Economy in Brief

Italy's retail sales fell by 1% in October with declines in food and clothing & furniture as well as a sharp pull-back in real retail sales. Italian retail sales show a lot of red ink, indicating sales declines for all categories over [...]

The labor market remained on a firm footing last month. Nonfarm payrolls increased 228,000 (1.4% y/y) during November following a 244,000 October increase. Together these two figures were revised up by 3,000. A 198,000 increase in [...]

Wholesale inventories fell 0.5% m/m (+3.8% y/y) in October following a downwardly revised 0.1% m/m increase in in September (initially +0.3% m/m). The summer rebound in inventories has slowed recently. Seasonally adjusted inventories [...]

German exports and imports are both off their recent peak year-on-year rates of growth. Exports have fallen for two months in a row. Imports are up in October and by more than their drop in September. There is no sequential [...]

The labor market remained on a firm footing last month. Nonfarm payrolls increased 228,000 (1.4% y/y) during November following a 244,000 October increase. Together these two figures were revised up by 3,000. A 198,000 increase in [...]

Consumer credit outstanding increased $20.52 billion during October after a $19.22 billion September rise, revised from $20.84 billion. It was the strongest increase since November 2016. A $17.0 billion gain had been expected in the [...]

EMU growth rates are now 'finalized' for Q3 2017. There are no negative growth rates among these 'first' EMU members over the last three quarters and the last year-over-year negative growth rate among the group was in Q4 2016 for [...]

Initial unemployment insurance claims slipped to 236,000 (-7.3% y/y) in the week ended December 2 from an unrevised 238,000 in the prior week. Expectations had been for 240,000 claims in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. The four- [...]