Economy/Ecommerce

U.S. personal income grew 0.5 percent in December, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Monday.

The 2.8 percent annualized growth rate that the U.S. economy experienced during the fourth quarter of 2011 sounds good at first blush, but economists were quick to point out that growth during the quarter wasn’t unalloyed good news.

New home sales took an unexpected 2.2 percent dive in December compared with the previous month, coming in at an annualized rate of 307,000 units.

Employment should be as important to the central bank as stable prices, and U.S. growth will continue be “modest” in the coming months.

As expected, President Obama laid out numerous elements of his economic program in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, along with campaign-style dollops of criticism for Congress.

There’s optimism these days among economists regarding the U.S. economy, according to the National Association for Business Economics’ Industry Survey, with fully 65 percent of respondents expecting real GDP growth to increase.

Existing home sales rose 5 percent month-over-month in December, according to the National Association of Realtors on Friday, to an annualized rate of 4.61 million units, which for NAR purposes includes everything.

The U.S. Department of Labor reported on Thursday that for the week ending January 14th, initial unemployment claims totaled 352,000, a sharp decrease of 50,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 402,000.