Good Weather for the Global Economy?

The Economist has released an interactive barometer that reports the perceived forecast for the global economy (as rated by more than 1,500 senior executives).  By clicking on dates on the line graph, the barometer will change to correspond to the global business outlook at the time.  By clicking on the regions to the right of the line graph, new bars will appear to represent the chosen region.  In addition, the interactive feature allows the user to select the confidence by selected industry.  The third tab entitled "In Focus" focuses on two questions:  "Is the euro crisis over?" and "How would you describe current regulation of the banks?"

The Economist has gleaned from this information that since the last quarter of the 2012 approval ratings concerning the global economy have risen from -11% to 7% in the first quarter of 2013.  This optimism carries over into the transport and tourism sectors of industry, but turns negative in the IT, technology and government sectors.  Finally, an overwhelming majority of respondents do not believe the euro crisis is over and around half respond that the current bank regulations have not gone far enough.

U.S. Department of Commerce Reports Large Decrease in American Durable Goods

The Department of Commerce released its monthly report on Durable Goods Manufacturers' Shipments this past Thursday.  In August 2012, new orders for manufactured durable goods fell $30.1 billion (13.2%) to $198.5 billion.  This decrease represents the most severe drop since January of 2009.  While the durable goods report is highly volatile and not representative of the economy on the whole, it does provide insight into the performance of manufacturers that produce high value-added goods such as cars, turbines, semiconductor equipment, computer products, and electrical equipment.  Additionally, the Census utilizes the report in its Gross Domestic Product estimates.  American durable goods manufacturers had previously enjoyed three consecutive months of increases, and the over $230 billion value of shipments in July 2012 marked the first time the figure had recovered to pre-recession levels. The drastic 13.2% reduction, while not necessarily the best indicator of long-term trends, can be utilized to make short-term earnings predictions regarding the industries represented in the report.  An important note regarding this report: civilian aircraft orders fell significantly, and burdened the overall figure.  Orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft increased 1.1% in August, and this important portion of the report is a good barometer of American business; thus, despite the 13.2% overall drop, many manufacturers did in fact experience a healthy increase in orders.

Retail Sales Fall for the Third Straight Month

The monthly retail and food services report came out on Monday, and experts across the board agree that the numbers do not support a vigorous recovery.  Retail sales dropped for the third straight month, a trend that has not occurred since 2008.  On the other hand, retail sales increased by 3.8 percent since June 2011, and the auto industry, which faced grave prospects just a few years ago, experienced a healthy rebound, with sales growing 8.7% over the past year.

Unemployment By Industry

In one of the New York Time’s Economix blog posts, Motoko Rich discusses changes in the unemployment rate by industry from February 2011 to February 2012, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  While unemployment remained relatively unchanged at 8.3 percent in February “mainly because more people started – or resumed – looking for work,” the data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows quite a bit of variability in unemployment between industries.  For example, as the table from the Bureau of Labor Statistics above shows, construction experienced a 4.7% decrease (from 21.8 % to 17.1%). Agriculture; information; and mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction all saw increases in unemployment of 1.1%, 1.7% and 1.6% respectively.  In addition to changes in unemployment rate, the rates themselves also vary widely; agricultural workers experienced an unemployment rate of 19.5% while government workers experienced only 3.9% unemployment.

3.2 Million Job Openings in November

A report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that there were 3.2 million job openings in November, unchanged from October. This is still below the 4.4 million job openings that were recorded when the recession officially started in December 2007, though it exceeds by one million the number of openings in July 2009, which was "the most recent trough for the series." According to the report, "The number of job openings has increased 30 percent since the end of the recession in June 2009."

The report notes, "Several industries saw increases in the number of job openings over the year, while the number of job openings decreased for finance and insurance, professional and business services, and federal government. The Midwest and South regions had increases in the number of job openings and the West experienced a decline over the year."

The BLS Editor's Desk further summarizes, "There were 2.8 million job openings in private industry. Within private industry, there were 87,000 job openings in construction, and 606,000 in education and health services."