​The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for August 2014 was unchanged. This is the second consecutive month in which the Index was unchanged, among other reasons due to the economic ramifications of the security situation.[1] The Index was negatively impacted by declines in the goods exports and services exports (including tourism) indices for August, and by the declines in the trade revenue and the industrial production indices for July. In contrast, increases in the consumer goods imports index and in the number of employee posts in June positively impacted the Index. There were no major updates to Index data for previous months (Table 1). Table 2 presents the development of components of the Index in the past few months.

 
Table 1: Revisions in the Composite Index
Revision
Previous data
New data
August
 
0.00
July
-0.02
-0.03
June
0.11
0.08
May
0.15
0.13
 
 
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
 
August
July
June
May
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)
 
-0.7
-0.5
1.3
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration)
 
-2.4
2.2
-1.6
Trade Revenue Index
 
-4.6
0.2
-1.2
Imports of consumer goods3
6.3
-1.9
0.3
3.5
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3
-0.6
-1.1
-0.6
3.6
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3
-6.7
-0.1
-2.8
4.1
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3
-4.8
-0.1
-1.9
-1.7
Number of employee posts in the private sector
 
 
0.2
-0.1
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector1
2.64
2.66
2.67
2.69
Building starts2
 
 
-2.8
-3.0
1 The rate of job vacancies at its actual level, seasonally adjusted and smoothed.
2 Six-month moving average.
3 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices).
 
For additional data and explanations please click here.
 
[1] A significant portion of the indices still do not reflect the full impact of Operation Protective Edge.