Economy in Brief: October 2016

Regular gasoline prices dipped to $2.24 per gallon (+0.7% y/y) last week, but remained near the highest level since early July. Prices remained down, however, versus a 2014 high of $3.71 per gallon. Haver Analytics constructs factors [...]

The Conference Board reported that its Consumer Confidence index for October declined 4.7% (-0.5% y/y) to 98.6, the first decline in three months. A 2.6% rise had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. During the last [...]

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) index of U.S. house prices increased 0.7% during August following an unrevised 0.5% July gain. The y/y change improved to 6.4% as the three-month increase rose to 6.2%, its best since April. [...]

The German IFO index made solid gains in October with the all sector index rising to 13.8 from September's 11.9 to stand in the 90.9 percentile of its historic queue of values. All the major early-release IFO gauges stand in the top [...]

The Business Conditions Survey, published by the National Association for Business Economics, showed an easing in U.S. unit demand last quarter. The diffusion index reading (rising minus falling) fell to 22.0 from 25.5. While these [...]

The early flash PMI readings for the EMU, Germany and France show upside surprises mainly on the gains in the manufacturing indices in October. Perspective on manufacturing The EMU, German and French manufacturing sectors advanced and [...]

The National Activity Index from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago increased to -0.14 during September from -0.72 in August, revised from -0.55. The three-month moving average deteriorated to -0.21, and remained in the narrow band [...]

The decline in the overall U.S. unemployment rate has stabilized this year around 4.9% versus 5.3% during 2015. It was half its late-2009 peak, and varied greatly amongst individual states. In today's state labor market report for [...]