Economy in Brief: May 2014

German orders fell by 2.8% in March, an unexpected drop. The decline comes after a 0.9% gain in February and a small 0.1% increase in January. On balance, the weakness is severe enough to drive the three-month annualized growth rate [...]

Worker productivity declined last quarter at the same time that adverse winter weather held down economic activity. Nonfarm business sector productivity fell at a 1.7% annual rate (+1.4% y/y) during Q1'14 following 2.3% growth during [...]

The International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs reported that chain store sales declined 2.0% (2.0% y/y) last week, retracing two weeks of increase. The rise left sales up 2.0% versus last year. During the last ten [...]

The price for a gallon of regular gasoline declined to $3.68 last week (+4.1% y/y. The drop reversed the prior week's rise but prices still were not far from the $3.78 per gallon peak reached in February of last year. To account for [...]

The services sector surveys for European economies and the US are completed today, allowing us to calculate total private sector indices for the various economies. The Markit index for the European Monetary Union moved up to 54.0 in [...]

The U.S. foreign trade deficit during March matched expectations and narrowed to $40.4 billion versus a February shortfall of $41.9 billion, last month reported as $42.3 billion. The deficit's easing reflected a 2.1% increase (5.0% [...]

The Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) rose to 55.2 in April, the second consecutive monthly gain. The latest figure beat expectations for 54.0 in the Action [...]

Industrial production (excluding construction) in Sweden fell by 3.8% in March with manufacturing production falling by 3.9%. Each of those drops follows a rise about 2% in February, but in each case those increases were preceded by a [...]