Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

In 2020’s fourth quarter, McDonald’s U.S. sales in stores open for more than a year rose 5.5 percent compared to a year earlier, the company reported, building on November’s 4.6-percent year-on-year gain. The burger chain saw sales shrink in Europe, down 7.4 percent compared to 2019’s final quarter and less bad than the third quarter’s...

S&P Global Ratings may cut the credit ratings of major oil companies as the world shifts from petroleum-powered engines to electric vehicles, the agency announced last week. General Motors has revealed plans to end the manufacture of gas- and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035, the same year that California will ban the sale of such vehicles...

Although 37 states added jobs in the building trades in November and December, the total number of U.S. construction workers still lags pre-pandemic levels, according to a 26 January report by the Associated General Contractors of America (AGCA). Construction jobs declined during the two-month span in 11 states and D.C. However, even those recent gains...

“It’s fair to assume we’re going back into an era of inflation,” Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s richest investment management company, said in comments at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia and reported by CNN. The global COVID vaccination campaign will create herd immunity by September, Fink said. “That...

At its meeting in late January, the U.S. Federal Reserve left interest rates and its bond-buying policies unchanged amid signs that the American economic recovery has stumbled. “Following a sharp rebound in economic activity last summer, the pace of the recovery has moderated in recent months, with the weakness concentrated in the sectors of the...

President Biden has signed an executive order directing federal agencies to spend more of the government’s annual $600-billion purchasing budget with U.S. companies, particularly small and medium-sized businesses and companies owned by minority entrepreneurs. “Under the previous administration, federal government contracts awarded directly to foreign companies went up 30 percent,” Biden said when signing the...

New claims for unemployment benefits, an indirect measure of layoffs, slipped to 847,000 in the week ending 23 January, compared to an adjusted 916,000 the week before, the U.S. Labor Department reported. The four-week moving average for jobless claims is 868,000, up 16,250 from the previous four-week average and higher than at any time since...

U.S. household income from salaries, wages, investments, and government aid edged up 0.6 percent in December from November, the first gain since August. The bump came largely from a new round of $600 federal stimulus checks to individuals and the restoration of federal unemployment benefits passed by Congress toward the end of the month, analysts...

The U.S. economic recovery slowed in the last quarter of 2020, crippled by a surge in state lockdowns and draconian restrictions on travel and gatherings during Thanksgiving and the December holiday seasons. U.S. GDP grew only 1 percent during the quarter, according to the U.S. Commerce Department, costing jobs as unemployment claims rose in December...

A horde of U.S. financial firms, especially those in New York, is moving to Florida. The convergence of financial businesses on southeast Florida’s “gold coast” is the greatest in any time during the last 32 years, Kelly Smallridge, president of the Palm Beach County’s Business Development Board, told Business Insider. One realtor is taking hedge...