Economy in Brief: March 2011

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 [...]

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Grey & Christmas reported that the level of layoffs during February jumped to 50,702, the highest level since January of last year. The rise in layoffs was led by government and retail sectors with [...]

The PPI in the Euro Area is up to 6.1% Yr/Yr and still accelerating. Over 6-mos the pace is 8.5%and over 3-Mo the paces is 12.3%. Most of the damage is being done in the intermediate goods sectors where commodity prices, especially [...]

The consumers' appetite for purchasing a new motor vehicle remains hearty. Unit sales of light vehicles jumped 6.4% last month versus January to 13.44M units (SAAR). Consensus had estimated sales of 12.7M according to the Bloomberg [...]

The corner clearly has been turned in the job market. In its latest National Employment Report, the payroll processor Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and economic consultants Macroeconomic Advisers, indicated that the February level [...]

Germany reported today that its unemployment rate declined from 7.4% in January to 7.3% in February, the lowest level since December 1991. Harmonized unemployment rates for all the members of the Euro Area and European Union were also [...]

The chart shows that EMU countries had completed much of their recession rebound according to the diffusion indices by late 2010; after some minor weakness, indices have moved up to even stronger levels. The EMU PMI gauge overall and [...]