Privately-owned housing starts in July 2008 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 965,000. This is 11.0 percent below the revised June 2008 estimate of 1,084,000.

U.S. total business sales for May were $1,212.4 billion, up 1.7% from last month. Month-end inventories were $1,489.5 billion, up 0.7% from last month.

U.S. retail and food service sales for July reached $384.6 billion, a decrease of 0.1 percent from the previous month.

The Nation's international deficit in goods and services decreased to $56.8 billion in June from $59.2 billion (revised) in May, as exports increased more than imports.

June 2008 sales of merchant wholesalers were $411.2 billion, up 2.8 percent from last month. End-of-month inventories were $435.9 billion, up 1.1 percent from last month.

New orders for manufactured goods in June increased $7.6 billion or 1.7 percent to $457.6 billion.

Total construction activity for June 2008 ($1,081.9 billion) was 0.4 percent below the revised May 2008 ($1,085.7 billion). Please see our web site for further details: http://www.census.gov/constructionspending

Sales of new one-family houses in June 2008 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 530,000. This is 0.6% below the revised May 2008 figure of 533,000.

New orders for manufactured durable goods in June increased $1.6 billion or 0.8 percent to $215.4 billion.

Homeownership Rate (HR)
The homeownership rate at 68.1 percent for the current quarter was not statistically different from the second quarter 2007 rate (68.2 percent) or the rate last quarter (67.8 percent).

Rental Vacancy Rate (RVR)
National vacancy rates in the second quarter 2008 were 10.0 percent for rental housing, which was higher than the second quarter rate last year (9.5 percent), but was not statistically different from the rate last quarter (10.1 percent).

Homeowner Vacancy Rate (HVR)
For homeowner vacancies, the current rate (2.8 percent) was not statistically different from the second quarter 2007 rate (2.6 percent) or the rate last quarter (2.9 percent).

After-tax profits for retail corporations with assets greater than $50 million averaged 2.2 cents per dollar of sales for the first quarter 2008, down 1.0 cents from the average of 3.2 cents for the fourth quarter 2007.

Manufacturing corporations' seasonally adjusted after-tax profits averaged 7.4 cents per dollar of sales for the first quarter of 2008, not statistically different from the average of 7.4 cents for the fourth quarter of 2007.

U.S. Information sector revenue for the first quarter of 2008, not adjusted for seasonal variation, holiday or trading-day differences, or price changes, was $277.9 billion, a decrease of 4.7 percent (+/- 0.7) from the fourth quarter of 2007.