Economy in Brief: February 2014

In December, German orders fell by 0.5%. Foreign orders rose by 0.4%, a deceleration from November's 2.3% gain. The real culprit in the weakness of orders, however, is domestic demand. German domestic orders fell by 1.6% in December [...]

Initial claims for unemployment insurance matched expectations and declined to 331,000 (-8.3% y/y) during the week ended February 1. That's versus 351,000 during the week prior, revised from 348,000. It was the first decline in three [...]

The Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) improved during January to 54.0 and recovered December's decline. The latest figure roughly matched expectations for [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that their total mortgage market index improved 0.4% last week (-52.3% y/y). Applications rose 20.5% since the end of December. The gain over the last five week's was driven by a 28.8% [...]

The services reading for the euro area in January 2014 has been finalized at 51.57, up from 50.96 in December. Only two of the five European Monetary Union (EMU) members saw their services sectors backtracking in January; they were [...]

Job creation moderated last month with heavy snowfalls. The ADP/Moody's National Employment Report showed a 175,000 rise (2.0% y/y) in nonfarm private sector jobs during January, the weakest increase since August. Expectations were [...]

The price for a gallon of regular gasoline prices edged down a penny last week to $3.29 (-7.0% y/y) last week and remained down versus the $3.78 per gallon peak reached in February of last year. Haver Analytics constructs seasonal [...]

Orders to all manufacturers roughly matched expectations and fell 1.5% (+0.8% y/y) during December. For all of last year new orders rose 2.7% and roughly equaled the 2012 increase. Last month's decline reflected a little-revised 4.2% [...]