Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category
The price of oil is rising, hitting a nine-month high on the New York market as traders worry about the disruption in Iranian oil exports.
On Sunday, Iran cut off the small amount of oil it supplies to British and French companies. It was a pre-emptive retaliation against the European Union’s planned embargo of Iranian oil starting in July that is aimed at halting Tehran’s nuclear development program. The U.S. and EU nations say Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at producing nuclear weaponry, a claim Iran rejects.
On Monday, Iran threatened to extend the oil cutoff to other European countries, which together buy about 600,000 barrels of Iranian oil a day of the 2.5 million Iran exports. About two-thirds of Iran’s exported oil is sent to Asian countries.
As the uncertainty grew, the price of crude on the New York market increased about 2 percent to more than $105 a barrel, its highest point since early last May. The price is up more than 6 percent since start of the year.
The price for Brent crude on the London market rose 1.3 percent Monday to more than $121 a barrel.
Oil financial analysts say Iran’s heightened tensions with the West, along with continued economic growth in the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies, are likely to keep oil prices high. The higher price of crude oil has already boosted gasoline prices that motorists pay in the U.S.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
The U.S. says its labor market surged last month, with nearly a quarter million workers added to payrolls, and that its unemployment rate fell 0.2 percent to 8.3 percent, the lowest in almost three years.
In its closely watched monthly report, the government said Friday that 243,000 jobs were added in January, a month after the world’s largest economy recorded 200,000 new jobs. The January figure – the biggest addition in nine months – substantially exceeded the early estimates of economists. Analysts said the report signaled that the sluggish U.S. economic recovery might be advancing at a faster pace than first thought.
U.S. President Barack Obama called the employment report evidence that the “recovery is speeding up” from the depths of the country’s recession of a few years ago. He called on Congress to quickly extend a cut in payroll taxes affecting 160 million workers that is set to expire at the end of February, as well as benefits for unemployed workers, so the economy is not slowed.
Investors seemed heartened by the favorable news on hiring, boosting major U.S. stock indexes by more than one percent in mid-day New York trading.
The jobs report and the jobless rate have perhaps become the two most important barometers of the sluggishly advancing American economy. Central bank chief Ben Bernanke said this week that the recovery from the nation’s 2007 to 2009 recession, its worst economic downturn in seven decades, has been been “frustratingly slow” and is likely to advance by no more than 2.7 percent this year.
But the January jobs report – and the unexpected drop in the jobless rate from December’s 8.5 percent figure – could boost the re-election prospects for Mr. Obama, a Democrat seeking a second four-year term in the national election next November. The two leading contenders seeking the Republican nomination to oppose him – one-time venture capitalist Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich – have regularly unleashed verbal assaults on the president’s handling of the economy, calling for less government regulation of American corporations as a way to boost the country’s economic fortunes.
Analysts say the additional number of U.S. jobs the last two months are a sign the American economy is growing at a time when some other economies across the globe, such as in Europe, have virtually stalled, or slowed, as is the case in China and India.
The U.S. jobless rate has dropped for five straight months, the first time that has occurred in 18 years. The government said the boost in hiring occurred across the economy, with manufacturers adding 50,000 jobs and the leisure and hospitality industry another 44,000. Professional and business service companies hired 70,000 more workers, the most in 10 months, with many of them filling higher-paying positions.
In a separate report, a U.S. trade group, the Institute for Supply Management, said its survey of American service companies shows they are growing at the fastest pace in almost a year, with increased hiring and sales.
Even with the additional jobs added to the labor market in January, the U.S. has fallen far short of replacing the 8.7 million jobs lost in the recession. Nearly 13 million workers remain unemployed, while millions more are under-employed, working part-time jobs because they cannot find full-time work or at jobs beneath their skill level.
The state of the U.S. economy has become the prime issue in the emerging presidential campaign, with many voters saying they disapprove of the way that Mr. Obama has overseen the recovery. Even with the falling jobless rate, he is likely to face voters with the highest national unemployment figure of any U.S. president since the end of World War II.
Mr. Obama has said that without the still-controversial economic boost the government provided some American corporations during the worst days of the recession, the national economy would be in worse shape. The country’s housing market has been particularly troubled, with millions of unemployed homeowners losing their houses to bank foreclosures when they could no longer make their monthly loan payments.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
The sluggish U.S. economy produced mixed signals Thursday about how fast it is advancing.
The U.S. government reported that orders for durable goods, those designed to last at least three years, surged three percent in December, suggesting that manufacturing is a strong segment of the national economy. Orders for cars, commercial airplanes, machinery, communications equipment and primary metals fueled the increase, the second straight monthly gain.
But two other reports depicted a more negative snapshot of the U.S. economy.
The Commerce Department said the number of new-home sales in the country was the lowest ever in 2011, based on records dating back to 1963. It said 302,000 new homes were sold last year, well less than half the 700,000 figure that economists say would represent a healthy economy.
Millions of homeowners in the U.S. have lost their homes to foreclosures when they lost their jobs and were unable to keep paying their home loans. The glut of houses for sale has pushed down prices, but stricter lending requirements have curtailed the number of buyers who qualify for new loans. Sales of existing houses, often cheaper than prices on comparable new homes, have increased in recent months.
In a third report, the government said that the number of U.S. workers making their initial claims for jobless aid increased by 21,000 last week to 377,000, after falling to a nearly four-year low the previous week. New applications for unemployment assistance have steadily fallen in recent months, averaging about the same number as last week’s total.
But economists say that the 8.5 percent national unemployment rate will not decrease much until the number of new requests for jobless aid falls consistently below 375,000, to signal that hiring has picked up. About 13 million U.S. workers are unemployed. While the labor market has improved in recent months, the country has struggled to replace the 8.7 million jobs lost during the recession from 2007 to 2009, the worst in the U.S. since the 1930s.
The country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, announced Wednesday that it is keeping its benchmark lending rate near zero through late 2014, its latest attempt at boosting the national economy. At the same time, however, it trimmed its projection for the U.S. economy this year, saying that it may only advance by as much as 2.7 percent, down from an earlier 2.9 percent prediction.