It was a fairly quiet day for economic data from the US yesterday, although we did see existing home sales for December. The figures showed that sales of previously owned homes slumped by 6.4% which was far below a 1% fall the markets had been expecting. It is the lowest reading since November 2015.
The World Economic Forum has calculated that reskilling the American workforce to thrive in the new technological age will cost $34 billion. That is not great news for the government, as Washington will have to foot most of the bill. It has been said that it will only be profitable for companies to reskill around a quarter of the approximately 15 million workers who will be made redundant by automation in the next ten years.
Today is another relatively quiet day, although we will see mortgage applications up to 18 January 2019. Tomorrow is the busiest day of the week for the US, with manufacturing and services PMI set for release. We will also see initial jobless claims up to 19 January 2019.
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