Wednesday, February 22, 2012
January Home Sales Up Again
Existing-home sales rose in January for the third time in the past four months, according to a release from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), and inventory also fell the same month. Total existing-home sales increased 4.3 percent compared to the previous month of December and 0.7 percent compared a year ago in January 2011. Total housing inventory at the end of January fell 0.4 percent compared to the previous month and 20.6 percent compared to a year ago.
Monday, February 6, 2012
It's been said that no news is good news.
Last week, the Jobs Report brought some good news for the labor market.
The headline Jobs Report showed 243,000 jobs created, which was much better than expected. Meanwhile, a whopping 257,000 private jobs were created, also much higher than expected. Upward revisions to November and December added another 60,000 jobs to what was previously reported for those months. And adding to the euphoria was a 0.2% decline in the Unemployment Rate, bringing it to 8.3%...the lowest since February 2009.
Despite all this good news, the report did show a pretty sharp decline in the labor participation rate from 64% to 63.7%. We really need to have more people participating, or working to help pay down our debt. Understandably, the demographics of baby boomers retiring does account for some of the decline. But is it the entire 0.3%? And the U-6 Unemployment Rate (which counts all persons marginally attached to the labor force, including those who are employed part-time but would prefer full-time) remains at a lofty 15.1%, with that figure dropping just 0.1% for the month.
And there was other good news to note last week as well: The Commerce Department reported that Personal Incomes rose in December by 0.5%, above expectations and well above the 0.1% reported in November. This marked the largest increase in nine months!
The headline Jobs Report showed 243,000 jobs created, which was much better than expected. Meanwhile, a whopping 257,000 private jobs were created, also much higher than expected. Upward revisions to November and December added another 60,000 jobs to what was previously reported for those months. And adding to the euphoria was a 0.2% decline in the Unemployment Rate, bringing it to 8.3%...the lowest since February 2009.
Despite all this good news, the report did show a pretty sharp decline in the labor participation rate from 64% to 63.7%. We really need to have more people participating, or working to help pay down our debt. Understandably, the demographics of baby boomers retiring does account for some of the decline. But is it the entire 0.3%? And the U-6 Unemployment Rate (which counts all persons marginally attached to the labor force, including those who are employed part-time but would prefer full-time) remains at a lofty 15.1%, with that figure dropping just 0.1% for the month.
And there was other good news to note last week as well: The Commerce Department reported that Personal Incomes rose in December by 0.5%, above expectations and well above the 0.1% reported in November. This marked the largest increase in nine months!
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