LAST WEEK

News & Commentary Weekly Highlights:

• Wall Street Journal: U.S. Growth May Struggle to Find Support from the Third Quarter’s Strongest Industries (Thursday)
• Market Watch: Traders Seem Certain Federal Reserve Won’t Raise Interest Rates Again This Year (Wednesday)
• Fortune: UnitedHealth Says Obamacare Is Costing It Billions (Tuesday)
• Wall Street Journal: After 7 Years of Slow Growth, U.S. Now Sees More of Same (Tuesday)
• Market Watch: New Era of Rising Deficits Has Begun, CBO Says (Tuesday)

 

Top Economic Indicator Highlights:

Consumer Price Index (December)

• Change from previous month: -0.1%
• Change less food & energy (M/M): 0.1%
• Noteworthy: The indexes for energy and food both declined for the second consecutive month. The index for all items excluding food and energy rose 0.1%, the smallest increase since August. The headline index rose 0.7% over the last 12 months, unadjusted. Core CPI (less food and energy) has increased 2.1% over the past 12 months. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow forecast for fourth quarter of 2015 ticked up a tenth of a percentage point to 0.7% following the Consumer Price Index and the Census report on new residential construction.
• Series Detail: The CPI is a collection of indexes that measures the average change in consumer prices over time for a fixed basket of goods and services from the perspective of the consumer, whereas the producer price index for final demand (PPI-FD) measures price changes from the producer’s perspective.

 

THIS WEEK

Upcoming Economic Reports & Releases:

Major Indicators

• S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index (9am, Tuesday)
• New Home Sales (10am, Wednesday)
• Durable Goods Orders (8:30am, Thursday)
• Pending Home Sales (10am, Thursday)
• Gross Domestic Product (8:30am, Friday)
• International Trade in Goods (8:30am, Friday)
• Employment Cost Index (8:30am, Friday)

 

Reports

• CBO’s Full Report of the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2016 to 2026 (2pm, Monday)
• Federal Open Market Committee Meeting Announcement (2pm, Wednesday)

Chart of the Week:

The chart above shows the change in the respective shares of men and women out of the workforce by reason between 2004 and 2014. The reason of ill or disabled ranked first among the reasons contributing to the increased share of women not in the labor force. For men, a tie of ill or disabled and going to school ranked as the top two reasons. There was no significant change in the share of women out of the labor force by reason of home responsibilities, but the share of men increased by 0.3 percentage point for that reason.