up to 98.7 in October from 97.8 in September. It is still below its long-term average of 100. Nonetheless, the pick-up in this indicator has the Bank of France looking for growth of 0.4% in Q4 2015, [...]