Among eight major advanced economies, all but one — the United States — show gains in labor force participation over the past 15 years, according to a new study by Maximiliano Dvorkin and Hannah Shell of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
The personal consumption expenditures price index, which is the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.3% from April, the Commerce Department said Thursday. It was the biggest rise in more than two years and largely reflected increased prices for energy, including gasoline. Food prices were flat, and prices excluding food and energy ticked up 0.1%.
Fed officials sharply downgraded their economic forecast for this year. They projected the economy would grow between 1.8% and 2% this year, well below the range of 2.3% to 2.7% in its last forecast in March.
U.S. economic growth in the second quarter will be far weaker than previously expected and it will prevent the pace of growth from exceeding last year’s 2.4 percent, according to a forecast by a group of U.S. business economists.
The revision, which was near economists’ latest estimate of a 1% contraction, showed how the world’s largest economy remains vulnerable to shocks as it struggles to regain its vigor. The dip, expected to be short-lived, marked the third quarterly contraction since the economy emerged from recession in mid-2009.
Although unemployment is down, Torain said, she thinks many of the new jobs created pay relatively little. “The jobs being added aren’t jobs you raise a family on,” she said.
Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco argue in a new paper that issues with seasonal adjustments in the official growth statistics are depressing winter figures.
Business leaders in Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, southern Alameda and northern Santa Cruz counties predict a hiring boom in 2015. Almost 64 percent of 217 companies surveyed plan on staffing more people this year, according to the annual CEO Business Climate Survey by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.
Retail sales barely budged in April, confounding projections for a small increase, figures from the Commerce Department showed Wednesday. That followed a 0.2 percent drop from January through March that marked the first quarterly decline in almost three years.
California reported a decrease in new claims of 4,218. The state attributed the change to fewer layoffs in the service industry as well as in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting.
U.S. companies hired in April at the slowest pace in nearly a year and a half, a private survey found, as the strong dollar dragged down overseas sales and energy companies cut back on spending in the face of lower oil prices.
U.S. worker productivity declined in the first three months of the year as labor costs jumped, reflecting a slowdown in growth.
The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that the goods and services deficit was $51.4 billion in March, up $15.5 billion from $35.9 billion in February, revised. March exports were $187.8 billion, $1.6 billion more than February exports. March imports were $239.2 billion, $17.1 billion more than February imports.
By a greater than 2-to-1 margin, however, Americans said they’re less worried about the income gap, per se, and more worried about how middle- or working-class Americans can get ahead financially, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
The nation’s trade deficit expanded by 43.1% in March from February, the largest monthly widening since 1996, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. A record level of non-petroleum imports flowed into the U.S. after a labor dispute at West Coast ports ended, causing the seasonally adjusted trade gap to widen to $51.37 billion.