A Stern Glance

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that March 2012 sales of merchant wholesalers, except manufacturers’ sales branches and offices, after adjustment for seasonal variations and trading-day differences but not for price changes, were $411.1 billion, up 0.5 percent from the revised February level and were up 6.5 percent from the March 2011 level.  The February preliminary estimate was revised downward $0.4 billion or 0.1 percent.  March sales of durable goods were down 0.6 percent from last month, but were up 7.8 percent from a year ago.  Sales of nondurable goods were up 1.5 percent from February and were up 5.5 percent from last March. Sales of farm product raw materials were up 4.3 percent from last month and sales of petroleum and petroleum products were up 2.7 percent.

Total inventories of merchant wholesalers, except manufacturers’ sales branches and offices, after adjustment for seasonal variations but not for price changes, were $480.4 billion at the end of March, up 0.3 percent from the revised February level and were up 8.4 percent from the March 2011 level.  The February preliminary  estimate was virtually unchanged.  March inventories  of durable goods were up 1.0 percent from last month and were up 10.8 percent from a year ago. Inventories of lumber and other construction materials were up 2.1 percent from last month and inventories of machinery, equipment, and supplies were up 1.6 percent. Inventories of nondurable goods were down 0.6 percent from February, but were up 5.1 percent from last March. Inventories of petroleum and petroleum products were down 5.9 percent from last month and inventories of paper and paper products were down 2.0 percent.

The March inventories/sales ratio for merchant wholesalers, except manufacturers’ sales branches and offices, based on seasonally adjusted data, was 1.17.  The March 2011 ratio was 1.15.

Statistics released today by the Greater Las Vegas Association of REALTORS® (GLVAR) show existing home prices in April increased for the third straight month while the supply of homes listed for sale continued to shrink.

The local housing inventory, which was already tightening throughout 2011, began to contract more rapidly after Oct. 1, 2011, when a new state law known as AB284 took effect, requiring lenders to prove they have all the necessary documents in place before proceeding with a foreclosure. Since Oct. 1, Kelley said there has been a dramatic drop in the notices of default lenders file to begin the foreclosure process and in the number of bank-owned homes put on the market in Southern Nevada.

Even with fewer homes to sell, Kelley said existing home sales remain ahead of the record pace set in 2011, when GLVAR reported that 48,186 existing properties were sold in Southern Nevada.

According to GLVAR, the total number of local homes, condominiums and townhomes sold in April was 3,924. That’s down from 4,388 in March, but still up from 3,902 total sales in April 2011.

Compared to March, single-family home sales during April decreased by 9.9 percent, while sales of condos and townhomes decreased by 13.5 percent. Compared to one year ago, home sales were up 3.3 percent, while condo and townhome sales were down 9.7 percent.

As for prices, GLVAR reported the median price of single-family homes sold in April was $127,900, up 4.0 percent from $123,000 in March, and up 2.3 percent from $125,000 one year ago. Kelley said it was the first time since April of 2010 that single-family home prices had increased for three consecutive months.
Meanwhile, the median price of local condominiums and townhomes sold in April was $59,900. That’s down 1.8 percent from $61,000 in March and down 0.2 percent from one year ago.

The total number of homes listed for sale on GLVAR’s Multiple Listing Service again decreased from March to April, with a total of 17,884 single-family homes listed for sale at the end of the month. That’s down 1.7 percent from 18,200 single-family homes listed for sale at the end of March and down 20.3 percent from one year ago.

GLVAR reported a total of 3,836 condos and townhomes listed for sale on its MLS at the end of April. That’s down 1.7 percent from 3,901condos and townhomes listed at the end of March, and down 27.8 percent from one year ago.

As in past months, the number of available homes listed for sale without any sort of pending or contingent offer also dropped sharply compared to the previous month and year. By the end of April, GLVAR reported 4,162 single-family homes listed without any sort of offer. That’s down 15.1 percent from 4,901 such homes listed in March and down 63.4 percent from one year ago. For condos and townhomes, the 1,161 properties listed without offers in April represented an 8.9 percent decline from 1,275 such properties listed without offers in March and a decrease of 57.4 percent from one year ago.
In April, GLVAR reported that 54.9 percent of all existing homes sold in Southern Nevada were purchased with cash. That’s up from 54.5 percent in March.

