Economy in Brief: May 2011

Initial claims for jobless insurance jumped last week to 474,000 from 431,000 during the prior period, initially reported as 429,000. By far, the latest figure exceeded Consensus expectations for 410,000 claims and was the highest [...]

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Grey & Christmas reported that layoffs during April fell back to 36,490, nearly the lowest level since June, 2000. The decline in layoffs was led by the government, legal, media, electronics, [...]

Growth in U.S. nonmanufacturing activity continued to slow last month. The April Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) fell to 52.8 from 57.3 in March. The latest was [...]

The EMU services sector took a step back in April and sets up just below its standing in February. The service sector in France is still pushing ahead for improvement; Spain's index while still below its February standing rose in [...]

In its latest National Employment Report, the payroll processor Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and economic consultants Macroeconomic Advisers, indicated that the April level of private nonfarm payrolls rose 179,000 after a 207,000 [...]

Unit sales of light vehicles recovered just 0.5% during April to 13.17M units (SAAR) after the 2.4% decline in March. The Consensus expectation was for sales of 13.0M, according to the Bloomberg survey. (Seasonal adjustment of these [...]

The UK MFG index fell unexpectedly in April. The index is on a seven month low. It is still 'strong' sitting at the 81st percentile of its high-low range. The construction and services indices lag and are not yet in for April. The [...]

Inflation expectations have been added to the Haver Data Base, EMERGEPR for South Korea and India. The South Korea data include monthly data, starting in February 2002 on the average expected inflation rate over the next twelve [...]