Here are some of the best indicators of the direction the U.S. economy is moving as we enter October, 2012. Do you see anything that isn't accurate below?
Home prices rebound
By Chris Isidore @CNNMoneySeptember 25, 2012: 10:11 AM ET
Home prices are back to 2003 levels in the latest sign of an improved housing market.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- In another sign of a turnaround in the long-battered real estate market, average home prices rebounded in July to the same level as they were nine years ago. According to the closely watched S&P/Case-Shiller national home price index, which covers more than 80% of the housing market in the United States, the typical home price in July rose 1.6% compared to the previous month.
It marked the third straight month that prices in all 20 major markets followed by the index improved, and it would have been the fourth straight month of improvement across the full spectrum if not for a slight decline in Detroit in April.
The July reading matched levels last seen in summer 2003, when the market was marching toward its peak in 2006. The collapse of the market after that led to the financial crisis of 2008.
"The news on home prices in this report confirm recent good news about housing," said David Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. "Single-family housing starts are well ahead of last year's pace, existing home sales are up, the inventory of homes for sale is down and foreclosure activity is slowing."
Record low mortgage rates and a tighter supply of homes available for sale have helped to lift home prices. Lower unemployment also has helped with home prices, although job growth in recent months has been slower than hoped.
Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve announced it would buy $40 billion in mortgage bonds a month for the foreseeable future. This third round of asset purchases by the central bank, popularly known as QE3, is its effort to jump start the economy through even lower home loan rates.
September auto sales best since March 2008
Oct 2, 2012 5:47pm EDT
Unemployment falls in the vast majority of US cities
- Article by: CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER , Associated Press
- Updated: October 3, 2012 - 2:01 PM
The Labor Department said Wednesday that unemployment rates dropped in 329 large cities, the most in four months. Rates rose in 24 cities and were unchanged in 19.
The trend closely matched the national figures. The U.S. unemployment rate fell in August to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent, also because more people stopped searching for jobs and weren't counted.
The four cities with the biggest drops in unemployment were all in Mississippi, where the work force shrunk by 1.8 percent to 1.3 million. In Hattiesburg, the unemployment rate dropped to 7.3 percent from 9 percent. In Jackson, it fell to 6.7 percent from 8.2 percent. Pascagoula and Gulfport-Biloxi reported the next biggest declines.
In Denver, where President Barack Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney are set to debate Wednesday night, the unemployment rate fell half a percentage point to 7.7 percent. Unemployment also dropped in Las Vegas, where Obama has been preparing for the debate.
There were some signs of progress in the report. The unemployment rate is below 7 percent in 123 metro areas, up from 73 a year ago.
The lowest unemployment rate was in Bismarck, N.D., where it was 2.6 percent. North Dakota has benefited from a boom in oil and gas drilling.
The trend closely matched the national figures. The U.S. unemployment rate fell in August to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent, also because more people stopped searching for jobs and weren't counted.
The four cities with the biggest drops in unemployment were all in Mississippi, where the work force shrunk by 1.8 percent to 1.3 million. In Hattiesburg, the unemployment rate dropped to 7.3 percent from 9 percent. In Jackson, it fell to 6.7 percent from 8.2 percent. Pascagoula and Gulfport-Biloxi reported the next biggest declines.
In Denver, where President Barack Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney are set to debate Wednesday night, the unemployment rate fell half a percentage point to 7.7 percent. Unemployment also dropped in Las Vegas, where Obama has been preparing for the debate.
There were some signs of progress in the report. The unemployment rate is below 7 percent in 123 metro areas, up from 73 a year ago.
The lowest unemployment rate was in Bismarck, N.D., where it was 2.6 percent. North Dakota has benefited from a boom in oil and gas drilling.
Polaris Industries Inc formally announced plans to more than double its product development
center in Wyoming, Minn., while adding another 300 workers to the facility
Polaris Industries Inc. on Friday formally announced plans to more than double its product development center in Wyoming, Minn., while adding another 300 workers to the facility over three years.
The company will spend $20 million to build a 144,000 square-foot addition to its existing facility, which sits on 620 acres 30 miles north of Minneapolis.
Bennett Morgan, president and chief operating officer of the $3 billion manufacturer of ATVs, snowmobiles, motorcycles and utility vehicles, said he already is hiring engineers for the expansion. When the project is complete, Polaris expects to transfer about 100 employees into the space.