Meanwhile, 29.9 percent of all existing local homes sold during March were short sales, which occur when a lender agrees to sell a home for less than what the borrower owes on the mortgage. That’s up from 26.6 percent in March, but still short of the peak of 34 percent set in June 2010.

Bank-owned homes accounted for 36.9 percent of all existing home sales in April, down from 40.7 percent in March.

GLVAR reported that the median price of bank-owned single-family homes sold in April was $112,500, up 6.1 percent from $106,000 in March. The median price of single-family homes sold as part of a short sale in April was $120,000, down 0.8 percent from $121,000 in March.

This month’s GLVAR statistics include activity through the end of April 2012. GLVAR distributes such statistics each month based on data collected through its MLS, which does not necessarily account for newly constructed homes sold by local builders or for sale by owners. Other highlights include:

The monthly value of local real estate transactions tracked through the MLS during April decreased by 5.5 percent for homes to nearly $508 million. For condos and townhomes, the total value of all sales in April was nearly $57 million, down 12.2 percent from March. Compared to one year ago, total sales volumes in April were up 3.7 percent for homes, but down 16.9 percent for condos and townhomes.

In April, 61.1 percent of all homes and 70.5 percent of all condos and townhomes sold within 60 days. That compares to March, when 58.8 percent of all homes and 66.6 percent of all condos and townhomes sold within 60 days.

The amount employees earn per week showed signs of improvement in 2011, further indicating Nevada’s economy is in on the mend, said Bill Anderson, chief economist for Nevada’s Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR).

Wages in Nevada averaged $829 per week in 2011, which represents a gain of 1.3 percent compared to 2010′s $818 average weekly wage. Gains in each of the first three quarters of the year were only partially offset by some sluggishness in the final months of the year.
Average weekly wages declined in both 2009 and 2010 before reversing course last year. Specifically, beginning in late-2008, wages declined relative to a year ago in five of seven quarters. An uptrend began in mid-2010. Wages rose for five straight quarters, before declining in the October to December 2011 period.

“As is the case for other labor market barometers, while recent wage trends have been encouraging, room for improvement remains,” Anderson said. “With consumer prices rising 3.2 percent in 2011, wage growth is not keeping pace in “real” terms. However, recent wage trends have been consistent with other measures pointing to moderate improvement in the state’s labor market. Unemployment is trending down. Job growth is slightly positive. Initial claims for unemployment insurance have been on the decline. By all accounts, Nevada’s economy is on a slow, yet steady pace to recovery.”

Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 115,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in professional and business services, retail trade, and health care, but declined in transportation and warehousing.

Household Survey Data

Both the number of unemployed persons (12.5 million) and the unemployment rate (8.1 percent) changed little in April.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.5 percent), adult women (7.4 percent), teenagers (24.9 percent), whites (7.4 percent), and Hispanics (10.3 percent) showed little or no change in April, while the rate for blacks (13.0 percent) declined over the month. The jobless rate for Asians was 5.2 percent in April (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed at 5.1 million in April. These individuals made up 41.3 percent of the unemployed. Over the year, the number of long-term unemployed has fallen by 759,000.

The civilian labor force participation rate declined in April to 63.6 percent, while the employment-population ratio, at 58.4 percent, changed little.

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was essentially unchanged in April at 7.9 million. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

In April, 2.4 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, essentially unchanged from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

Among the marginally attached, there were 968,000 discouraged workers in April, about the same as a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.4 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in April had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.

Establishment Survey Data

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 115,000 in April. This increase followed a gain of 154,000 in March and gains averaging 252,000 per month for December to February. In April, employment rose in professional and business services, retail trade, and health care. Transportation and warehousing lost jobs over the month.

Employment in professional and business services increased by 62,000 in April. Since a recent low point in September 2009, employment in this industry has grown by 1.5 million. In April, employment in temporary help services edged up by 21,000. Employment grew in architectural and engineering services (+7,000) and in computer systems design and related services (+7,000).

Retail trade employment rose by 29,000 over the month. General merchandise stores added 21,000 jobs in April but has shown no definitive trend in recent months. Employment in building material and garden supply stores continued to trend up; the industry has added 19,000 jobs since December.

