U.S. Economic News
November 4, 2019
U.S. Economic Indicators
New factory orders for manufactured goods declined 0.6% in September following a 0.1% decline in August and are down 0.3% compared to a year ago. New orders excluding transportation were down 0.1%, while new orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft fell 0.6%. Census Bureau Report
U.S. News
Andrew Van Dam and Heather Long report for the Washington Post that despite the health of the labor market on a national level, about one in three U.S. counties have a higher unemployment rate today than a year ago—especially in swing states likely to be key battlegrounds in the 2020 election. Many of the areas experiencing rising joblessness depend on manufacturing and agriculture, sectors hit hard by the trade war with China. WaPo
According to the Wall Street Journal, a new paper by former Fed economists David Reifschneider and David Wilcox argues that average inflation targeting, a new way of potentially bolstering the Fed’s inflation target, would do little to help the central bank fight recessions and persistently low inflation in the post-crisis economy. Under an average inflation targeting framework, the Fed would set an average level for inflation over a given period and over- and under-shoot the target rate as necessary to hit the average path. WSJ