Friday, December 23, 2011

Happy Holidays

We've got some good economic news to ring in the holiday season:

* The biggest news is that unemployment claims fell to 364,000 last week, putting new unemployment claims at their lowest level since April 2008. The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits fell to 3.55 million, the lowest that number has been since September 2008.

* The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment increased to 69.9 in December, up from 64.1 in November.

* One thing helping both consumer confidence and consumer spending is that the price of regular unleaded gasoline at the pump fell to $3.21 a gallon Dec. 20, the lowest it’s been since February. Here in New Jersey, we’re under the national average, at $3.09 a gallon.

One bit of bad news is that fact that the government has revised the third quarter GDP number down to 1.8 percent from the earlier reading of 2.0. That, though, is a backward-looking figure; the other signs are pointing to better times ahead.

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