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Confidence Up; Expectations the Key

Today’s news from the University of Michigan-Thomson Reuters index of consumer sentiment was surprisingly good. Surprising, that is, if we had not been paying attention to the details of other recent announcements. The jump in confidence to 83.1 at the beginning of October from September’s 78.3 fits neatly with the steady but largely hidden drumbeat […]

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Brighter Outlook on Jobs?

In a week of little news about the state of the economy, today’s weekly report on new claims for unemployment assistance comes as a nice treat: jobless claims fell 30,000 to 339,000 the lowest level since February 2008. Coming as it does on the back of last week’s improved unemployment numbers we begin to talk […]

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Unemployment Rate Drops

Just a quick note on this morning’s jobs report: the US unemployment rate dropped below 8%, it was 7.8% for September, down from August’s 8.1%, and the lowest we have seen since January 2009. The economy added 114,000 new jobs during the month, a rate, which as I have said many times, not sufficient to […]

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