The low down: More people sought U.S. unemployment aid last week, but the average for the past month fell to the lowest level in 15 years, a sign that few employers are cutting jobs. The Labor Department announced this morning that applications for jobless benefits rose 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 274,000 last week. Yet the four-week average, a less volatile measure, dropped 1,750 to 266,250, the lowest since April 15, 2000. The Associated Press reports the figures indicate that six years after the Great Recession forced 8.5 million layoffs, Americans are enjoying solid job security. Economists note that when adjusted for population growth, the current level of applications is likely at all-time lows. Read the full story.
Further on down the road: With the U.S. economy continuing to expand, Bloomberg reports American trucking companies have had to keep up with ever-growing freight demand. They’ve been able to do so even with a significant shortage of licensed drivers in the country. Instead of putting more trucks on the road and hiring people to drive them, the industry is opting to add more trailers to increase the capacity each individual driver can haul. About 70% of those surveyed plan to expand capacity by buying more trailers, the highest level since 2007, according to CK Commercial Vehicle Research’s most recent Fleet Sentiment Report. Read the full story.
Boom or bubble? Investors are pushing commercial real-estate prices to record levels in cities around the world, fueling concerns that the global property market is overheating, The Wall Street Journal reports. The valuations of office buildings sold in London, Hong Kong, Osaka and Chicago hit record highs in the second quarter of this year, on a price per square foot basis, and reached post-2009 highs in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin and Sydney, according to industry tracker Real Capital Analytics. Deal activity is soaring as well. The value of U.S. commercial real-estate transactions in the first half of 2015 jumped 36% from a year earlier to $225.1 billion, ahead of the pace set in 2006, according to Real Capital. Read the full story.
