Economy in Brief: February 2016

Total sales of light vehicles during January improved 1.4% m/m to 17.58 million units (SAAR) from 17.34 million in December. The 5.2% y/y increase was prompted by the decline in gasoline prices, strong consumer confidence and low [...]

It is a global paradox of sorts that unemployment rates are behaving relatively well even as economies do not. Part of it is the global slump in manufacturing which is a productivity-centric sector rather than a jobs-centric center. [...]

Gasoline prices continued to decline last week and reached a nine year low. The pump price for a gallon of regular gasoline fell to an average $1.82 (-11.9% y/y), down from $1.86 in the prior week, according to the U.S. Department of [...]

The value of construction put-in-place improved 0.1% (8.0% y/y) during December following a 0.6% November decline, revised from -0.4%. For all of last year, construction activity strengthened 10.5% versus a 9.6% gain in 2014. A 0.5% [...]

Activity in the factory sector continued to contract in January for the fourth consecutive month. The ISM Composite Index of factory sector activity of 48.2 compared to 48.0 in December, revised from 48.2. The reading roughly equaled [...]

Among the manufacturing PMIs listed in the table, 7 of 16 of them reside below their breakeven diffusion value of 50. However, even more of them appear to be even weaker when simply expressed as their percentile rank or standing in [...]

Personal consumption expenditures were little changed during December (3.2% y/y) following a revised 0.5% November increase, initially reported as 0.3%. A 0.1% rise had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. When [...]