Economy in Brief

Non-farm payrolls increased just 78,000 in May, the weakest rise since 2003. The prior month's strong gain was revised slightly higher but March was revised lower. Consensus expectations had been for a 180,000 May increase. Widespread [...]

In the May edition of "Haver Analytics News", we announced the availability of the CEIC China Premium Database. This new database, CHINA, has over 125,000 series covering many, many facets of Chinese economic life. The level of detail [...]

Factory inventories rose just 0.1% in April following an upwardly revised 0.7% gain in March. These gains lowered the three month growth in inventories to 5.8%, nearly half the high rate of accumulation set last summer. These figures [...]

Job cut announcements jumped in May, however, the 42.2% m/m rise did not reverse all of the prior month's plunge. Therefore, the three month average of job cut announcements fell further to the lowest level since last August. During [...]

Initial claims for unemployment insurance jumped 25,000 last week to 350,000, the highest level since late March. The prior week's level was revised up slightly and Consensus expectations had been for 325,000 claims. The rise in [...]

Non-farm labor productivity growth about matched Consensus expectations and was revised higher to 2.9%. A surprise, however, was that compensation costs were revised up in 1Q to 6.3% and up sharply to 10.4% in 4Q04. As a result of [...]

May sales of light vehicles reversed all of the prior month's gain and fell 4.5% to 16.67M according to the Autodata Corporation. Car sales were notably weak following a firm April and fell 7.5%. So far this year the average level of [...]

May sales of light vehicles reversed all of the prior month's gain and fell 4.5% to 16.67M according to the Autodata Corporation. Car sales were notably weak following a firm April and fell 7.5%. So far this year the average level of [...]