Economy in Brief: 2010

The bad news about the labor market continued today. The Labor Department's report that initial claims for jobless insurance rose to 484,000 last week from an upwardly revised 482,000 brought them to the highest level since February. [...]

Last week, Haver's Louise Curley focused on the sustained strength in wheat prices (+45.6% y/y). The broader product trend shows that most industrial commodity prices recently have either recovered or stabilized after earlier [...]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that their latest reading of labor market conditions held steady after earlier deterioration. The Job Openings & Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) indicated that the job openings rate during June [...]

Unexpectedly, the June U.S. foreign trade deficit deteriorated to $49.9B from a little-revised $42.0B in May. The combination of lower exports and higher imports brought the deficit to its deepest level since September 2008. The [...]

While Japan and Germany run trade surpluses and China's trade surplus grows, the US trade deficit erratically is creeping higher. The reason is clear. As we saw earlier in German orders, demand for German goods is led by demand from [...]

France, Denmark and Finland released their June Industrial Production Indexes today. All three indexes are based on 2005=100. Finland and Denmark showed increases from May: the former rose 2.1 points from 99.7 to 101.8 and the latter [...]

The pump price for regular gasoline moved four cents higher last week to $2.78 per gallon. That remained down from $2.91 in early-May. Pulled higher by firm demand, prices have risen from the late-2009 level of $2.61. Yesterday, the [...]

For the second consecutive month, small business optimism fell. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) reported their July small business optimism index fell m/m to 88.1. That's down from the recent high of 92.2 and it [...]