Jobless Claims up. Manufacturing Weakens.

CPI – Retail Inflation  (October 2012)

CPI – Month/Month +0.1%
CPI – Year/Year  +2.2%
CPI Core (less food & energy) Month/Month +0.2%
CPI Core (less food & energy) – Year/Year +2.0%

One of the larger increases was in rents which were +0.4%.

Initial Jobless Claims (week ended 11/10/2012)

New Claims – 439,000. Previous was 355,000
4-week Moving Average –  383,750

This very large increase was due mainly to Sandy which both closed some businesses and delayed would-be claims from the previous week.  While we can say “No problem, this was storm related” the fact is that those people are not working and this will impact 4thQ2012 GDP, the next BLS Jobs Report and tax revenues  further straining the budgets of local, state and Federal governments.
Empire State Manufacturing Survey (November 2012)

– Index level was -5.22.  Previous was -6.16. 

Philadelphia Fed Survey (November 2012)

– General Business Conditions Index level was -10.7.  Previous was +5.7.  This is the 6th negative reading in the past 7 months.

Together, today’s data is very ugly.  This could easily translate into less than 1% GDP growth for the current quarter.