BULLETS Current business highlights The total value of building permits issued by Canadian municipalities increased 6.7 percent year-over-year to $8.6 billion in February. —Statistics Canada The trend in housing starts in Canada was 207,809 units for Q1 2020, compared to 192,384 units for Q1 2019, an increase of 8 percent. —Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Builders started construction on new homes in the U.S. at a pace of 1.6 million units in February. This represented a 1.5 percent decline, however, year-on-year there was a 39 percent increase in starts. —U.S. Department of Commerce The U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) increased 2.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019. By contrast, the Canada GDP growth for the same period was 0.3 percent. —U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis/Statistics Canada. In a Covid-19 survey on April 8, country populations of at least four million and over two thousand confirmed cases were ranked by the rate of infection per one million inhabitants. Using this measure against 2018 population census data, Spain had the most severe rate with 3,038 cases, followed by Switzerland and Italy. Eighth place U.S., the country with by far the most cases at that time, still had a relatively low figure in comparison, 1,222, while Canada came in at a distant 482. —John Hopkins University/World Bank For the two weeks ended March 21, 2020, total U.S. consumer packaged goods sales (in-store and online) increased $8.5 billion US from the two weeks prior. For context, that’s 15x the average rate of change for a typical two-week period. —Nielsen Japan’s imports of wooden assembled flooring rose 23 percent in January 2020 compared to a month earlier but year-on-year the value of imports was almost unchanged. —Japan Ministry of Finance EU imports of flooring products from tropical countries increased 0.5 percent to 25,690 tonnes in 2019, while import value was up 1.2 percent at €59.4 million. —IMM/Eurostat China’s 2019 sawn hardwood imports from Canada surged 56 percent to 170,000 cubic metres, with the Philippines and Germany imports rising 18 percent and 8 percent respectively. —China Customs 28
May/June 2020
Peruvian exports of wood and wood products in January 2020 totaled almost $3.7 million US, down 4 percent year on year. The main markets were China, the U.S., Canada, South Korea, Switzerland, India, Chile and the United Arab Emirates. —Peru Association of Exporters U.S. imports of hardwood flooring rose by 10 percent in January, recovering from four straight months of decline. Despite the gain, January totals still trail January 2019 numbers by 22 percent. While imports from China rose 87 percent and imports Malaysia grew nearly 250 percent, the monthly totals from those two countries are still well behind totals from a year ago. —U.S. Census Bureau/Foreign Trade Statistics February marked the sixth straight month of revenue growth for U.S. architecture firms. The Architecture Billings Index score of 53.4 for the month reflected the strongest growth in billings at firms over this period. —AIA Amid the various media options consumers have to choose from, including streaming platforms and connected TVs, a recent survey found that 83 percent of American consumers say they’re listening to as much or more radio as they were before the pandemic. —Nielsen In 2017, the global crowdfunding market reached $3.9 billion US. By the end of 2018, it grew by more than 35 percent to reach $5.3 billion US. Since then, the transaction value of the entire crowdfunding industry increased by 60 percent to $8.5 billion US. —Statista In the U.S., 68 percent of workers said they would accept a 10 percent pay cut in return for being able to work from the comfort of their home. Almost half of all workers surveyed said they would take a pay cut and work more hours just for not having to show up to the office every day. —Platform.sh Looks like they got their wish. – Editor The Consumer Sentinel Network reports that business and personal loan scams top the list of loan or lease frauds in the U.S., with nearly 44,000 complaints, or over 40 percent of all loan fraud reports in 2019. Compared to 2018 data, business and personal loan scams jumped 116 percent over the last year. —U.S. Federal Trade Commission
