Economy in Brief: 2014

The Markit manufacturing indices for April show increases in the UK and Ireland and a decline in the Netherlands. Over three months very strong gains are registered in Ireland and the manufacturing index is up by 3.4 points with the [...]

The value of construction put-in-place rose 0.2% in March (8.4% y/y). The severe winter weather was reflected in downward revisions to February and January, which both now show declines. January was changed from -0.2% to -0.4% and [...]

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that job cut announcements rose to 40,298 (+5.7% y/y) during April. Layoffs increased m/m in the aerospace/defense, apparel, automotive, education, energy, financial, [...]

Initial claims for unemployment insurance increased to 344,000 last week (3.6% y/y) from an upwardly revised 330,000 in the week ended April 19. Expectations had been for 320,000 claims in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. The [...]

Factory sector activity is improving with the end of a rough winter and more hiring. The Composite Index of Manufacturing Sector Activity from the Institute for Supply Management improved to 54.9 during April from an unrevised 53.7 in [...]

Shop 'til you drop. That mentality raised personal consumption expenditures by 0.9% in March (4.0% y/y) following a 0.5% February increase, revised from 0.3%. It was the strongest gain since August 2009. A 0.6% rise had been expected [...]

German retail sales fell by 0.6% in March after rising by 0.2% in February. Nonetheless, over three months German retail sales excluding autos are rising at a 7% annual rate on the strength of the strong gain back in January. Ex-auto [...]

At today's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed indicated that economic growth had picked up and that price inflation still was below its long run objective. Fiscal policy was seen as limiting the economy's [...]