US forest industry performance in February and March was recently reported by both the US government and the Institute for Supply Management.
US housing starts fell unexpectedly in March, coming off a poor performance in February when single-family builds dropped to an 18-month low.
Despite lower mortgage rates, higher wage growth and other economic indicators holding steady, there hasn’t been enough buyer activity to ignite a new wave of housing starts activity in recent months.
Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York says, "It is hard to know what is ailing the home construction industry."
Investment spending has been a clear victim of the uncertainty generated by the trade war since mid-2018, and that continued through the end of 2018.
2019 is getting off to a better start, but there is still so much uncertainty surrounding the trade war that there are certainly downside risks ahead.
Business optimism about the year ahead is now the lowest for two and a half years, posing downside risks to growth in coming months.
Approximately 935,000 of the 1.09 million direct jobs and $47.2 of the $55.4 billion of the direct payroll in forestry-related businesses is attributable to private timberlands.
The total direct, indirect and induced employment effect associated with private timberlands is around 2.5 million jobs and $109.4 billion in annual payroll.
Topics: forest industry news, forest industry trends, US forest industry performance
Source: Forest2Market
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