A year ago today I answered Randy Befumo's want ad and started writing the daily Economic Indicators articles. Now, I've decided its time to move on to other endeavors. There are a number of research and writing projects I want to pursue, and I plan to spend more time managing my personal investments.

I want to thank Motley Fool for the opportunity to study and write about the economy. I know I've learned a lot, and I hope I've been able to stimulate some of you to learn more about the interactions between the economy and the financial markets.

Now, on to today's news. The Commerce Department issued its July report on housing unit completions today. I'm not going to bother you this time with the month-to-month change data that always has large uncertainties associated with it. Instead, I'm going to delve into the back pages of the report to come up with an obscure indicator that has a small uncertainty, and can shed some light on the present status of the housing sector. What I'm talking about here are the statistics on housing units under construction.

We can look at the units under construction going back to the middle of last year and see this year's mini-boom in single-family home sales unfolding. From July, 1995 to February, 1996 homes under construction rose gradually from 539,000 units to 565,000 units -- a rise of approximately 3,700 units per month. Then, in March of this year, the monthly rise jumped by 16,000 units and in April it tacked on another 10,000 units, bringing the number units under construction to 591,000. The number of units leveled off in May, then jumped to 598,000 in June and was unchanged in July. The concentration of construction in the single-family market is emphasized by the fall off in multi-unit construction in the same period. From March to July of this year, the number of units under construction in structures with 5 units or more declined every month, falling from the 215,000 level down to 203,000.

For the last few months we have been reporting that new home starts and building permits for single-family homes have been declining. What's more the National Association of Home Builders has been reporting recent declines in prospective-buyer traffic and current sales at new home sites.

The upsurge in home buying and construction earlier in the year was attributed to the onset of a rise in long-term interest rates that began in mid-January. Potential home buyers rushed to become actual home buyers when they detected that interest costs might be rising. Well, they were right about the interest rates rising. Since January the yield on the 30-year T-bond rose from around 6.0 percent to approximately 7.15 percent, and mortgage rates rose right along with the bond rates. After awhile all the new buyers had made their moves and interest rates had risen to level that slowed down home sales. In the meantime, based on today's report, it looks like builders were merrily beginning construction on more and more homes, so that now it appears that there may temporarily be too many single-family homes under construction -- a real-world case study in supply and demand and economics in action.

The Labor Department reported today that new claims for state unemployment insurance benefits declined by 15,000 in the week ending August 31. The 316,000 figure surprised analysts who were expecting something of the order of 335,000.

The four-week moving average of new claims, one of the eleven indicators making up the Commerce Department's Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators, rose slightly to 323,500 from last week's level of 323,000.

The total number of people receiving state unemployment benefits rose during the most recent week for which data was available. In the week ending August 24, the ranks of the insured unemployed rose by 8,000 to 2.525 million.

What all this means with regard to tomorrow's employment situation report is unclear. On the one hand, the week-to-week change in new claims declined by a surprisingly large amount. On the other hand the four-week moving average moved up and the total number of insured unemployed persons increased.