Economics stories on Noozify — original reporting and curated links, ranked by the community.
Initial claims for the week ending August 15 came in at 206,000, a decrease of 6,000. But the previous week was revised up from 209,000 to 212,000 — the figure reported a week earlier — and the four-week moving average climbed 4,250 to 204,000. Continuing claims rose 18,000 to 1,799,000 for the week ending August 8, with the insured unemployment rate unchanged at 1.2%. The headline number fell while the underlying trend moved the other way. This is the Labor Department's own release, not a summary of it.
A day after the 30-year yield hit a 19-year high, Treasury said it will at least double its liquidity-support buybacks in the 10-to-20-year and 20-to-30-year sectors, raising the cap from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. The change takes effect September 9 and runs through November 4, the date of the next quarterly refunding. Treasury framed it as a response to the "significant volume of high-quality offers" it already receives at the long end rather than as an intervention in yields — though long-dated yields fell on the news. This is Treasury's own announcement, not a summary of it.
The long bond topped 5.33% on Tuesday, its highest since June 2007 and within striking distance of that year's 5.44% peak. The driver is not the Fed but the term premium — the extra compensation investors want for lending across three decades — which has climbed from near zero to roughly 0.8 points as the deficit widens and Treasury issuance competes with corporate borrowing to fund AI infrastructure. Long yields are rising globally: Japan's 10-year hit a 30-year high, France's 30-year a post-2008 high, Germany's the highest since 2011.
Every central bank on Earth defends a 2% inflation target as if it were a law of nature. It began as a New Zealand finance minister's offhand remark on a 1988 TV broadcast — the Reserve Bank governor later admitted the figure was "plucked out of the air." How an improvisation became the world's monetary constitution, and why nobody can change it now.
Housing starts came in at a 1,239,000 annual rate, down 12.4% from June and 13.5% from a year ago, with single-family starts off 9.9%. Permits moved the opposite way: 1,443,000, up 5.0% on the month and 3.1% on the year. Builders are filing the paperwork for homes they are not yet willing to begin — a gap between intention and shovel that usually says more about financing costs and confidence than about demand.
Retail and food services sales came in at $763.6 billion, down 0.6% from June against a consensus calling for a small increase. The pullback was broad rather than one bad category: motor vehicles fell 1.8%, online and other nonstore retailers 2.2%, gasoline stations 0.9%. Clothing was a rare gainer at 1.9%. Sales are still up 5.0% over the year, but that annual pace has slid from 7.3% in May — the consumer is not stopping, just decelerating.
A flesh-eating parasite returned to Texas cattle in June after a six-decade absence and quickly became an easy explanation for record beef prices. The evidence points elsewhere. The more consequential story began years ago, when ranchers started shrinking the national herd — and rebuilding it will initially tighten supply further.
Initial claims for the week ending August 8 came in at 209,000, up 9,000 from the prior week's revised 200,000 and above the 202,000 economists expected. The steadier number is the four-week moving average, which held at 199,000 — the smoothing that keeps a single noisy week from being mistaken for a trend. Continuing claims fell 22,000 to 1,777,000, with the insured unemployment rate unchanged at 1.2%, a labor market that keeps refusing to break in either direction.
The Producer Price Index for final demand was unchanged in July after edging down 0.1% in June, against forecasts of a 0.2% rise. The flat headline hides a split: services rose 0.2% and construction jumped 2.2%, while goods fell 0.7%. Strip out food, energy and trade services and prices rose 0.4% — and that measure is up 4.7% over twelve months, the same as the headline, which is the part that should bother anyone expecting wholesale costs to stop feeding into consumer prices.
Core prices rose 0.2% for the month and 2.5% over the year, with every reading landing where forecasters expected. Two consecutive tame months suggest the energy-driven burst earlier this year is fading. The catch sits underneath the headline: inflation is still running ahead of the 3.2% wage growth in last week's jobs report, so purchasing power keeps eroding even as the number improves — and 3.4% remains well clear of the Fed's 2% target.
Economists expected a gain of 83,000. Instead nonfarm payrolls contracted, and downward revisions to May and June dragged the 12-month average to just 34,000. Unemployment ticked down to 4.1% — but only because the labor force shrank, pushing participation to 61.4%, its lowest outside the Covid era since 1976. Wage growth slowed to 3.2% annually, the weakest since May 2021, and traders promptly cut the odds of a September Fed hike to 44%.
Everyone expected China to panic when the Strait of Hormuz closed. Instead it stopped buying oil — imports fell 32% in a single quarter — and the satellites watching its storage tanks still can't account for where two million barrels a day of demand went.
ADP's count came in well under the 75,000 economists expected and down sharply from June's revised 95,000. Services carried the entire gain while goods-producing industries shed 3,000 jobs. Pay for workers who stayed put held at 4.4% year-over-year, but job-switchers pulled a 7% raise — their biggest in nearly a year, and a sign parts of the labor market are still supply-constrained.
Three Fed officials just dissented in favor of a rate hike at the same meeting — the first time that's happened since 2016. Chair Kevin Warsh says that's not a crisis. He says it's the design working.
The Commerce Department's advance estimate came in well below the 2.1% growth economists expected, even as consumer spending jumped to a 3.2% pace and businesses kept pouring money into AI-related equipment. The drag came from trade: a surge in imports tied to AI infrastructure build-outs widened the deficit and subtracted more than a full point from growth. The report lands a day after the Fed's contentious 9–3 vote to hold rates.
The FOMC left its benchmark rate at 3.5%–3.75%, but Dallas's Lorie Logan, Cleveland's Beth Hammack, and Minneapolis's Neel Kashkari all dissented in favor of a quarter-point hike — the first time since September 2016 that three officials broke ranks in the same direction. Markets had priced roughly a 35% chance of a surprise increase. Chair Kevin Warsh, in only his second meeting, said he "asked for a good family fight, and I got one." The 30-year Treasury yield jumped 12 basis points to 5.21%, a 19-year high.
A week-ahead look at markets: Microsoft and Meta report Wednesday and Apple and Amazon Thursday — together roughly 17% of the S&P 500's value — while the FOMC concludes Wednesday with a Warsh press conference and the advance Q2 GDP reading lands Thursday, all with oil near $100.
Headline CPI fell 0.4% in June from May as gasoline prices dropped sharply, bringing the annual inflation rate down to 3.5%.
New data shows America's wealthiest households now account for a share of discretionary spending that rivals the entire bottom 70% — a stark illustration of the K-shaped economy powering consumer growth.
A reserve born from a 1973 fright is being tested as never before. As the Strait of Hormuz hangs in the balance, the salt caverns of the Gulf Coast are finally being asked to be exactly what they were built to be.