Week Ahead: Housing Starts, Home Sales, Jobless Claims

Center State Bank

• The housing market is one sector of the economy that has kept up the momentum from June though the summer, and September is expected to continue gaining after a bit of a pause in August.  Starts are expected to increase 3.1% versus August’s dip of –5.1%
• Permits are expected to increase  2.3% increase to 1.510 million annualized versus 1.476 million in August.  So a solid read is expected in September after a bit of a pause in August. It speaks to the continuing strength in all segments of the housing market.
• The weekly change in initial jobless claims continues to be the best real-time indicator of how the economy is recovering and the expectation is that while recovering the recovery is getting shallower.
• Continuing claims are expected to be 9.78 million versus 10.02 million the prior week. While the trend is headed in the right direction the slope is very shallow and that speaks directly to the Fed’s concerns that this will be a long and grinding recovery that spans years, not months.

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