Economy in Brief: 2017

Initial claims for unemployment insurance nudged up to 234,000 (-12.7% y/y) during the week ended May 20 from 233,000 during the prior week, revised from 232,000. It remained near the lowest level of initial claims since July 1973. [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its total Mortgage Applications Volume Index increased 4.4% (-16.2% y/y) in the week ended May 19, after a 4.1% decline during the prior week. Refinancing applications rebounded 10.5% [...]

Oil has been driving trends in the PPI for some time now (see the chart on the left). Since at least 2006, every single major shift in the PPI growth rate has been preceded by a substantial change in the Brent oil price. The recent [...]

Sales of existing single-family homes declined 2.3% during April to 5.570 million (AR, +1.6% y/y)) from 5.700 million in March, revised from 5.710 million. Expectations had been for 5.640 million purchases in the Action Economics [...]

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) index of U.S. house prices increased 0.6% during March (6.2% y/y) following an unrevised 0.8% February rise. During the last three months, the 6.5% annualized rate of increase roughly [...]

Regular gasoline prices rebounded to $2.40 per gallon last week (4.3% y/y), the highest level in three weeks. Prices remained down five cents versus late April's high and lower than the 2014 high of $3.71 per gallon. Haver Analytics [...]

Themes of scraping and scrapping emerge this month as the EMU manufacturing and services gauges continue to post strong readings as well as truly stellar readings compared to previous scores in this business cycle. But Japan's [...]

Sales of new single-family homes declined 11.4% (+0.5% y/y) during April to 569,000 (AR) from 642,000 in March, revised from 621,000. Earlier figures were revised higher. Expectations had been for 612,000 sales in the Action Economics [...]