Now that the US recovery is in full swing, many continue to asked “when will this newfound economic growth produce new jobs?”
This past week all eyes were on job numbers. And there were some encouraging signs.
First, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. announced on Wednesday that planned layoffs at U.S. firms fell for a third [...]

I know that I tend to harp quite a bit about the topic above, but I also trust that my readers by now will be well be used to this. One of the main interesting things about the notion that aging might be related to export dependency is that while it enjoys little, if any, [...]

Fed Chief Ben Bernanke said Tuesday that indeed the recession of the past year is over. And positive economic data continues to punctuate assertions that the Q3 growth will be anything but lackluster:
1. On Tuesday, the popular ICSC-Goldman report’s year-on-year measure jumped into positive ground — 1.6 percent for the best showing in a [...]

Since early June we’ve been observing more and more markers that US economic recovery has started. Monday brought even more data to support that assertion.
A close look at the elements of Monday’s Conference Board report supports the view that the recession ended in June and recovery has indeed begun. The CB’s leading index posted a [...]

Last year Wal-mart added close to 30,000 jobs to it’s domestic labor force. In 2009 it now predicts it will add another 22,000 positions nationwide. In fact in some hard hit states like California, Florida and Michigan, Wal-Mart plans to add over 1,000 jobs in each.
Wal-Mart is the largest private-sector employer in the [...]

Pending home sales in April posted their largest monthly increase since Oct 2001, the National Association of Realtors said on Tuesday. The Pending Home Sales Index, jumped to 90.3 in April from 84.6 in March.
It was the third straight monthly increase this year. The index is also now 3.2% above its level a [...]

We now have three very reputable markers that signal the recession’s end.
1. According to the U.S. Weekly Leading Index published by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), that index growth has steadily risen to a 36-week high.
2. You’ve seen the pointer here for several weeks now that the “lagging peak” in new claims for unemployment [...]

riting in Business Standard today, Surjit Bhalla has a table of the vote share of the CPI and the CPI(M) put together. I thought it would be useful to see this data as a time-series, so here is the result.
Click on the graph to see it more clearly. Each circle is a data point. The [...]

In the Australian federal budget delivered earlier this week, forward estimates of revenue and spending were based on Treasury projections of economic growth rates in excess of 4 percent coming out of the current recession. This projection has attracted attention because the projected growth rates are higher than those experienced in Australia during recent boom [...]

U.S. retail Internet sales are expected to reach $146 billion in 2008, a 14.3% rise from 2007—and yes, that reckoning takes into account the economic downturn, which has actually boosted online sales because of high gas prices and reduced driving. While U.S. retail sales rose by 2.8% between the first quarter of 2007 and the [...]