Economy in Brief

As the unemployment rate declined last month to a 10-year low of 4.5%, it continued to reflect widely divergent rates amongst the states. At the high end were two states which realized unemployment above 6.0%. At the low end, were [...]

Different strokes for different folks There are various Japanese indicators and some are available up through March. But here we are going to look at the updates through March to compared METI (indexes from Ministry of Economy, Trade [...]

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index fell 3.7% during April (+27.0% y/y) to 120.3 following a little-revised 7.6% March gain. Despite the decline, the index remained near the highest level since December 2000. The Action [...]

Sales of new single-family homes increased 5.8% (15.6% y/y) during March to 621,000 from 587,000 in February, revised from 592,000. The latest level roughly matched the highest reading in November 2007. Expectations had been for [...]

The French manufacturing sector trend index is down to 1 in April from 3 in March. However, the recent-trend was up and the likely-trend was up on the month. The industrial price level reading has softened over the past four months [...]

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) index of U.S. house prices increased 0.8% during February (6.5% y/y) following a 0.2% January rise, revised from no change. It was the strongest increase since March of last year. During the [...]

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas indicated in its Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey that the General Business Activity Index of 16.8 in April was fairly steady m/m, though it was down slightly from the earlier three months. It [...]

The German IFO diffusion index signaled improved climate in April with an index that rose to 18.5 from 17.5 in March. The business situation improved to a net reading of 30.3 this month from 27.2 in March as current conditions in [...]