Economy in Brief: November 2017

Initial unemployment insurance claims increased to 239,000 (-4.4% y/y) during the week ended November 4 from an unrevised 229,000 in the prior week. Expectations had been for 233,000 claims in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. The [...]

In September, French exports barely nudged ahead as imports gained 1.2% expanding the trade deficit to 6.4 billion euros from 5.9 billion euros in August. On a broader timeline, imports have been outpacing exports since early-2016 on [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its total Mortgage Applications Volume Index remained unchanged (-18.9% y/y) last week, but was 15.7% below the September high. Purchase applications edged 0.5% higher (8.2% y/y) [...]

Consumers didn't hesitate to borrow last month. Consumer credit outstanding grew $20.84 billion during September (5.6% y/y) following a $13.14 billion August increase, revised from $13.07 billion. It was the strongest increase since [...]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the total job openings rate in September remained at the record high of 4.0%, where it's been for four straight months. The hiring rate declined, however, to 3.6%, the lowest level since [...]

Despite growing optimism about European growth and the prospects for the ECB to continue its easing scale back, output growth in Germany fell in September and has dropped in three of the last four months. This period of weakness was [...]

Recently improved economic growth has given strength to petroleum prices. Retail gasoline prices rose seven cents last week to $2.56 per gallon (14.7% y/y). Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal variation in [...]

Germany's new orders rose by 1% in September with foreign orders gaining 1.7% and domestic orders slipping by 0.1%. Even so, domestic real orders rose to a point approximately level with orders before the start of the financial crisis [...]