Tag: USA

The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits last week fell sharply for the second week in a row to 227,000, reversing a spike in claims earlier in the month after a pair of major hurricanes.

Rent inflation will continue to put pressure on consumers for some time to come, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland said in a report, on Wednesday, in a finding that may point to ongoing challenges for the Fed to get overall inflation back to 2%

The U.S. import price index fell 0.4% in September, the Labor Department said Wednesday. This is the second straight monthly decline due to lower fuel prices.

US mortgage rates rose sharply for a second straight week, reaching the highest level since early August while prompting steep declines in both home-purchase and refinance activity.

The producer price index was expected to show a 0.1% increase in September, according to the Dow Jones consensus.

The pace of price increases over the past year took an unexpected step higher in September as policymakers contemplate their next move on interest rates, according to a Labor Department report Thursday.

U.S. businesses added a higher-than-expected 143,000 new jobs in September , paycheck company ADP said. Yet it was the sixth straight month in which employment gains totaled less than 200,000 in a sign the labor market has cooled off considerably.

President Joe Biden’s administration heaped pressure on U.S. port employers to raise their offer to secure a labor deal with dockworkers on strike for a second day on Wednesday, choking half the country’s ocean shipping.

U.S. auto sales are projected to grow at a weaker pace in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to industry experts, as inflationary headwinds continue to push consumers away from considering new vehicles.

A massive dockworker strike at seaports on the U.S. East and Gulf coasts is expected to wreak havoc on global supply chains and the economy, with American consumers likely to notice shortages of popular products if the work stoppage lasts for a long time.

The last of three updates on U.S. growth in the second quarter showed the economy expanded at solid 3.0% annual pace — and there’s no sign it’s taken a big turn for the worse. Gross domestic product, the official scorecard of the economy, was unchanged from the prior 3.0% estimate, the government said Thursday.

The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits last week fell to the lowest level since mid-May.

Sales at U.S. retailers barely rose in August in another sign consumers have tightened their spending as unemployment rises and the economy slackens. Sales inched up 0.1% last month, the government said Tuesday.

Prices increased as expected in August while the annual inflation rate declined to its lowest level since February 2021, according to a Labor Department report Wednesday that sets the stage for an expected quarter percentage point rate cut from the Federal Reserve in a week.

The U.S. economy created slightly fewer jobs than expected in August, reflecting a slowing labor market while also clearing the way for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates later this month.

Private sector payrolls grew at the weakest pace in more than three-and-a-half years in August, providing yet another sign of a deteriorating labor market, according to ADP.

Inflation edged higher in July, according to a measure favored by the Federal Reserve as the central bank prepares to enact its first interest rate reduction in more than four years.

The US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced on Thursday that it revised the annualized real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth for the second quarter to 3% from 2.8% in the initial estimate. Markets were expecting the BEA to confirm the GDP growth at 2.8%.

Goldman Sachs has cut its probability forecast for a U.S. recession to 20% shortly after raising it, as fresh labor market data sparked a reassessment of market views on the economy.

The consumer price index was expected to show a 0.2% increase in July and a 3% gain over the past year, according to Dow Jones consensus estimates.