The otherwise humming U.S. economy may be hitting a few speed bumps.
Business investment dropped more sharply than expected in October, and new applications for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose in November, according to new government reports issued on Wednesday.
“U.S. economic data generally missed consensus forecasts today, raising downside risks” for third-quarter gross domestic product growth to fall below a 2.4 percent pace, Bank of the West Chief Economist Scott Anderson wrote in a note on the data.
Not all the news was negative, though: A private sector report found that home sales, down for the year, increased for the first time in seven months.
Purchases of durable goods by U.S. businesses dropped for the third month out of the last four, according to a Commerce Department report published Wednesday morning. Orders for capital goods used to make new products or provide services dropped 4.2 percent from the month before.
The report signals a potential slow down in economic growth, though preliminary reports can be revised up or down. While the Commerce Department does not single out a cause for the drop, businesses may have ordered more capital goods earlier in the year to preempt tariffs on a variety of imported products imposed by President Trump. A number of businesses have noted uncertainty over the Trump administration’s trade disputes with China and other countries in their latest quarterly earnings reports, as well in surveys conducted by the Federal Reserve.
Overall, durable goods orders fell off by 4.4 percent, or $11.5 billion, in preliminary estimates for October, driven both by the decline in capital goods orders and a sharp fall in transportation aircraft orders, which decreased 12.2 percent, or $11.7 billion, from September.
The figures missed the estimates of economists, who anticipated a drop but one not as severe as what the government reported.
Jobless claims also crept up slightly, to a four-month high, according to the Labor Department. Unemployment insurance claims grew by 3,000 over the last week, reaching their highest level since June, even when adjusting for seasonal increases in employment during warm-weather months. Still, the unemployment rate remains at a nearly 50-year low of 3.7 percent.
The lagging housing market saw some welcome good news in October, as the National Association of Realtors, a real estate trade organization, reported that existing home sales increased in October, increasing 1.4 percent from September. Still, sales of existing homes are down 5.1 percent from a year ago.
