LAST WEEK

News & Commentary Weekly Highlights:

• Wall Street Journal: U.S. Job Growth Roars Back in June (Friday)
• Real Clear Policy: Mired by Cost, Obamacare Fails to Deliver (Friday)
• Wall Street Journal: U.S. Trade Gap Widened in May (Wednesday)
• Financial Times: Fed held US jobs market worries ahead of Brexit (Wednesday)
• Wall Street Journal: Bad Debt Piled in Italian Banks Looms as Next Crisis (Monday)

 

Top Economic Indicator Highlights:

Employment Situation (June 2016)

• Unemployment rate: June: 4.9%; May: 4.7%; April: 5.0%
• Nonfarm payroll job growth: June: 287,000; May (second estimate): 11,000; April (third estimate): 144,000
• Noteworthy: The 3 month average for job gains is 147,000; just barely above the 145,000 jobs estimated to absorb new entrants into the job market according to a Wall Street Journal survey of economists. The labor force participation rate was 62.7%, which is 3.0 percentage points below the level when the recovery started in June 2009.

 

JEC Releases:

• Coats Statement on June Job Report (Friday)
• These 3 Conservative Policies Have Allowed Indiana’s Economy to Flourish (Thursday)

 

THIS WEEK

Upcoming Economic Reports & Releases:

Major Indicators

• Survey of Consumer Expectations (11:00am, Mon)
• Job Openings and Turnover Summary (JOLTS) (10:00am, Tue)
• Atlanta Fed Business Inflation Expectations Survey (8:30am, Wed)
• Exports/Imports (8:30am, Wed)
• Federal Reserve Board of Governors Beige Book (2:00pm, Wed)
• Producer Price Index (8:30am, Thu)
• Advance Retail Sales (8:30am, Fri)
• Consumer Price Index (8:30am, Fri)
• Real Earnings (8:30am, Fri)
• Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization (9:15am, Fri)
• Business Inventories (10:00am, Fri)
• Michigan Consumer Sentiment (preliminary) (10:00am, Fri)
• Michigan Inflation Expectations (preliminary) (10:00am, Fri)

 

Hearings, Reports, & Releases:

• June Labor Review (Monday)
• CBO: The 2016 Long-Term Budget Outlook (10:00am, Tue)
• Hearing: Encouraging Entrepreneurship: Growing Business, Not Bureaucracy (2:00pm, Tue)

 

Chart of the Week:

 

 

This chart shows the average unemployment rate and average regulatory rank (closer to 1 means less regulation) for the 50 States between 2007 and 2011. States with more regulations tend to have higher unemployment rates.

 

The Regulatory Rank is derived from the Mercatus Center’s Freedom in the 50 States project. For example, if a state has a “certificate of need” requirement to open a new hospital, it would have a higher rank (more regulated) than a state that does not.

 

The index used to generate the regulatory rank depends on freedom from tort abuse, property right protection, health insurance freedom, labor market freedom, occupational licensing freedom, cable and telecom freedom, and miscellaneous.