Economy in Brief

The 0.6% rise in the November Leading Index of the Major 7 OECD economies was the sixth consecutive monthly increase. The rise lifted the leaders' six month growth rate to 2.7%, the best since July 2004. During the last ten years [...]

Canada's labor market was fairly firm in 2005, despite a modest reversal in employment for December, data for which were published this morning by Statistics Canada. In December, employment fell by 2,100 from November, but both [...]

Challenger, Grey & Christmas reported that job cut announcements in December rose for the fourth consecutive month. The 8.6% rise versus November to 107,822 pulled the three month average of job cut announcements up to 96,134 (-8.6% [...]

Non-farm payrolls in December grew just 108,000. Nevertheless, when averaged with a November increase revised up to 305,000 from 215,000 reported initially, the gain was a sharp improvement from the prior two months' average of just [...]

Non-farm payrolls in December grew just 108,000. Nevertheless, when averaged with a November increase revised up to 305,000 from 215,000 reported initially, the gain was a sharp improvement from the prior two months' average of just [...]

Today, January 5, a wide variety of data was reported by national statistical agencies and private sources all over the world. Some of these reports glean considerable press coverage, particularly if the results are a surprise, such [...]

Chain store sales dipped 0.8% during the final week of 2005 according to the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)-UBS survey. The decline, however, followed three weeks of solid increase. Therefore, December sales on [...]

The Business Activity Index for the non-manufacturing sector recovered in December about all that it lost in November. The 1.3 point gain to 59.8 followed an unrevised 1.5 point slip in November. A reading above 50 indicates [...]