Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

The Cass Freight Index, which measures demand for trucking services, crept up 0.6 percent in March, compared to an 8.6-percent rise in February. At the same time, spot rates for space on trucks fell 37 percent in March from the month before, according to a Bank of America (BoA) analysis. The report also found that...

The wealth of the U.S.’s 735 billionaires has soared 62 percent in the last two years to $4.7 trillion, according to an 18 April report from nonprofit Oxfam America. At the same time, American workers have earned about 10 percent more, much of which has been gobbled by inflation, the report noted. Making matters worse,...

As rising mortgage interest rates, record-high home prices, and inflation squeeze more and more individuals and families out of the house-buying market, home builders are turning to professional investors to replace them. Investors buy homes in popular markets and nice neighborhoods, then rent them to people who want to live in a single-family home with...

The number of Americans aged 55 or older who are working or actively looking for a job edged up from 38.4 percent last October to 38.9 percent in March, the U.S. labor department reported. About 500,000 people in that age group “unretired” into the labor force in the last six months, the department said. The...

Despite what CEO James Dimon reported to be strong credit card sales and low delinquency rates on loans, JPMorgan Chase reported a 42-percent drop in profits after surprising analysts by setting aside $900 million to cover an expected increase in loans that might go bad. A year earlier, the bank released $5.2 billion it had...

Pig iron, the raw form of iron used to make steel, is vanishing from the American market: two-thirds of the pig iron U.S. steelmakers import comes from Russia and Ukraine, those shipments have ceased because of the war, and sanctions have blocked new orders for deliveries from Russia. About 70 percent of steel made in...

The U.S. Federal Reserve needs to hike interest rates to a so-called “neutral” level as quickly as it can and be prepared to raise rates higher than neutral if inflation fails to moderate, Thomas Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, said in an 12 April speech at a New York University event. ...

Speaking at the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund on 21 April, Jerome Powell, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve hinted the central bank is likely to raise its key interest rate by half a percentage point when its rate-setting committee meets next month. Powell cited the Fed’s series of rate hikes from 2004...

Builders’ confidence in the market for new homes has slipped for the fourth consecutive month, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) / Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. The index edged down from 79 in March to 77 in April. It stood at 83 a year ago. Any reading above 50 indicates optimism...

Interest rates on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 5.11 percent during the week ending 21 April, compared to 5.0 percent a week earlier, according to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). Rates notched their seventh consecutive week of increases, reaching their highest since April 2010, which saw an average rate of 5.21 percent, Freddie...