Economy in Brief: 2014

Retail and food service sales were unchanged (3.7% y/y) during July following an unrevised 0.2% June rise. A 0.3% increase had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. Fewer sales of motor vehicles & parts limited last [...]

The worries about European growth are for good reason. Total EMU industrial production excluding construction fell by 0.3% in June after a 1.1% decline in May. In the quarter, it's rising at a 0.1% annual rate. That's pretty thin [...]

The Federal Government posted a $94.6 billion budget deficit during July of FY 2014, and roughly matched expectations in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. For the first ten months of the current fiscal year, the government ran a [...]

The price for a gallon of regular gasoline declined another penny last week to $3.51 (-1.6% y/y). Prices remained down from the $3.78 per gallon peak reached in February of last year. To account for seasonal volatility, Haver [...]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its Job Openings & Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) that the job openings rate jumped to 3.3% during June from an unrevised 3.2% in May. The latest level was the highest since June 2007. The job [...]

Germany's ZEW current index fell sharply in August to 44.3 from 61.8 in July. The current index had peaked at 67.7 in June in this cycle. It's now on a two-month drop. Expectations, the more closely watched component, fell to 8.6 in [...]

The National Federation of Independent Business reported that its Small Business Optimism Index edged up to 95.7 during July, making up half of its June decline. The latest level remained near its highest since September 2007, just [...]

Income growth expectations, as measured by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, deteriorated in July. The 2.2% expectation for next year's earnings growth reversed most of June's improvement, although it remained up slightly from the [...]