Economy in Brief: 2011

There's no way but up for petroleum prices. The pump price for regular gasoline increased last week by fourteen cents to $3.52 per gallon, the highest since October-2008 and more-than double the December-2008 low of $1.61. Typically, [...]

A firmer job market is encouraging consumers to take on more debt, but this time it's not business as usual. During January consumer credit expanded by $5.0B after a revised $4.1B increase during December. Credit has risen strongly [...]

Japan's January business conditions indexes suggest that the Japanese economy has gained the momentum it appeared to have lost in the fourth quarter when the Gross Domestic Product fell by 1.1% on a seasonally adjusted annual rate. [...]

Weather effects faded last month and the U.S. job market showed clear signs of improvement. Nonfarm payrolls increased 192,000 and added to a 63,000 increase during January, initially reported as 36,000. The December figure also was [...]

Europe's PMI index for services from Markit was revised lower from its preliminary reading but still managed to make a month-to-month gain. Germany's index actually dropped month-to-month as did the UK's service sector index. As a [...]

The U.S. nonmanufacturing sector showed improvement last month. The February Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) rose to 59.7 from 59.4 in January. The latest beat [...]

As expected, labor productivity in the nonfarm business sector rose an unrevised 2.6% (AR) last quarter and roughly repeated its Q3 increase. For the full year, productivity rose 3.6% and roughly repeated the 2009 increase. Last [...]

Improvement in the job market continues. Initial claims for unemployment insurance fell to 368,000 last week from 388,000 during the week prior, initially reported as 391,000. Consensus expectations had been for 395,000 claims [...]