Economy in Brief: June 2011

A news headline announced that the overall May unemployment rate unexpectedly edged up to 9.1%. The Labor Department's figures painted a picture not only of higher unemployment but of great variation in conditions by gender, age, [...]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its Job Openings & Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) that the April job openings rate slipped to 2.1% from 2.3% during March. The latest reading remained improved versus the recession low of [...]

The consumer recently has shown an indication to pull back from past, strong spending trends. Like last month's decline in vehicle sales, chain store sales fell 2.2% in May. In addition today's news of a 0.4% w/w uptick in store sales [...]

Last week, the pump price for regular gasoline fell one penny to $3.78 per gallon. Since the peak four weeks ago prices have fallen 17 cents (4.6%). Pump prices usually start rising this time of year with increased seasonal demand. To [...]

German new orders for manufacturing rose 2.4% in April to 121.5 (2005=100) from 119.0 in March. They almost made up for the 2.5% decline in March and are now only 6% below the pre recession peak of 129.5 reached in November, 2007. [...]

The ex-construction PPI index rose as much in April as it did in March. The three-months growth rate of the PPI edged slightly below that of the six month pace but both were elevated relative to the 12-month pace which at 6.7% is [...]

Although there is some improvement in the world wide supply of wheat, the price has begun to creep up again, Kansas city hard wheat, for example, has risen 5% in the last month and is now $9.06 a bushel. World supply and demand for [...]

The May Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) rose to 54.6 from 52.8 in April. Nevertheless, the index remained near the lowest since February 2010. The figure roughly [...]