Housing Starts, Permits climb in June. Jobless claims rise, Philly fed edges up. Dollar rises in fx trading. | CountingPips Forex & Currency Trading Blog

July 17, 2008 - Forex Economic News

Housing Starts, Permits climb in June. Jobless claims rise, Philly fed edges up. Dollar rises in fx trading.

U.S. Housing Starts and Building Permits climbed in the month of April according to data released by the Commerce Department on new residential construction. Housing Starts grew by 9.1 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,066,000, an increase from May's 977,000 estimated housing starts. June's total, despite the monthly increase, is down 26.9 percent compared with June of 2007. Single-family housing starts totaled 647,000 in June which was a 5.3 percent decline from May's 683,000 starts.

Building permits statistics, used as a predictor of future construction, showed a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,091,000 permits in June which is an increase of 11.6 percent compared to May. June's total, despite the monthly increase, is 23.9 percent below the level of June 2007. Single-family permits totaled 613,000 which was a decline of 3.5 percent from May.

Housing Completions for June also increased when compared to May with an annual rate of 1,167,000 privately-owned housing completions. This is a increase of 1.2 percent from May but a 21.7 percent annual drop compared to June 2007. Single family housing completions totaled an annual rate of 859,000 in June which was an decrease of 2.9 percent from May.

U.S. Weekly Jobless Claims rise.

U.S. new jobless claims increased last week by 18,000 people to a seasonally adjusted total of 349,000 workers according to data released today by the U.S. Labor Department. A four week moving average of unemployment claims showed a decrease of 4,500 workers to a rate of 376,500. Workers receiving continuing unemployment benefits for the week ending July 5th decreased by 81,000 to 3,203,000. A four week moving average of continuing claims increased by 16,500 from prior week to 3,142,750. Last week's moving average registered 3,126,250.

Philly Manufacturing Business Survey.

The Philadelphia Manufacturing Index released today by the Philadelphia Fed showed a slight increase in its business outlook survey when compared to last month but was still in deep contraction territory. The Philly general business diffusion index for July edged up to -16.3 from a score of -17.1 in June, marking the 8th straight month of negative scores. A negative score is considered a contraction in that area or sector while a positive score constitutes growth or expansion. Demand for new orders was steady at -12.1 in July while the the current shipments index dropped from -6.7 to -8.0. The unfilled orders index fell by six points to -18.3 for the month while delivery times fell almost three points -10.7. The inventories index increased over five points to -7.5 for July.

The future outlook of the manufacturing growth also declined a bit in July but remained positive as manufacturers have a upbeat outlook in six months compared to now. The general diffusion business index fell slightly from 21.3 to 18.0 but the future outlook showed positivity in most indexes of the report as manufacturers expect conditions to improve in new orders, shipments, unfilled orders, delivery times, prices received, prices paid, employment and capital expenditures.

The U.S. dollar has been on the rise against most of the major currencies in forex trading today. The dollar has made gains against the Japanese yen, Swiss franc, European euro, Canadian dollar, British pound and the New Zealand dollar. The dollar has made the biggest gains against the yen and New Zealand dollar today as the U.S. currency has gained over 150 pips versus the yen and approximately 100 pips versus the NZ dollar.

Tags: us economy, construction, unemployment, jobs, business survey

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