Economy in Brief: January 2011

Both domestically motivated and foreign motivated orders are in a declining trend in the Euro-Area. The standard deviation o f the monthly percentage change in orders in 2010 has been 3.2 percentage points. Taken alone booth domestic- [...]

For the fourth consecutive month the U.S. service sector improved. The December Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) rose to 57.1.0 from 55.0 in November. The latest [...]

Unit sales of light vehicles increased 2.3% last month versus November to 12.55M units (SAAR). Sales were slightly stronger than expectations for 12.3M. (Seasonal adjustment of these figures is provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic [...]

In its latest National Employment Report, the payroll processor, Automatic Data Processing (ADP), indicated that the level of private nonfarm payrolls jumped 297,000 m/m during December. The gain exceeded Consensus expectations for a [...]

Small business employment has been growing since September, 2009. That's the indication from Intuit's Small Business Employment Index for December. Since the 2009 low, the index has risen 4.5% and that compares to roughly 0.5% growth [...]

France's Household confidence indicator had been creeping higher until December. Its backtracking was unexpected. The index made a steady recovery from its low of December 2008 through Jan 2010 then it fell and has since mounted a [...]

One of the priorities of the newly elected President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, is to reign in the rise of the Brazilian Real. As can be seen in the first chart, the real has been appreciating for almost two years from February 2009, [...]

There's a recovery underway in the factory sector, but it's losing steam. Shipments of manufactured goods rose 0.8% in November (5.9% y/y) after a 0.4% October increase, but the magnitude of that recovery is misleading. Higher oil [...]