Economy in Brief: January 2012

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its Job Openings & Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) that the November job openings rate slipped to 2.3% from an unrevised 2.4%. Nevertheless, the latest reading remained improved versus the [...]

Consumers felt confident enough during November to significantly strengthen their usage of credit. The Federal Reserve reported that overall consumer credit surged $20.4B after a revised $6.0B gain during October, initially reported [...]

The profile in the chart of year-over-year growth rates is unmistakable. The trends in the table are clear as well. In terms of growth rates from one year in and shorter, only construction and consumer goods are showing any resilience [...]

Consumer sentiment in Ireland began to improve early this year but took a turn for the worse in November and December as the financial difficulties in the Euro Area intensified. The index of Consumer sentiment (Q4 95=100) finished up [...]

German orders are losing momentum again and rapidly after a false signal of a pause in the unraveling as of October. Orders in October had surged by 5% (M-o-M) and a surge of that degree blunted a lot of downward momentum that had [...]

The job market gave further indication of moderate improvement. Nonfarm payrolls grew 200,000 (1.3% y/y) in December and the prior two months were little-revised. Consensus expectations had been for a 150,000 gain in December [...]

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Grey & Christmas reported that job cut announcements during December slipped to a six-month low of 41,785 from November's 42,474. The latest figure was the lowest since June. The low level of [...]

In a testimony to still sluggish economic growth, service sector activity improved just slightly last month. The Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) ticked up to 52.6 [...]