Economy in Brief: November 2013

Pending home sales continue to show weakness. The number of homes on the market for sales has dropped for five straight months. The number of homes for sale has contracted by 1.2% over the past year. There are still year-over-year [...]

Germany's Ifo continues to power higher. It is engaged in its second upswing in its cyclical recovery since the end of the financial crisis. In this `second wave up' the Ifo is locked into a milder upgrade that it had earlier, but the [...]

The Belgian National Bank Survey shows an improving trend, but the index still signals contraction in November. The negative reading for manufacturing is halved in November compared to October. But wholesaling and retailing are only [...]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its Job Openings & Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) that the September job openings rate rose to 2.8% from a downwardly-revised 2.7% in August. The job openings rate is the number of job [...]

The EMU economy continues to advance, but the November PMI gain is decidedly lackluster. The manufacturing gauge rose to 51.55 from 51.30. In the service sector conditions barely improved as the index advanced to 50.94 from 50.91. [...]

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank reported that its General Business Conditions Index for November fell back to 6.5 from 19.8 in October. The figure was at its lowest level in six months and was weaker than Consensus expectations [...]

The Producer Price Index for finished goods matched expectations and declined 0.2% last month (+0.3% y/y) following a 0.1% September slip. Prices excluding food & energy rose 0.2% in October (1.4% y/y), the quickest rise since June. [...]

The job market is showing more signs of improvement. Initial claims for jobless insurance fell to 323,000 (-19.3% y/y) during the week ended November 16 from 344,000 during the previous week, revised up from 339,000. It was the lowest [...]