More Economic Updates

With the Dow crossing the 9000 point mark for the first time since January and the S&P hitting its highest level since November today, I thought I'd share a snapshot (good and bad) of our economy:

Housing Market -

• Home resales increased 3.6% in June after climbing by 1.3% in May, a monthly rise more than double what economists were expecting (in all, sales are down by 0.2% compared with a year ago).
  
• The number of potential buyers looking at homes is 12% higher compared to a year ago.
• The median price of a home rose for the second straight month in June, climbing by 4.06% to $181,800 from May (compared with a year ago, home prices are off by 15.8%).
• Inventory fell by 0.7% in June with 3.82m homes for sale, representing a 9.4-months supply, down from a revised 9.8 in May.

Job Market -

• new jobless claims climbed by 30,000 to 554,000 during the week ending July 18 (in line with economists’ expectations).
• The four-week average of new claims declined last week, falling by 19,000 to 566,000. Earlier this month, benefits claims had dropped to their lowest level since January.
• The four-week average of continuing claims is down by 132,500 to 6.54m, which is 106% higher (or roughtly double) than a year ago.
• The unemployment rate is at a 26-year high of 9.5%

State Governments -

While California has been making most of the headlines with it's budget crisis, many other states have quietly been battling theirs. The financial times put together this great visual to illustrate the problem:

According to data released on Monday by the National Conference of State Legislatures, the total deficit of all 50 states totaled $143bn for fiscal year 2010.

Our economy has come along way in the last 18 months, but we're not out of the woods yet.