Economy in Brief: April 2017

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that pending home sales slipped 0.8% ((+0.8% y/y) during March to an index level of 111.4 following a 5.5% rise. The decline followed a 5.5% February increase that was strengthened [...]

New orders for durable goods rose 0.7% (4.5% y/y) during March following a 2.3% February gain, revised from 1.8%. A 1.2% increase in orders had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. The increase in total orders [...]

Regular gasoline prices of $2.45 per gallon last week (13.3% y/y) compared to $2.44 during the prior week. Prices remained lower than the 2014 high of $3.71 per gallon. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal [...]

As the unemployment rate declined last month to a 10-year low of 4.5%, it continued to reflect widely divergent rates amongst the states. At the high end were two states which realized unemployment above 6.0%. At the low end, were [...]

Different strokes for different folks There are various Japanese indicators and some are available up through March. But here we are going to look at the updates through March to compared METI (indexes from Ministry of Economy, Trade [...]

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index fell 3.7% during April (+27.0% y/y) to 120.3 following a little-revised 7.6% March gain. Despite the decline, the index remained near the highest level since December 2000. The Action [...]

Sales of new single-family homes increased 5.8% (15.6% y/y) during March to 621,000 from 587,000 in February, revised from 592,000. The latest level roughly matched the highest reading in November 2007. Expectations had been for [...]

The French manufacturing sector trend index is down to 1 in April from 3 in March. However, the recent-trend was up and the likely-trend was up on the month. The industrial price level reading has softened over the past four months [...]