"We are hiring right now and temporarily" placing the workers in Osceola, Wis., the headquarters in Medina and the existing structure in Wyoming, Morgan said.
About 350 ATV and motorcycle designers, engineers, mechanics, calibration experts and quality technicians already work in the existing building, which opened in 2005 with the help of the state's JOBZ tax incentive program.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held Friday before cheering employees, executives, city officials and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Chip Cravaack. Ryan Companies, the contractor for the project, will begin construction next week, with completion expected by August.
Wyoming Mayor Eric Peterson said he is excited about Polaris' decision to expand. With the influx of another 300 workers, the town has a chance to woo other businesses such as hotels and restaurants.
R&D consumes about 4 percent of company sales. That percentage has remained steady even as Polaris nearly doubled sales in five years. About 71 percent of all revenues now comes from products introduced in the last three years, Wine said.
The Wyoming research center frequently serves as an innovation showplace for customers, dealers and shareholders who come in to see, test or collaborate on new engine and product designs, Wine said. The expansion will further spotlight that role, he said.
The Wyoming project is the latest in a series of building projects for the Medina-based company. Polaris recently added 33,000 square feet to its motorcycle and electric vehicle plant in Spirit Lake, Iowa. Still other additions are being considered for that plant.
Wine said he expects 2012 sales to grow 14 to 17 percent from 2011's $2.7 billion. Earnings are expected to grow at least 26 percent.
The company will spend $20 million to build a 144,000 square-foot addition to its existing facility, which sits on 620 acres 30 miles north of Minneapolis.
Bennett Morgan, president and chief operating officer of the $3 billion manufacturer of ATVs, snowmobiles, motorcycles and utility vehicles, said he already is hiring engineers for the expansion. When the project is complete, Polaris expects to transfer about 100 employees into the space.
"We are hiring right now and temporarily" placing the workers in Osceola, Wis., the headquarters in Medina and the existing structure in Wyoming, Morgan said.
About 350 ATV and motorcycle designers, engineers, mechanics, calibration experts and quality technicians already work in the existing building, which opened in 2005 with the help of the state's JOBZ tax incentive program.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held Friday before cheering employees, executives, city officials and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Chip Cravaack. Ryan Companies, the contractor for the project, will begin construction next week, with completion expected by August.
Wyoming Mayor Eric Peterson said he is excited about Polaris' decision to expand. With the influx of another 300 workers, the town has a chance to woo other businesses such as hotels and restaurants.
R&D consumes about 4 percent of company sales. That percentage has remained steady even as Polaris nearly doubled sales in five years. About 71 percent of all revenues now comes from products introduced in the last three years, Wine said.
The Wyoming research center frequently serves as an innovation showplace for customers, dealers and shareholders who come in to see, test or collaborate on new engine and product designs, Wine said. The expansion will further spotlight that role, he said.
The Wyoming project is the latest in a series of building projects for the Medina-based company. Polaris recently added 33,000 square feet to its motorcycle and electric vehicle plant in Spirit Lake, Iowa. Still other additions are being considered for that plant.
Wine said he expects 2012 sales to grow 14 to 17 percent from 2011's $2.7 billion. Earnings are expected to grow at least 26 percent.
