Privately-owned housing starts in June 2008 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,066,000. This is 9.1 percent above the revised May 2008 estimate of 977,000.

New orders for manufactured durable goods in May increased slightly to $213.6 billion.

New orders for manufactured goods in May increased $2.8 billion or 0.6 percent to $448.7 billion.

U.S. retail and food service sales for June reached $384.2 billion, an increase of 0.1 percent from the previous month.

U.S. total business sales for May were $1,189.4 billion, up 0.8% from last month. Month-end inventories were $1,479.3 billion, up 0.3% from last month.

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.

Industrial production advanced 0.5 percent in June after having fallen 0.2 percent in May.

In June, the capacity utilization rate for total industry moved up to 79.9 percent, a level 1.1 percentage points below its average for 1972-2007.