News in end use

31 states reported month-over-month employment gains in February, the BLS and National Association of Home Builders reported.

In January, the number of Canadians receiving regular Employment Insurance (EI) benefits was up 0.3%.

Existing home sales increased 9.5% month-over-month in February to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.38 million, the National Association of Realtors reported.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.87%, up from last week when it averaged 6.74%, Freddie Mac reported.

The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index® increased 0.1% in February, following a decline of 0.4% in January.

The advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial unemployment claims was 210,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the previous week.

The Federal Reserve announced it was holding interest rates steady and made no changes to its forecast that it will be necessary to cut rates three times in 2024, Yahoo Finance reported.

Mortgage loan application volume declined 1.6% on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier, the MBA reported.

The Redfin Home Price Index showed that US home prices climbed 0.6% month-over month in February, on par with the average gain in the years leading up to the pandemic.

In 2023Q4, job vacancies in Canada fell by 3.6%, or 25,400, to 678,500. The job vacancy rate decreased 0.1 percentage point to 3.8%.