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- InsightsEconomic Security
The policy rate has given back less than a fifth of its climb
On annual averages the federal funds rate rose 5.06 percentage points from its 2021 low to its 2024 peak, then fell 0.93. Everything priced against the policy rate is still being priced against most of the increase.
- InsightsIndustrial Policy
New orders for durable goods fell once in five years, then jumped
Orders dipped by 4.9 billion dollars a month in 2024 and rose by 23.4 billion in 2025, the largest single-year gain in the window. The series counts dollars, not machines.
- InsightsIndustrial Policy
Core capital-goods orders took three years to return to their 2022 figure
The monthly average rose from 62 billion dollars in 2020 to 77 in 2022, then ran 75, 74 and back to 77. The figure counts dollars and is not adjusted for prices, so a return to the same number is not a return to the same order book.
- InsightsHousing & Urban Development
Two years of decline have taken the mortgage rate 0.21 points off its peak
The thirty-year fixed rate peaked at 6.81 per cent in 2023, and the two annual readings since are 6.72 and 6.6. The federal funds rate ended those same two years 0.81 points lower, nearly four times as far, though it rose before it fell.
- InsightsWorkforce & Skills
The states most crowded with construction workers are mostly drilling and mining
Ranked by construction and extraction jobs per thousand, the top of the table is Wyoming, North Dakota, New Mexico and Alaska. Their own occupational detail shows what is doing the work in that ranking, and it is not building.
- InsightsInfrastructure
Nonresidential construction spending rose 14 billion in 2025 after 450 in three years
The annual rate stands at 1,309 billion dollars, the highest of six readings, and the step that brought it there is the smallest rise in the series. Spending on manufacturing plant fell 29 billion in the same year, so a total that barely moved sits on top of a 43-billion rise in everything else.
- InsightsInfrastructure
The ten-year yield has risen in every year since 2020
Six annual observations, five changes, and not one of them negative. In the year the overnight policy rate fell 0.93 points, the ten-year rose again.
- InsightsHousing & Urban Development
Housing units authorised by permit fell in every year after 2021 and are now below their 2020 reading
The series peaked at a monthly average of 1734 thousand units in 2021 and has come down in each of the four years since, to 1431 in 2025. The thirty-year mortgage rate reached its own high in 2023 and has eased in the two years since, and authorisations fell in both of them.
- InsightsMacroeconomics & Markets
Producer prices fell in two straight years and are still below the 2022 peak
The all-commodities producer price index reached 264.5 in 2022, fell twice, and at 260.3 in 2025 has not regained it. It also sits 65.9 points above 2020.
- InsightsIndustrial Policy
Factory construction spending fell in 2025 after four straight years of increase
The monthly average rose from 75 billion dollars in 2020 to 244 billion in 2024, then fell to 215 billion in 2025, the only fall in six readings. Nonresidential construction spending, from the same agency and on the same basis, rose in that same year.