The new research-and-development center that the company plans to build on its Maplewood headquarters campus -- with room for 700 current researchers -- is a sign the company believes it's important to maintain the core of knowledge that it has locally, company observers say. "I think it's positive," said Bill Frels, the CEO of St. Paul investment firm Mairs & Power. "It has to be taken as a vote of confidence looking ahead for Minnesota." From preliminary discussions with the city about the new building, it's clear that 3M "looked at other states and other countries for this facility," said Chuck Ahl, Maplewood's assistant city manager. The possibility of putting the new building in Austin, Texas -- where 3M's electro and telecommunications division is based -- was part of that discussion, he said. 3M started moving jobs to the Austin area in the mid-1980s. The total project cost for the new Maplewood building announced Wednesday, Sept. 26, is somewhere near $150 million, and the east metro suburb and the state still need to put together financial parts of the deal, Ahl said. But those are on track. He said he thinks 3M also heard from employees that they wanted to be in Minnesota. "This is a major plus," Ahl said. "These are the type of jobs that are good for the economy and the state." You Want Jobs? Here are the Jobs! Tim Mullaney, USA TODAYIn 2009, Andrea Conaway was an X-ray technician whose career plan was showing a few fractures. Hospitals were consolidating around Pittsburgh, so she went searching for oil, in a sense. She went back to school, got an associate's degree in computer electronics, and in August, began a job as an associate systems analyst at EQT, a Pittsburgh-based natural gas driller. "I figured this industry was the future," says Conaway, who says she boosted her income to almost $50,000 a year from $38,000. "It's growing like crazy around here. My friends were getting raises and great benefits, and I knew I wouldn't be.'' Of all the places that America's new jobs are, the emerging energy business, directly or indirectly, might be responsible for more of them than almost anything else. Since 2002, the exploration of natural gas deposits embedded in shale, followed by oil drilling that began in earnest late in the decade, has created more than 1 million jobs, says Moody's Analytics economist Chris Lafakis. That's out of 2.7 million the whole country created. "It's really huge,'' Lafakis says. "And the jobs pay very well.'' Jobs directly in the oil and gas extraction business pay an average of just under $150,000 a year, Lafakis says -- almost exactly three times the national average. Big jobs in small towns Just counting positions directly in the energy industry, the shale boom has accounted for as many as 33,000 new U.S. jobs this year, according to Bright Labs, a San Francisco start-up whose website provides job-hunt data and tips. More than 3,500 are in metropolitan Houston, Bright says. But the job expansion stretches through cities of all sizes. Oklahoma City's 400 jobs are near the top of the list, Bright says. Denver, Pittsburgh, and Williston, N.D. -- all near newly exploitable oil and gas deposits -- are also seeing big changes from shale for shale-related jobs. The most plentiful jobs -- at least, of those that end up being advertised online -- seem to be in engineering. Six of the top eight most-filled new jobs in the industry are for some kind of engineer, says Bright senior data scientist Jacob Bollinger. Broad-based boom But the shale job surge is more broadbased than those numbers alone would suggest, thanks to the energy industry's complicated infrastructure and supply chain, researchers say. While oil and gas deposits are concentrated in a handful of places, more than 30 states saw oil and gas support employment, including suppliers and service companies that work with energy companies, rise at least 50% in the past decade, Moody's says. Because new rigs have to be built, and oil and gas have to be moved to market either via newly built pipelines or by truck  and rail, new jobs abound at both drilling companies and their suppliers, says Tom Tunstall, research director for the Institute for Economic Development at the University of Texas San Antonio. It has closely studied the development of the Eagle Ford shale field that spans more than a dozen counties in South Texas. In Pennsylvania, where officials say shale added 18,000 new energy industry jobs between 2008 and last year, another 5,000 jobs were added for freight trucking, and 500 more were created to build roads, according to a state-sponsored study this summer. One company that's gotten a big boost is the Union Pacific railroad, which now gets about 2% of its business from shale-based companies, hauling everything from tank cars of oil to sand used in the process of extracting gas and oil from deep underground, CEO John Koraleski says. Rising U.S. energy production also is creating manufacturing jobs for everything from steel for piping to rail cars. Among the biggest: a $650 million, 350-job plant by French tubing manufacturer Vallourec to make products for shale drilling in Youngstown, Ohio, and a planned natural gas cracking plant outside Pittsburgh that could add 10,000 construction jobs and hundreds of permanent positions at Shell, if it goes forward. "Every week, I see a billion-dollar investment ,'' Navigant Consulting energy economist Julie Carey says. Teachers and vets may apply Pioneer Natural Resources, an Irving, Texas-based driller, has hired 400 people in the South Texas area in the last two years, says Joey Hall, vice president in charge of Pioneer's South Texas Asset Team. About three-quarters of those are blue-collar workers in the fields, he said. But the company has retained at least another 1,000 outside contractors to build rigs, drive