Economy in Brief: July 2017

Regular gasoline prices rose to $2.31 per gallon last week (6.0% y/y) from $2.28 in the prior week. They remained down, however, versus the high of $2.45 per gallon in late-April. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the [...]

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index jumped 3.2% (25.2% y/y) during July to 121.1 following a 0.3% June dip, revised from +1.1%. Despite the increase, the index remained 3.0% below its March peak, which was its highest level [...]

Positioned in its various arrays of data since 1991, the German IFO index and its principle components show the all-sector reading at its historic high (since 1991), manufacturing at its historic high and construction at its historic [...]

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) index of U.S. house prices rose 7.5% (AR) during the last three months, compared to a 6.2% gain during all of last year. In May, prices rose 0.4% (6.9% y/y) following a 0.6% April gain, [...]

New data but not much change The main story about the EMU PMIs this month is still plain vanilla. The message is that PMI readings are still strong in the EMU. The overall gauge did weaken on a softer manufacturing sector as the [...]

Sales of existing homes declined 1.8% (+0.7% y/y) during June to 5.520 million units (AR) from an unrevised 5.620 million in May. It was the lowest level of sales since February. Expectations were for 5.580 million sales in the Action [...]

Unemployment at a 10-year low of 4.5% reflected 1.4% y/y growth in employment and a dampened 0.8% gain in the size of the labor pool. Amongst the states, unemployment continued to be widely divergent. Two states held above the 6.0% [...]

The chart and table present data in slightly different formats. Nonetheless, they come to the same conclusion that Canada's retail sector is on very solid ground. This is something that most G7 countries cannot say. U.S., EMU and [...]