Economic Data

The Atlantic has an epic piece on employment trends in America in this month’s issue.  This is a must-read piece of journalism, not just for the anecdotes and analysis of this particular downturn, but also for its statistics and…

This post was originally published at A Fistful of Euros. Well, as we say in English, it never rains but it pours. Latvia, which has had the deepest recession of all 27 European Union member states, contracted by nearly 18 per cent in the…

This post was originally published at A Fistful of Euros Well, as reported over the weekend on this blog, the EU Commission did in fact demand “more sacrifices” from the Greek people, and in the end Prime Minister Papandreou had to make a…

John Mauldin’s latest is about spotting asset bubbles and the potential government policy response. But he also has a lot to say about the latest employment situation survey and the situation in Greece with an apt comparison to the U.S. In…

A lot of people are questioning the unemployment rate of 9.7% in the face of a –20,000 non-farm payroll print.  How could we be losing jobs and have the unemployment rate drop? It would seem people are dropping out of the labor force.…

Those are the numbers. But this month’s unemployment rate and the non-farm payrolls number are less important this go round. The devil is in the details here because we have some major benchmark revisions and that means changes to…

According to data released today by the Halifax, UK house prices are now up almost 10% above the levels of just 9 months ago.  Low interest rates have certainly been a big factor in the rise, with Nationwide’s figure showing an even…

This morning, I left just in time to see the U.S. Department of Labor’s jobless claims numbers for the preceding week.  They were not good.  Initial claims hit 480,000 for the week ending 30 Jan 2010, pushing the 4-week average up…

This map comes via Gallup. The jobs picture is worst in the west and best in the south. See Gallup’s analysis of the data at the link below: Source In January, Most Job Creation in U.S. South and East - Gallup

This is a post which was originally published at A Fistful of Euros. The global manufacturing expansion continued to gather momentum in January. Coming in at 56.1, up from 54.6 in December, the JPMorgan Global Manufacturing Purchasing…