Labor/Economy

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.

Even homebuilders are feeling a little more optimistic these days, according to the latest National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, which was released on Wednesday.

The World Bank revised its prediction for the growth of the global economy in 2012 on Tuesday, and it wasn’t a change toward the upside.