Economy in Brief

• The Composite Index declined to the lowest level since April 2009. • The orders, production & employment indexes fell significantly. • Pricing power evaporated. With the continued pressure from the coronavirus, the Composite index [...]

• Construction spending increased 0.9% in March with downwards revisions to previous months. • Residential activity grew 2.3% while nonresidential edged down 0.1%. • Forward-looking indicators such as mortgage applications and state [...]

• The Composite Index declined to the lowest level since April 2009. • The orders, production & employment indexes fell significantly. • Pricing power evaporated. With the continued pressure from the coronavirus, the Composite index [...]

• The Composite Index declined to the lowest level since April 2009. • The orders, production & employment indexes fell significantly. • Pricing power evaporated. With the continued pressure from the coronavirus, the Composite index [...]

In the eight weeks ended April 22, 2020, total assets on the books of the Fed increased by $2.4 trillion, the largest eight-week increase in Fed assets in the history of the institution. In the seven weeks ended April 15, 2020, loans [...]

• • The employment cost index (ECI) for civilian workers rose 0.7% in the fourth quarter of 2019............. The employment cost index, which measures the change in the cost of labor, free from the influence of employment shifts [...]

• Initial jobless claims declined to a still extremely-elevated 3.839 million in the week ending April 25. • Over the last six weeks 30.3 million people or 18.6% of the labor force have filed new claims. • Eleven states had over [...]

Europe was hit especially hard in Q1. The year-on-year growth rates for this cluster of reporters is at or near the lowest they have posted since end-1997. European economies generally were hit a bit earlier than the U.S. That is [...]