Economic Overview

This week, The Economist published an overview of the previous weeks economic headlines. Here are the overviews:

Economic and financial indicators
America's businesses (excluding farms) added 128,000 workers to the payrolls in August. The unemployment rate fell slightly, to 4.7%. Unit labour costs are also rising faster than previously thought. In the second quarter they increased at an annual pace of 4.9% (in the non-farm business sector), compared with earlier estimates of 4.2%; in the first quarter they rose by a revised 9%.

America's house prices increased by just 1.2% in the second quarter, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, which publishes the most reliable, but least timely, house-price figures. This was the smallest quarterly gain since 1999 and a marked slowdown from the 2.2% increase recorded in the first quarter.

In Japan companies raised their investment spending by 16.6% in the year to the second quarter. The figures were stronger than expected and helped to lift the yen, which had been languishing.

In the euro area the volume of retail trade grew by 2.5% in the year to July. But surveys of purchasing managers a month later revealed a slowdown in both services and manufacturing. The index for services fell to 57.1 in August from 57.9 in July; the index for manufacturing fell to 56.5 from 57.4.

Britain's industrial production in the three months to July was only 0.1% higher than in the previous three months.

Emerging-market indicators
Thailand's GDP growth slowed to 4.9% in the year to the second quarter, down from 6.1% in the first. Brazil's growth fell from 3.3% to 1.2% over the same period—the slowest growth of any economy in our table.

In August the inflation rate fell in several Asian economies, including Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. Turkey's rate also eased to 10.3%, from 11.7% in July. But Argentina's inflation edged up to 10.7%.