Economy in Brief: March 2019

Manufacturing output in the U.K. rose by 0.8% in January after a 0.7% decrease in December and a 0.1% slip in November. On balance, these shifts leave IP with no growth over the last three months. That is an improvement on its six- [...]

The Consumer Price Index increased 0.2%, as expected, during February following three consecutive months of holding steady. The expectations figure is from the Action Economics Forecast Survey. The 1.5% y/y increase was the weakest [...]

Retail gasoline prices increased to $2.47 per gallon last week (-3.4% year-on-year), the highest level since late November 2018. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal variation in gasoline pump prices. The [...]

President Trump's 2020 budget proposal has many story lines, but the main story is the "chaos" in the numbers. Not only do the economic forecasts appear to be overly optimistic when compared to consensus estimates, they contradict two [...]

Total business inventories rose 0.6% (4.9% y/y) during December after holding steady in November. Total business sales fell 1.0% (+1.9% y/y) following a 0.6% decline. The inventory-to-sales ratio increased to 1.38, its highest level [...]

Germany shows a 0.8% drop in industrial production (-1.1% for manufacturing) in January. It shows declines over three months, six months and 12 months at rates of decline that are getting progressively larger. Output for German [...]

Consumers remain in a cautious mood. Total retail sales improved just 0.2% during January (+2.6% y/y) after pulling back spending by 1.6% in December, revised from -1.2%. A 0.1% uptick had been expected in the Action Economics [...]

Total housing starts rebounded markedly in January, surging 18.6% m/m (but still down 7.8% y/y) to 1.230 million units at an annual rate after having collapsed 14.0% m/m in December to a slightly downwardly revised 1.037 million units [...]