A Moderate & Mixed U.S. Recovery

As people cheered the stronger than expected ISM manufacturing index, they seems to have missed that another important economic report was released that was much weaker than expected: namely construction spending which fell by 2.5% in December compared to the previous month and 6.4% compared to December 2009. All categories of construction, government construction, private residential and private non-residential fell.

All in all, recent economic reports suggests that the U.S. economy continues its recovery, but at a relatively slow pace and in a very uneven way. Manufacturing seems to have a fairly strong recovery, while growth is much slower in services and with the construction sector still being in a recession.