Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

As other corporations empty their commercial office space and send workers home, Amazon is defying the trend and leasing 900,000 square feet of new space – often at bargain rates – as it makes plans to add 3,500 white-collar jobs in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, New York, Phoenix, and San Diego. “The ability to connect with...

Complaining that they are paying for a “glorified Skype” service, a growing number of college and university students and their parents are demanding reductions in their tuition. At Rutgers University in New Jersey, more than 30,000 people have signed a petition calling on the school to waive certain fees and discount tuition 20 percent. The...

As we have clearly illustrated, how can it be that equity markets keep hitting new highs when industry across the economic spectrum keep hitting new lows? More than 23 percent of U.S. hotels are 30 days late or more in making their mortgage payments, according to data compiled at the end of July by Trepp,...

A record 45 companies with more than $1 billion in assets have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy since the economic shutdown began in March. The number breaks the previous record of 38 for the same period in 2009 in the depths of the Great Recession. As of 17 August, 157 companies with liabilities above $50...

IHS Markit’s U.S. Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) rose from 50.3 in July to 54.7 in August, indicating a continued rise in activity in manufacturing and services as more businesses reopen and more consumers make purchases delayed by the shutdown. Numbers above 50 signal expansion. Also in August, the data firm’s Manufacturing Output Index bumped up...

Sales of previously owned homes in the U.S. shot up 24.7 percent in July from June’s pace, the biggest monthly gain since 1968 when records began to be kept. It also was the fastest pace since December 2006, before the Great Recession struck. There were 1.5 million homes for sale at the end of July,...

Yes, the rich, as we have been reporting by the numbers, are getting richer. According to the Federal Reserve, most stock profits go to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans, who owned 87 percent of the available shares in this year’s first quarter. The proportion was 82.4 percent in 2009, after the Great Recession’s shakeout....

The U.S. Federal Reserve has said repeatedly that it and Congress will need to do more stimulus lending and spending to ensure an economic recovery, but the Fed has said nothing about when the additional stimulus might be needed. Officials have said only that more explicit comments on timing will be “appropriate at some point,”...

In the week ending 15 August, 1.1 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits, 135,000 more than in the previous week. Also, 543,000 self-employed persons, contractors, and other workers not eligible for state unemployment insurance applied for support to the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program. More than 11 million people were enrolled in that program...

CENTRAL BANK MULLS MORE STIMULUS. It comes as no surprise. Despite Eurozone governments soon ending stimulus and employment support programs, the European Central Bank (ECB) will inject more monetary methadone into the 19-nation union’s economy as unemployment rises and more companies face bankruptcy. At their mid-July meeting, bank officials debated whether they would need to...