Economic Data

Now, Bill Gross, the Bond King, knows that bonds go up in price when bad economic data comes out.  So, leaving aside the desire to talk one’s own book, I think Gross makes a number of good points on CNBC about the unemployment data…

Here is how the Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the situation. THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION: JUNE 2009 Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in June (-467,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.5 percent,…

The June 2009 Manufacturing ISM Report On Business® came out today and we saw yet another rise in the PMI to 44.8.  While equity markets in the U.S. seemed pretty pleased that the numbers continue to go up, I found this report a bit…

Apparently, the U.S. auto industry is working off a significant backlog of inventory because I have been hearing that pretty much everyone in North America is planning to ramp up production for the third quarter.  This is prima facie…

Initial Jobless claims rose in the latest week to 627,000 from a revised 612,000.  Continuing claims also rose to 6,738,000, demonstrating that the job market in the U.S. remains weak. Now, back in April and May, I made a big to-do about…

The unemployment insurance weekly claims report revealed that the number of persons filing an initial claim rose 3,000 this past week to 608,000.  While these are still very high numbers, they are the lowest since January, suggesting…

Submitted by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns. During the last generation, the economics profession has veered toward a ‘science’ model of economics and finance. The intellectual underpinnings for this development began with…

The U.S. Labor Department came out with its latest weekly report.  The data were mixed because initial claims are pointing to recovery, but continuing claims continue to hit new records.  The long and short: the U.S. Labor market remains…

The payroll data this morning were pretty good given the job losses came in nearly 200,000 less than expected.  But further digging suggests the number is not nearly as bullish when parsing the data.  Below are a few data points.…

The number of persons filing an initial claim for unemployment insurance in the week just ended May 30 declined to 621,000 from 625,000 the prior week.  In addition, the number of persons still receiving unemployment insurance dropped to…