Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

Office spaces in 10 major U.S. cities saw occupancy rates of 33 percent in the week ended 25 August, dipping from 35 percent in late July, according to Kastle Systems, which tracks swipe card use in more than 2,500 business buildings. Offices in New York and San Francisco were the most lightly attended at 22...

The Producer Price Index, a measure of what manufacturers charge wholesale markets for their finished products, jumped 8.3 percent from August 2020 through last month, the U.S. Labor Department reported the largest annual gain since the agency began tracking the number in 2010. The index, a measure of inflation that has yet to reach consumers,...

Earlier this year, economists’ vision for September 2021 was bright: the vast majority of people would be vaccinated, schools would fully reopen across the country, and retail, travel, and face-to-face service businesses would bloom again… and the work-at-home millions would be commuting back to their offices.  Now, thanks to the media fear of COVID’s Delta...

Consumers’ purchases of items designed to last at least three years, such as cars and washing machines, edged down 0.1 percent in July compared to June, totaling $257.2 billion. Orders for durable goods has increased in 13 of the past 15 months, according to The Wall Street Journal, but is now being hurt by shortages...

U.S. employers added a paltry 235,000 non-farm jobs in August after adding one million in July and 962,000 in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported as it also revised upward the previous two months’ numbers. The consensus among economists had called for 735,000 new jobs last month, almost three times the actual number...

The number of claims filed for new unemployment benefits shrank to 340,000 in the most recent week reported, down from the previous week’s revised total of 354,000, to reach the lowest number since March 2020, according to U.S. labor department figures. The number bested the 345,000 expected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg but remained well...

Despite recent weakness in the U.S. job market and economic growth, “I still think that some time this year is going to be appropriate” for the U.S. Federal Reserve to begin winding down its $120-billion monthly bond purchases, Raphael Bostic, president of Atlanta’s Federal Reserve bank, said in an interview last week with The Wall...

The U.S. Federal Reserve will be forced to taper off its $120-billion monthly bond purchases swiftly and raise interest rates next year to tame inflation, according to a majority of 49 academic economists polled by the Financial Times. Consumer demand, coupled with savings amassed during last year’s shutdown and global shortages and supply chain disruptions,...

STOCKS END WORST WEEK IN SEVEN MONTHS Last week, U.S. equity markets slumped to their worst weekly performance since February, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor’s index dropping 0.8 percent and the NASDAQ, dominated by tech stocks, off 0.9 percent. As we had forecast since the media began selling the Delta...