Economy in Brief: 2014

The U.S. foreign trade deficit in goods and services narrowed slightly to $43.4 billion in October from a modestly revised $43.6 billion in September. Expectations in the Action Economics Forecast Survey were for $41.6 billion. [...]

German new industrial orders in October surged by 2.5%, rising faster than had been expected. The rise follows a 1.1% increase in September. This comes after a period of severe volatility. Despite the rise in orders the Bundesbank has [...]

Nonfarm payrolls surged 321,000 during November (2.0% y/y) following upwardly revised increases of 243,000 and 271,000 during the prior two months. The gain outpaced expectations for a 225,000 rise in the Action Economics Forecast [...]

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that job cut announcements declined to 35,940 (-20.7% y/y) during November. Layoffs fell m/m in the aerospace/defense, apparel, commodities, computer, electronics, [...]

Initial claims for unemployment insurance during the week ended November 29 dropped to 297,000 after increasing to 314,000 in the prior week, revised from 313,000. The four-week moving average of initial claims increased to 299,000. [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that their total Mortgage Market Volume Index declined 7.3% last week (-11.5% y/y) to the lowest level since early last month. Applications to refinance a loan declined 13.4% (-16.3% y/y) [...]

Nonmanufacturing activity rebounded last month following two months of decline. The Institute for Supply Management's (ISM) composite nonmanufacturing index rose to 59.3 from 57.1 in October. The figure nearly reached its August peak [...]

The manufacturing and services sectors for EMU are weakening and are staying on their recent trends as they do so. Conditions are weak and headed to get weaker. While there are many distortions in the global economy there are also [...]