trucks and do other work. On top of that, the company added scientists and engineers back at headquarters to support both Eagle Ford and other operations, he said. In all, the company added 850 staffers last year and another 500 so far this year -- to a team of about 4,000. "These are good, decent, honorable jobs,'' Hall said. "People can and do leave satisfied and provide for their families.'' The picture is similar at ConocoPhillips, the nation's biggest independent exploration company. Conoco added more than 500 jobs in Texas and North Dakota related to shale exploration in the last three years, spokeswoman Davy Kong said. More than half were professional staff such as engineers, and the rest were field staff, such as mechanics and construction workers. About 15% of the 54,000 new jobs expected in the Eagle Ford shale by 2021 will require a college degree, and a little more than 10% will require direct experience in the energy business, Tunstall said. Community colleges and business groups are organizing training programs for those who need them. A federally funded $15 million program called ShaleNet plans to train pipeline operators and oil-field technicians nationwide, who are expected to follow work to new places as new fields open, said Laura Fisher, senior vice president for the Allegheny Conference, a business group in Pittsburgh. At Pioneer, field hands and supervisors include everyone from military veterans to former schoolteachers, Hall said. Pipeline technician James Laake took about a $20,000 raise from his old job as a prison guard; the 24-year-old high school graduate, who has a welding certificate, said he needed only brief on-the job training. "The transferable skills for veterans are leadership, logistics and working with large equipment,'' Hall said. "Electronics are electronics, and a truck is a truck.'' Contractors and spinoffs Because jobs related to shale are in more places, more job categories and more industries than you might suspect, figuring out which jobs are really caused by the shale boom is a bit tricky. Only about a quarter of employment growth driven by the shale boom has happened at energy companies, Moody's found. Another 308,000 have been "indirectly" created by the boom -- those include the ones at transportation companies or equipment firms, Lafakis said. More than half a million are "induced" jobs -- created to serve the needs of the other half-million people, once oil and gas brings more wealth to their towns. The boom is causing everyone from law firms to banks to add white-collar staffers, as well -- and to open everything from hotels to the Red Dog Ice House, a big- screen sports bar coming to Carrizo Springs, Texas. At Huntington Bancshares in Columbus, Ohio, executives give shale drilling in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia much of the credit for the bank's move to No. 3 among Small Business Administration lenders, from No. 15 three years ago, says CEO Stephen Steinour. The company has added 500 bankers, from loan officers to private bankers serving landowners whose petroleum-rich property turned out to be more valuable than they ever thought. "It's not all about shale, but shale is what's driving the confidence to keep investing ,'' says Jim Dunlap, Huntington's director of regional and commercial banking. Hard to predict Most agree that large-scale oil hiring has at least another year or two to run, before the infrastructure of the new fields is put into place, Hall says. Operating rigs will require less labor, and job growth will moderate, he adds. Then keeping shale's job boom going will depend on how many manufacturers in chemicals, autos and other energy-intensive fields will boost hiring by growing in the U.S., rather than abroad, thanks to energy oil prices lower than the world average, says George Schink, energy economist at Navigant Economics. "We've done most of our hiring,'' Pioneer's Hall says. "But we'll do some for another couple of years." USA TODAY |
Populations Increasing in Many Downtowns, Census Bureau Reports
Published: September 28, 2012
By U.S. Census BureauWASHINGTON, SEPT. 28, 2012 — /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A U.S. Census Bureau report released today shows that in many of the largest cities of the most-populous metro areas, downtown is becoming a place not only to work but also to live. Between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, metro areas with 5 million or more people experienced double-digit population growth rates within their downtown areas (within a two-mile radius of their largest city's city hall), more than double the rate of these areas overall.
Chicago experienced the largest numeric gain in its downtown area, with a net increase of 48,000 residents over 10 years. New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington also posted large population increases close to city hall.
A common theme for the non-Hispanic white alone population from 2000 to 2010 was population increases in the central areas of many of the largest principal cities, especially those in the largest metro areas.
Robotics maker PaR Systems adding capacity, jobs
- Article by: NEAL ST. ANTHONY , Star Tribune
- Updated: September 28, 2012 - 8:10 PM
PaR Systems of suburban St. Paul, a global manufacturer of robotic equipment, has broken ground on a manufacturing facility that will drive employment on its Shoreview campus from 150 jobs to 250 jobs over the next several years, its president said Friday.
Brian Behm said the new facility, about half the size of a small Target store and boasting a 65-foot-high roof, will accommodate construction of a huge robotic arm -- or "tensile truss" -- that PaR will build to help clean up the damaged nuclear plant at Fukushima, Japan.
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