Daily Economic Update: Jobless Claims, Inflation

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, the Producer Price Index and inflation.

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  The new jobless claims showed some volatility last week, with new claims jumping 27,000 to 412,000. The weekly readings were below the critical job creation level of 400,000 since early March. The less volatile four-week average continues at 395,750.
• The state with largest decreases were California, Texas and Florida, due to fewer layoffs in construction, trade, transportation, service, and manufacturing industries, and a shorter work week in California. The states with largest increases were Massachusetts, due to administrative factors; Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois, due largely to layoffs in construction, transportation, and warehousing industries.
• The continuing claims for the April 2 week fell 58,000 to 3.680 million. There had been 1.3 million net new job additions in the past 12 months to March.  Assuming that jobless claims continue to trend down, NAR expects about 1.5 to 2 million net new jobs in the next 12 months.
• The overall Producer Price Index continues to indicate inflation pressures largely from high oil prices, and increase 0.7 percent in March. This is following a 1.6 increase in February. Excluding energy and food, the increase was a smaller 0.3 percent, similar to 0.2 increase in February.
• Inflation in food prices was smaller than in February, however energy continues to rise at significant levels, jumping 2.6 percent after a 3.3 percent increase in February. The largest increase was in gasoline and heating oil. For the overall PPI, the year-over-year increase is at 5.7 percent, compared to 5.8 percent in February (seasonally adjusted). The core rate increased to 2.0 percent from 1.9 percent the prior month.