Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

Around the U.S., about 40 percent of office workers have returned to their desks, as we report in this issue in “COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE BUST? OFFICE OCCUPANCY RATES IN TOILET,” but barely a third of desk jockeys in midtown Manhattan are back in place, according to ID card swipes counted by data service Kastle Systems....

Across the country, about 40 percent of office workers are back in place on a typical workday, The New York Times reported, a COVID-era proportion reached only once before, in December 2021. Workers are more inclined to comply with employers’ back-to-the-office orders now that the Omicron variant is ebbing and governments are dropping mask mandates,...

In the week ending 13 March, a quarter of shoppers on car sales website Edmunds.com considered a hybrid or fully electric vehicle (EV), 39 percent more than the week before and an 84-percent leap from February, The Wall Street Journal reported. Gasoline prices notched a record-high U.S. average of $4.33 a gallon on 11 March,...

Trucking firms are seeing their profit margins shrink as diesel fuel prices rise and wholesalers and retailers both balk at covering the higher cost. The price of diesel fuel, which most commercial trucks use, jumped $1.10 a gallon in the two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine to reach a national average of $5.25 on 14...

Compared to January, signed contracts for U.S. home sales slipped 4.1 percent in February, and 5.4 percent from a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported. February marked the fourth consecutive month of decline. By region: sales were up 1.9 percent in the Northeast, but down 9.2 percent year on year; in the...

The number of applications for mortgages to buy a home or refinance a loan dropped by 8.1 percent during the week of 14 March from the previous week, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported. The volume of applications for new mortgages to buy a home slipped 2 percent and was 12 percent below that during...

Oil prices have rocketed 88 percent since the end of 2019, but U.S. production for the week ending 18 March was 10 percent below late 2019 levels. However, despite soaring prices and insatiable global demand, the U.S. oil industry is unlikely to increase production any time soon, oil company executives say. The reason: producers are...

New applications for unemployment payments dropped to 187,000 during the week ending 19 March, the smallest weekly cohort since 1969, the U.S. labor department said. The number was 28,000 fewer than the previous week. Economists Bloomberg surveyed had pegged the number at a median of 210,000. Continuing claims also dipped below the 1.4-million benchmark to...

Thirty-two percent of American adults—virtually one in every three—expect their financial situations to worsen this year, according to the University of Michigan’s monthly survey of consumer sentiment. The number is the highest since the university began the poll 75 years ago. Consumer sentiment drooped to 59.4 this month from 62.8 in February; a year earlier,...

On 28 March, for the first time since 2006, the yield curve between U.S. five-year and 30-year treasury notes inverted, usually a signal that a recession is looming. The 2006 inversion preceded the Great Recession. Normally, yields on long-term notes are higher than those for shorter terms. That indicates investors’ faith in the short-term economic...