Nonfarm payrolls rose 115,000 in April, beating the consensus expectation for a gain of 65,000. Payroll gains for February and March were revised down by a combined 16,000, resulting in a net gain of 99,000, including revisions. The largest increases in April were health care and social assistance (up 54,000), transportation and warehouse jobs (up 30,000), and retail (up 22,000). Manufacturing jobs declined 2,000 while government jobs declined 8,000. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.3 percent in April. Initial jobless claims for unemployment rose 10,000 last week to a still relatively low 200,000 while continuing claims declined 10,000 to 1.766 million, also historically low. The report showed Americans working slig...
What You Need to Know Today: The G7 agreed to release 100 million barrels of crude oil and fuel reserves over four months, with a substantial diesel release front-loaded into the first 20 days. The announcement initially pushed crude oil lower on Friday, although it later recovered a portion o...
In a recent social media post, R-CALF unveiled its latest cattle market plan: “contracts that bind producers before establishing a base price, then tie that price to future negotiated cash transactions, should be prohibited.” That proposal aligns with recent legislation by Represent...
Key Takeaways: The recent pearl-clutching from parts of the beef industry regarding the loss of the daily Kansas fed cattle negotiated trade pricing report is overwrought and ignores the fact that the direction was readily apparent. The shift away from negotiated trade has been well docu...
From WPI Consulting
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.