Economy in Brief

There's no breaking out from a sideways trend for sales of U.S. light vehicles. Certainly that was the case last month as unit vehicle sales slipped 2.3% during June to 9.69 million units (AR). That followed a 6.4% rise during May. [...]

There's no breaking out from a sideways trend for sales of U.S. light vehicles. Certainly that was the case last month as unit vehicle sales slipped 2.3% during June to 9.69 million units (AR). That followed a 6.4% rise during May. [...]

Construction outlays fell 0.9% in May, reverting to a decline after April's limp 0.6% increase. That was revised from a 0.8% rise and March was revised to a 0.4% decrease from a 0.4% increase reported last month. This report included [...]

While a turn to positive growth in employment still is not at hand, the June report from the payroll processor ADP in their National Employment Report again showed an easing in the rate of contraction. It indicated that private [...]

The moderate rebound in housing activity continued last month. The National Association of Realtors reported that May pending sales of existing homes held roughly stable with April at the highest level since last September. Consensus [...]

The percentile readings on the far right of the table tell the real story. A bottom 12 percentile range result is about the strongest reading for any component except for the outlook surveys where the standing is a 20% to 30% result [...]

For the fifth consecutive month the outplacement firm of Challenger, Grey & Christmas indicated that job cut announcements eased. In fact, the number of layoff announcements of 74,393 was the least since March of last year. This [...]

The National Association of Purchasing Management indicated that the recession in factory sector continued to moderate last month. The June composite index for the factory sector rose to 44.8 from 42.8 in May. Though the latest figure [...]