December 17, 2020

Housing Starts and Permits  (November 2020)

- Starts - Annual Rate    1,547,000. Previous was 1.528,000

- Permits - Annual Rate    1,639,000. Previous was 1.544,000

A goal must be to keep starts above the 1.500,000 annual needed to accommodate expanded population and units lost. We were below that from Jan. 2007 to Dec. 2019, went above that for 2 months and then had the COVID crash. If we have another month of greater than 1.5 million the homebuilding will have accomplished something not seen in 14 years.

SFR Starts were 1,143,000 which was +22.2% year/year.

Source:  Census  Details:  https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/newresconst.pdf

 

Initial Jobless Claims (week ended 12/12/2020)

- Initial Claims seasonally adjusted  885,000. Previous was 862,000

- Initial Claims  not  seasonally adjusted, totaled 935,138 in the week a decrease of 21,335 (or -2.2 percent) from the previous week

- 4-Week Moving Average seasonally adjusted  812,500. Previous was  778,250

Total receiving regular state UI increased by 552,349 

Total receiving Pandemic UI increased by  688,793

Total receiving Emergency Pandemic UI increased by  268,532 

Total receiving any UI increased by 1,603,281

Source:  Labor Department   Details: https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf