Key Economic Indicators – April 15, 2013

  • Advance estimates of retail and food services sales for March were  down 0.4% from February, but were up 2.8% from March 2012.
  • Total manufacturing and trade sales for February were up 1.2% from January, while inventories were up 0.1%.
  • Sales of merchant wholesalers in February were up 1.7% from January, while inventories were down 0.3%.
  • The federal government budget ran a deficit of $106.5 billion in March. The cumulative budget deficit for the first six months of fiscal year 2013 was $600.5 billion, $178.5 billion less than the deficit for the same period of the previous fiscal year.
  • The producer price index for finished goods decreased 0.6% in March, following an increase of 0.7% in the previous month. The producer price index for finished goods increased 1.1% from March 2012 to March 2013.
  • The import price index decreased 0.5% in March, while export prices decreased 0.4%.
  • The advance figure for initial claims for unemployment insurance decreased 42 thousand to 346 thousand in the week ending April 6.
  • The results of Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey showed average fixed mortgage rates edging down for the second consecutive week.
  • Mortgage applications increased 4.5% from a week earlier, according to data from Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Applications Survey for the week ending April 5th.
  • The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment, preliminary, for April dropped to 72.3, from 78.6 in March.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.