Economics Update

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Philly Fed 1^st Q: 25 states down, 18 up, 7 unchanged

The official non-farm payroll (NFP) number comes out on Friday, but today we have the private report from ADP, which shows a loss of 23,000 jobs, but the payroll withholding taxes numbers imply an increase in total jobs of something in the 300,000 range.

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Bank of the Federal Reserve has released its State Coincident Indexes, which show that half of the states contracted over the past 3 months, and 23 decreased in the past month.

It's better than it was a year ago, but it's still not good.

In the consumer sector, consumer spending rose in February, and the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index rose in March.

On the production side, factory orders rose for the 6^th month, though the data was not good in the Midwest, with the, with the Chicago purchasing managers index falling.

In real estate, mortgage application, including purchases, rose last week, and Fannie Mae has reported that mortgage delinquencies rose to 5.52% in January.

Note that because of the different times covered, these numbers may be consistent.

Across the ponds, Euro zone inflation rose to 1.5% year over year, and unemployment broke 10%, while in China, manufacturing grew faster than forecast in March.

Meanwhile, for reasons that I do not understand, oil rose, though the Chinese manufacturing data might have led to concerns over additional demand, and both the dollar and the Yen fell on reduced demand for safe havens.