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    Housing Starts, Building Permits Up, Unemployment Down, Regional Fed Data Positive

    May 16, 2019
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    Housing And Building

    Data this morning was positive all around. Housing starts for April rose 5.7% on top of an upwardly revised 1.7% increase in the March reading. This brings the annualized rate of starts to 1.235 million, a 3-month high.

    Building permits, a decent proxy for future construction, rose 0.6% with positive revisions to the March number, taking it from -1.7% to -0.2%. Within the permits data, the multi-family permits number is running 26% above multi-family starts, which augurs more growth.

    Unemployment

    The Labor Department reported that state-level unemployment claims dropped 16,000 to 212,000 for the week ending May 11. No revisions were given to the prior number. The overall unemployment rate remains near a 50-year low of 3.6%. While the number of people receiving benefits decreased by 28,000, the four-week moving average of continuing benefit claims rose 1,500 to 1.67 million.

    Regional Fed Data

    Regional Fed data--important sentiment gauges--continue to firm. The Philadelphia Fed came in at 16.6 points, a four month high, and well above the forecast of 9.0. Within the details, employment rose to 18.2 from 14.7, and shipments, a closely watched category re: demand, was up. New orders softened to 11.0 from 15.7, but overall a very positive report.


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    CDM Staff

    The mission at Creative Destruction Media is to be the catalyst for the "process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."
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