News in end use

Freddie Mac has released its Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) for the week ending March 4, 2021. The PMMS reports that 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.02% with an average 0.6 point, up from last week when it averaged 2.97%.

The U.S. Department of Labor is reporting that an additional 745,000 Americans made their initial filing for unemployment benefits during the week ending on Saturday, February 27, 2021 — an increase of 9,000 from the previous week’s revised level.

Statistics Canada (StatsCan) is reporting that in January 2021, there was a record high total value of building permits issued, increasing 8.2% to $9.9 billion and exceeding the previous record of $9.6 billion set in April 2019.

According to the latest released report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas (CG&C), Inc, a global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm, planned job cuts announced by U.S. based companies fell -57% to 34,531 in February from 79,552 in January.

According to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Application Survey for the week ending February 26, 2021, the Market Composite Index — a measure of mortgage loan application volume — increased 0.5% on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier.

Smith Leonard’s latest Monthly Furniture Insight survey of residential furniture manufacturers and distributors reported that December sales were 27% higher year-over-year. The 27% increase was higher than November’s 17% increase, which had been the first month in the past 6 months that orders had slowed somewhat.

According to the February ADP® National Employment Report™ nonfarm private sector employment private sector employment increased by 117,000 jobs from January to February. The ADP National Employment Report is produced by the ADP Research Institute® in collaboration with Moody’s Analytics.

Further analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Construction Spending data for January 2021, provided by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), reveals that total private residential construction spending rose 2.5% in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $713 billion, reaching a new record high.

Statistic Canada (StatsCan) is reporting that real gross domestic product (GDP) grew 2.3% in Q4 of 2020, following record fluctuations in the previous two quarters. In 2020, real GDP shrank -5.4%, the steepest annual decline since quarterly data were first recorded in 1961.

Zillow, the Seattle-based online real estate marketplace company, is reporting in a new survey that a large majority (70%) of homeowners say they would be comfortable moving into a new home after widespread COVID-19 vaccine distribution — a significant increase from the 52% in the previous survey.