Economy in Brief: April 2011

In the US we complain that unemployment is so high. But in the US recession the rate of unemployment jumped sharply while Europe's rate only drifted higher by comparison. For a while US and European unemployment rates were roughly [...]

The Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey shows increased pessimism among businessmen in the first quarter of this year. The balance of opinion on future sales growth, which declined seven percentage points in the fourth quarter of [...]

Gasoline prices can have an impact on demand for motor vehicles. And when gas prices surge as they have, demand goes down, and demand for less fuel efficient light-trucks goes down a lot. Unit sales of light vehicles fell 4.2% during [...]

The Markit-NTC MFG indices show a step back in activity levels in March. The index readings are still strong, representing an 89th percentile standing for the entire EMU in its historic range and a 94th percentile standing in the case [...]

Still near its recent high, the Composite Index of activity in the factory sector from the Institute for Supply Management slipped to 61.2 from an unrevised 61.4 in February. The figure roughly matched Consensus expectations for 61.3. [...]

Severe winter weather and continuing fragility in the homebuilding market interacted once again to produce still another decline in construction put-in-place in February, as well as marked downward revisions to January and December [...]

The U.S. job market clearly recovered from depressing winter weather. Nonfarm payrolls increased 216,000 last month and added to a 194,000 February gain, initially reported as 192,000. The January gain also was revised up slightly to [...]