Philadelphia Feeling: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Business Outlook Survey July 2011

The latest release of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Business Outlook Survey (BOS) for July indicated continued weakness in the regions manufacturing activity with the current activity index remaining at a near contraction level of 3.2 while the future activity index increased to a level of 23.7.

The current activity index along with many of the other current data points (new orders, unfilled orders, delivery time and inventories) are now indicating notable weakness in manufacturing activity with the size and breadth of the latest pullback clearly demanding that closer scrutiny be paid to these series in future releases.

The following chart shows the current and future activity indexes both with their corresponding 3-month moving averages. The red line marks the threshold between contraction and expansion for these diffusion indexes.

Extended Unemployment: Initial, Continued and Extended Unemployment Claims July 21 2011

Today’s jobless claims report showed an increase to initial unemployment claims and an decline to continued claims as a rising trend was called into question for initial claims.

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment increased 10,000 to 418,000 claims from last week’s revised 408,000 claims while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 50,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.9%.

Since the middle of 2008 though, two federal government sponsored “extended” unemployment benefit programs (the “extended benefits” and “EUC 2008” from recent legislation) have been picking up claimants that have fallen off of the traditional unemployment benefits rolls.

Currently there are some 3.69 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.

Taken together with the latest 3.53 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 7.23 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.

Existing Home Sales Report: June 2011

Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their Existing Home Sales Report for June showing continued weakness with slumping sales and an increasing monthly supply.

Single family home sales went unchanged from May falling 7.4% below the level seen last year while the median selling price increased a slight 0.6% above the level seen in June 2010.

Further, inventory of single family homes remains high climbing 5.9% from May and 0.1% above the level seen in June 2010 which, combined with the relatively slow pace of sales, resulted in an increase in the monthly supply to 9.4 months.

The following charts (click for full-screen dynamic version) shows national existing single family home sales, median home prices, inventory and months of supply since 2005.