Health care continued to add jobs (+19,000) in April. Within the industry, employment in ambulatory health care services, which includes home health care and offices of physicians, rose by 15,000.

Within leisure and hospitality, employment in food services and drinking places continued to trend up (+20,000) in April. Since February 2010, food services and drinking places has added 576,000 jobs.

Manufacturing employment continued to trend up (+16,000) in April, with job growth in fabricated metal products (+6,000) and machinery (+5,000). Since its most recent employment low in January 2010, manufacturing has added 489,000 jobs, largely in durable goods manufacturing.

Transportation and warehousing lost 17,000 jobs in April, with employment declines in transit and ground passenger transportation (-11,000) and in couriers and messengers (-7,000).

Employment in other major industries, including mining and logging, construction, wholesale trade, information, financial activities, and government changed little in April.

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.5 hours in April. The manufacturing workweek edged up by 0.1 hour to 40.8 hours, and factory overtime rose by 0.1 hour to 3.4 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 33.8 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)

In April, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 1 cent to $23.38. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 1.8 percent. In April, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose by 3 cents to $19.72.

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for February was revised from +240,000 to +259,000, and the change for March was revised from +120,000 to +154,000.

Stern And Company
Public Relations
www.sdsternpr.com
info @ sdsternpr.com
702-240-9533

You don’t sit at your desk all day, waiting for a phone call from journalists. Similarly, reporters don’t sit at their desks waiting for news about your company. In fact, given today’s smaller news staffs, in part because of reduced advertising revenues as a result of the recession, and their increasingly busy workdays, there’s a very good chance reporters may not even see your news release.

While distribution of a release via a news release dissemination service will ensure that it reaches key news outlets, news databases and online news portals. But these services are simply the electronic equivalent of dropping a document on the receptionist’s desk, it does not guarantee that the journalists who actually report for the media important to your company will ever see your news release, much less appreciate its importance.

A reporter for a local newspaper may receive up to 100 releases a day, and countless additional emails. Journalists on major national publications are besieged by several times this number. You may think your news release is very important, but to a journalist it will be just one item in a stack, unless you differentiate it. How do you make it stand out?

• If you or your company’s public relations agency issues a news release, make certain the appropriate reporters know about it. Call them. If you don’t plan to tell them about it personally, don’t waste your time or money on the release. Of course, this assumes your internal public relations staff or external agency has first done its homework and identified a target group of reporters.
• Make sure a professional will be available to service the news release, promptly returning phone calls from the media and answering their questions.
• Know and respect the media’s deadlines. Responding to a reporter’s call when he or she is on deadline, or past it, makes your company look amateurish or uncooperative. You will lose the opportunity for favorable coverage on the story at hand, and for future stories; reporters have long memories.
• Finally, don’t call the editor or the newspaper your targeting. First, he or she, in all likelihood, isn’t going to write the story; second, and far more importantly, few tactics are more offensive to a reporter than a PR pro calling his editor to pitch a story. On the other side of that coin, if your staff or agency doesn’t know any better, you are going to have some very significant media relations challenges, if you don’t already have them.

None of this is brain surgery, and it would seem that any public relations professional would assiduously adhere to these four simple protocols. Unfortunately, we hear complaints far too often from reporters that an important news release was never called to their attention by the company that issued it, or, if they did see it, that they had questions, left a voicemail and either never heard back or got a response after their deadline.

You’ve built your company by responding effectively to the needs and wants of your customers. The same goes for winning favorable treatment from the news media that are important to you. The fundamental lesson of effective PR is:

To get the ink you deserve, you have to serve the media’s agenda.

If your internal public relations team or your agency isn’t following the simple steps that will provide the best possible opportunity for positive media relations, it’s time for a change.

About Stern And Company 

Stern And Company, based in Las Vegas, develops and implements strategic corporate communications, financial relations and marketing programs for public and private companies.

All of our professionals have extensive senior-level experience as financial journalists with major publications or as communications executives at leading major corporations. Our firm’s practice areas include corporate and financial relations, public relations, strategic and product marketing, crisis communications, transaction communications, restructurings, bankruptcies and litigation support.

Stern And Company
Public Relations
www.sdsternpr.com
info @ sdsternpr.com
702-240-9533