Daily Economic Update: Jobless Claims, Imports and Exports

Each day the Research staff takes a look at recently released economic indicators, addressing what these indicators mean for REALTORS® and their clients. Today’s update highlights jobless claims and imports and exports.

• Jobless claims continued another week of keeping steady, with new claims up 2,000 to 414,000. With numbers revised upward for prior weeks, the four-week average is now at 414, 750 which is about 9,000 higher than a month ago.
• Economists generally suggest that claims below 400,000 indicate expansion of the workforce. Continuing claims fell 30,000 to 3.717 million with the four-week average also up 6,000 to 3.735 million. Assuming new jobless claims do not continue increasing, NAR expects about 1.5 million net new jobs in the next 12 months.
• Separately, data released today on exports and imports showed some positive movement. Exports rebounded from the month before, up 3.6 percent after falling 2.2 percent in June. Imports were down slightly, 0.2 percent after 1.1 percent decline the month before.
• In aggregate, the July trade gap narrowed to $44.8 billion from $51.6 in June.   The narrowing of the trade gap came from improvement in all major components, particularly the petroleum gap which shrank to $25.6 billion. The non-petroleum goods followed by narrowing to $34.1 billion, and the services surplus increased to $15.8 billion.
• Advantageous for US manufacturers, exports of end-use goods jumped 4.8 percent while imports declined 0.3 percent. The increase in exports was led by a jump in industrial supplies, followed by increases in capital goods excluding autos and automotive. Some declines were seen in consumer goods and in food and beverages.
• Improvement to net exports looks like it will boost the GDP closer to 2 percent growth in the third quarter.