LAST WEEK

News & Commentary Weekly Highlights:

• The Economist: The World Economy: Stuck in the Middle (Friday)
• Bloomberg Business: Puerto Rico Staring at $400 Million Short-Term Funding Squeeze (Friday)
• Market Watch: Greece’s Economy Shows Surprise Growth in Second Quarter (Thursday)
• Forbes: As Obamacare’s Cadillac Tax Looms, Employers Raise Deductibles, Shift Costs (Wednesday)
• Wall Street Journal: Sputtering Worker Productivity Vexes Economy (Tuesday)

 

Top Economic Indicator Highlights:

Productivity and Costs (preliminary, Q2)

Nonfarm Business Sector

• Productivity (output per hour): 1.3% annual rate, Previous quarter: -1.1%, Recovery avg.: 1.0%
  • Output: 2.8%
  • Hours: 1.5%
• Real hourly compensation: -1.1%
• Unit labor costs: 0.5%, reflecting a 1.8% increase in nominal hourly compensation and a 1.3% increase in productivity
• Noteworthy: Real nonfarm business sector productivity grew only 0.3% from the second quarter of 2014. Annual average productivity growth was unrevised for 2014, but growth was revised down in both 2013 and 2012, to rates of 0.0% and 0.9%, respectively. The 2013 revision to 0.0% is the lowest annual rate in productivity growth since a 1.0% decline in 1982.

 

THIS WEEK

Upcoming Economic Reports & Releases:

Major Indicators

• Housing Starts and Building Permits (8:30am, Tuesday)
• Consumer Price Index (8:30am, Wednesday)
• Existing Home Sales (10am, Thursday)
• Regional and State Employment and Unemployment (10am, Friday)

 

Chart of the Week: 

The BLS produces data on labor force flows so that users may analyze the movements between employment, unemployment, or not in the labor force. The chart above shows the likelihood that unemployed individuals may drop out of the labor force by the duration of their unemployment for the month of July 2015. As is shown, persons who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more show a greater likelihood of detaching from the labor force as compared to those under 27 weeks.