News

In 1987, during the last period of productivity hand-wringing, Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Solow quipped: “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”

China and its swooning stock market pose a growing risk to the global economy, say economists surveyed this month by The Wall Street Journal. But healthier U.S. consumer spending and a stronger housing market will provide enough domestic power to offset any drag coming from the world’s No. 2 economy.

U. S. consumer prices rose in June—and for the first time in 2015 this broad measure of inflation is in positive territory when compared with a year ago.

U.S. workers’ wages and benefits may be picking up faster than previously thought.

A stronger dollar and international turmoil are weighing on overseas consumers, meaning trade is unlikely to provide much support to the U.S expansion this year.

The point is not that everything in the U.S. labor market is hunky-dory. But Mr. Rose’s research has two key takeaways: First, not all workers are doing as badly as is often presumed. Second, if one agrees with the Fed’s position that the PCE price index is the best inflation measure to use, then workers haven’t done nearly so bad.

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.

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.

The unemployment rate, drawn from a separate survey of households, fell a 10th of a point in April to 5.4%, the lowest level in almost seven years and closer to the Federal Reserve’s expectation of “full” employment, which it pegs between 5% and 5.2%. The decline in joblessness reflected positive developments: The labor force grew as more Americans entered the job market and found work.

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.

Trade figures released by the Commerce Department on Wednesday suggest gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, contracted in the first three months of the year.

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.

U.S. labor costs accelerated in early 2015, a sign that the job market may be tightening and beginning to generate a long-awaited pickup in workers’ wages.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, rose just 0.3% in March from a year earlier, the same increase as the previous month, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

But the floating behemoths are overwhelming many U.S. ports that weren’t built to handle such supersize ships. Of the 10 busiest U.S. ports by container volume, as calculated by the American Association of Port Authorities, at least seven are grappling regularly with congestion.