The Monday Morning Quarterback | A quick analysis of important economic data released over the last week
Arizona Snapshot:
Arizona total weekly claims for unemployment insurance were way down from a year ago. Good news continued out of single-family real estate in Greater Phoenix. New home sales were up and prices of both new and existing homes continue to recover quickly. Lodging numbers for both Arizona and Greater Phoenix continued to improve as well in February. Occupancy was up as was demand. Finally, retail sales performed well in February.
U.S. Snapshot
If the unemployment insurance numbers were bad, the employment numbers were worse. Whether the data was an aberration or a result of a pull back as a result of the sequestration remains to be seen. Manufacturing was up but both the ISM index for manufacturing and non-manufacturing were lower. Yet, sales of motor vehicles and construction spending were up.
Arizona
Arizona total weekly claims for unemployment insurance remained in the 58,000 range. But, this represents a 40.5% decline from a year ago. The national unemployment insurance numbers were simply terrible. Initial claims nationally were actually up 4.6% from a year ago and continued claims were down a modest 0.2%.
Good news continued out of the single-family sector in Greater Phoenix. According to the Cromford Report, active listings were down 6.9% from a year ago and 2.2% from last month. Median prices were up 28.5% from a year ago and 4.4% over the past month. And days on market declined from 91 days a year ago to 74 days in March. While total sales were down 10.2%, new home sales were up 67.2% over the same 2012 period. The decline should have been expected as fewer distressed properties were on the market and thus, fewer investors. Median new home prices were up 20.4% March over March to $254,496 while all sales prices were up 36.5% to $170,000.
Lodging, both statewide and in Greater Phoenix, showed improvement in February. Statewide, occupancy was up to 66.9% from 64.9% a year ago. Demand was up 4.8%. In Greater Phoenix, occupancy was up to 73.0% from 70.6% in February 2012. Demand grew by 3.7%.
Finally, total sales in the state subject to transactions privilege tax were up 10.4% in February 2013 vs. February 2012. The largest gains were in utilities, wholesale, clothing and accessories, miscellaneous retail and food and liquor stores.
National
The unemployment insurance numbers wasn’t the worst news last week. Total nonfarm payroll employment was up a very modest 88,000 jobs. This was way below expectations. Over the prior 12 months, employment growth averaged 169,000 per month. In March, there were job gains in professional and business services and health care, while jobs in retail declined. Construction jobs were up as well. Whether this was an aberration or a result of uncertainty related to the mess in Washington related to the sequestration remains to be seen. The unemployment rate did decline from 7.7% to 7.6% last month but only because of declines in the labor force.
On the other hand, new orders for manufactured goods increased by 3.0% in February and now stand at the highest level since the start of the index in 1992. Yet, the Institute for Supply Management manufacturing index declined to 51.3 in March from 54.3 in February. This is not as bad as it may sound because any index number above 50 signals continued expansion in manufacturing. In this case, the momentum has slowed. The same is true for the ISM non-manufacturing index which declined in March to 54.4 from 56.0 in February.
U.S. motor vehicle sales continued to be strong at 15.5 million. This is up 7.5% from a year ago. Construction spending was also up over a year ago by 7.9%. This is made up for private construction (up 12.6%) and public construction (down 1.5%).
