Eye On Housing
Amid widespread job losses and other economic hardship resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, all the U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia experienced quarterly percentage increases in home loans past due, according to the seasonally adjusted Q2 2020 results of the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Q2 2020 National Delinquency Survey. In the second quarter of this year, on… Read More ›
Weekly initial jobless claims jumped back to above 1 million in the week ending August 15. Continuing claims, which lags initial jobless claims by one week, has declined for three weeks in a row. This week’s data indicate that the road to economic recovery may not be smooth, but bumpy. The U.S. Department of Labor released the Unemployment Insurance Weekly… Read More ›
The Federal Reserve’s latest release of the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey shows banks’ lending practices and households and businesses’ demand for various classes of loans as of the second quarter of 2020. As evidenced in the survey, in the wake of the COVID-19-wrought pandemic, widespread economic hardship caused many banks to tighten their standards across all credit classes of… Read More ›
Weekly initial jobless claims decreased below 1 million in the week ending August 8. Continuing claims, which lags initial jobless claims by one week, has declined for two weeks in a row. It is encouraging to see decreases in both jobless claims and continuing claims. More people are returning to work and the labor market is recovering gradually from the… Read More ›
In July, overall inflation remained unchanged from the previous month, while core inflation accelerated. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 0.6% in July on a seasonally adjusted basis, the same increase as in June. Excluding the volatile food and energy components, “core” CPI rose by 0.6% in July, after an increase… Read More ›
Surpassing recent dampened expectations, total payroll employment rose by 1.8 million and the unemployment rate declined to 10.2% in July. The U.S. labor market continues to recover from the COVID-19 crisis. Residential construction employment rose by 24,000 in July to 2.8 million. Total construction industry (both residential and nonresidential) employment rebounded to nearly 7.2 million in July. It is worth… Read More ›
Weekly initial jobless claims decreased in the week ending August 1 after two weeks of increases. Continuing claims, which lags initial jobless claims by one week, dropped by 844,000 in the week ending July 25. Although jobless claims remain at historically high levels, the decreases in initial jobless claims and continuing claims indicate that labor market is recovering gradually from… Read More ›
Weekly initial jobless claims increased for the second straight week in the week ending July 25. Continuing claims, which lags initial jobless claims by one week, increased to 17.0 million in the week ending July 18. The increases in initial jobless claims and continuing claims indicate that the rehiring process are slowing as the number of coronavirus cases rises and… Read More ›
The U.S. economy fell at its fastest pace on record in the second quarter of 2020 as economic activities were canceled or restricted amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The economy will start to bounce back as restrictions are lifted and economic activities increase. According to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), real gross domestic product (GDP)… Read More ›
The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Weekly Application shows a slight decrease in applications for the week ending July 24, 2020. The Market Composite Index decreased by 0.8% from the previous week on a seasonally adjusted basis. Refinancing activity, one of its determinants, decreased by 0.4% from the previous week, while purchasing activity decreased slightly more by 1.5%. The MBA’s… Read More ›