Weekly Economic Update: July 24 – July 28, 2017

July 24, 2017

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CHART OF THE WEEK

Loss of GDP from Lower Employment

Estimated U.S. Real GDP If Employment Recovery Matched U.K.

Last week’s chart showed how U.S. employment compared with that of the U.K. since the recession. Had U.S. employment recovered as fast as the U.K.'s, U.S. real GDP would have been $700 billion higher in 2016 alone, and annual growth would have averaged about 2.6% during the recovery instead of 2.1%. Policies to foster business investment and dynamism would have increased growth further, and released more of America’s economic potential, which the previous administration’s policies constrained.

LAST WEEK

News & Commentary Weekly Highlights

Hoover Institution: On the Prospects for Higher Economic Growth (by John Cogan, Glenn Hubbard, John Taylor, and Kevin Warsh)

MarketWatch: What Mexico and Canada want from the NAFTA renegotiation

Wall Street Journal: Fed Faces Inflation Conundrum

Wall Street Journal: Markets to Fed: Please Leave Us Alone

Top Economic Indicator Highlights

New Residential Construction (June, seasonally adjusted at annual rates, thousands of units)

Jun-2017 May-2017 Apr-2017 Jun-2016

preliminary revised final last year

Building permits 1,254 1,168 1,228 1,193

Housing starts 1,215 1,122 1,144 1,190

Housing completions 1,203 1,144 1,098 1,113

Noteworthy: Since 2011, the sluggish, but upward, march of new residential construction goes on. Newly issued building permits, starts, and completions are now comparable to what they were in the early 1990s but remain nearly half of what they were in the mid-2000s.