Payroll Employment
November 6, 2026 . .Payroll employment rose by 165 thousand in October after having gained 60 thousand in September after climbing by 186 thousand in August. In the past three months payroll employment has risen on average by 137 thousand per month .The labor...
Private Employment
November 6, 2026 . Private sector employment rose by 159 thousand in October after having gained 78 thousand in September after climbing by 142 thousand in August. In the past three months payroll employment has risen on average by 126 thousand per month. The...
Nonfarm Productivity
November 5, 2026 Non-farm productivity rose 3.6% in the third quarter after having climbed 2.1% in the second quarter. The third quarter growth rate consisted of a 3.7% increase in output combined with a 0.1% increase in hours worked. Hence, a 3.6% increase in...
Unit Labor Costs
November 5, 2026 Unit labor costs might be a term that is not familiar to you. Unit labor costs represent the increase in compensation adjusted for the gains in productivity. You might think that if labor costs are rising that would put upward pressure on...
Hourly Compensation
November 5, 2026 The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that hourly compensation rose 2.9% in the third quarter after having risen 4.0% in the second quarter In the past year compensation has risen 4.5%. Growth in hourly compensation is a good thing, but that...
Initial Unemployment Claims
November 5, 2026 Initial unemployment claims declined 6 thousand in the week ending October 31 to 189 thousand after having been unchanged in the previous week. The number of people receiving unemployment benefits rose 23 thousand in the week ending October 24 to...
Purchasing Managers Index — Nonmanufacturing
November 4, 2026 The Institute for Supply Management not only publishes an index of manufacturing activity each month, they publish two days later a survey of service sector firms. The business activity index for the service sector fell 2.7 points in October to...
Trade Deficit
November 4, 2026 The trade deficit for August narrowed by $0.7 billion to $105.0 billion in September after having widened by $12.9 billion in August. The widening of the trade deficit in the third quarter subtracted 3.9% from GDP growth in that quarter. We...
Car and Truck Sales
November 3 2026 Unit car and truck sales fell 2.7% in October to 15.542 thousand after having declined 3.5% in September.. Car sales bounce around a lot from month to monthly but the reality is that car sales have been quite steady. They have been hovering around...
Job Openings
November 3, 2026 The Labor Department reported that job openings rose 333 thousand in September to 7,523 thousand after having declined 145 thousand in August. They are currently slightly above the 7,000 thousand level that existed prior to the recession. As...
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