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July 5, 2001

USFinancialData
THE WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS:
■ First-time claims for state unemployment insurance benefits totaled
399,000 for the week ending June 30. Measured on a four-week
moving average basis, initial claims totaled 407,500, down 7,250
from four weeks earlier.
■ In May, new orders to manufacturers for durable and nondurable
goods totaled $343.7 billion, $8.3 billion more than April’s total.
After falling 2.4 percent in April, manufacturers’ shipments
increased 2.6 percent in May, while the value of their inventories
fell 0.3 percent, the fourth consecutive decline.
■ Real personal consumption expenditures (PCE) rose 0.3 percent
in May, the largest increase in four months. Year to date, real
consumer spending has increased at a 3.5 percent annual rate,
which is 1 percentage point less than that seen during the first five
months of 2000. The PCE chain price index rose at a 1.5 percent
rate in May, and it has increased at a 2.6 percent rate year to date.
■ In May, real construction spending rose $0.5 billion, or 0.1 percent.
Paced by a 3.6 percent drop in nonresidential construction, the real
value of private construction spending fell 1.1 percent in May, the
third straight decline. Public construction spending, by contrast,
rose 3.9 percent in May, after rising 5.1 percent in April.
■ The “final” estimate of first-quarter real GDP growth was revised
down 0.1 percentage point to 1.2 percent. Real GDP is up 2.5
percent from four quarters earlier.
All data are seasonally adjusted unless otherwise indicated.
U.S. Financial Data is published weekly by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of
St. Louis. For more information on data, please call (314) 444-8590. To be added to the mailing
list, please call (314) 444-8809.
Information in this publication is also included in the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) data base
on the internet at www.stls.frb.org/fred.