Even as numerous indicators suggest that the economy is emerging from recession, one of the most important of all continues to worsen. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that the unemployment rate rose to 10.2% in October (subscription required), its highest since April 1983. Statistics like this don’t augur well for optimistic predictions
The July employment report was released by BLS this morning and came as a pleasant surprise. The unemployment rate actually declined - by a tenth of a percentage point to 9.4% - for the first time since April 2008. Let's not break out the champagne, though. Payrolls were still nearly 250,000 lower in July than in June. It was not that long ago that
Wednesday marked the release of the 100th edition of NEMA's Electroindustry Business Confidence Index report. The EBCI tracks the evolution of business conditions facing the electroindustry in North America and three other world regions, as seen through the eyes of senior executives of NEMA member companies. Perhaps the most interesting component
With sentiment growing that the banking system may survive after all, one may be tempted to look ahead to a day when ostensibly private entities will once again be politely asked to bear their losses without recourse to the public dole. Not so fast. According to today’s Washington Post, Fannie Mae posted a gigantic first quarter loss , blowing
Retail sales tumbled in December, plunging by 2.7% from a month earlier. Naturally, the stock market cratered on January 14, the date of the data release, with the Dow Jones index sliding nearly 250 points and the S&P 500 off 29 points, or 3.4% Two thoughts come to mind. First, while the December sales figures were indeed ugly, one must remember
Writing in the WSJ yesterday (subscription req'd), Karl Rove takes both major party presidential nominees to task for their frequent aversion to the notion that a free society should allow market mechanisms to appropriately allocate its scarce resources. A particular target of the candidates is the behavior of certain energy firms. (In a grand rhetorical
This weekend marks the start of the summer driving season (although one could be forgiven for not noticing, given recent weather conditions). Crude oil prices spiked to more than $135 per barrel on Wednesday and regular grade gasoline is touching $4 per gallon in many parts of the country. One commodity not in scarce supply, though, is analysis of the