Labor/Economy

Economists, pundits and other Fed-watchers had wondered, before the Federal Open Market Committee released its latest meeting minutes, exactly what would happen to two little words: “considerable time.” That is, would the central bank remove those words from its guidance about interest rates?

Following a four-point uptick last month, builder confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes fell one point in December to 57 on the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index.

The price of crude oil, which is an international commodity, got another downward push when the energy minister of the UAE said that OPEC isn’t going to reverse its recent decision not to cut oil production, even if oil prices go as low as $40 a barrel.

The Census Bureau reported that U.S. retail and food services sales for November came in at $449.3 billion, an increase of 0.7 percent from the previous month, and 5.1 percent above November 2013.

The Census Bureau released its third-quarter revenue estimates for a number of U.S. service industries on Wednesday, adjusted for seasonal variation but not for price changes.

There were 4.8 million U.S. job openings on the last business day of October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.