Economy/Ecommerce

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that state and regional unemployment rates didn’t budge much in June.

Existing home sales, which have been on an upward trajectory most of this year, took a dip in June, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The Census Bureau reported on Wednesday that U.S. housing starts were at an annualized rate of 760,000 units in June.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve was on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, testifying as part of his “Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress,” and his assessment of the economy, at least for the short term, wasn’t particularly cheerful.

In synch with the generally grumpy mood consumers have been in lately, U.S. retail sales dropped 0.5 percent in June compared with May, according to the Census Bureau.

The preliminary Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index for July, which was reported on Friday, was down to 72.0 from the June reading of 73.2.

The U.S. Department of Labor reported a surprisingly large drop in the number of initial unemployment claims on Thursday.

The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee recently released the minutes of its latest meeting, and in its usual opaque way, didn’t convey to investors’ satisfaction many hints of whether the central bank was ready to prime the pump of the economy again.

As it always does during the week after the monthly jobs report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does a follow up called the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, which it released on Tuesday. The survey’s various measurements give a picture of how much churn there is in the labor market.