By Commodity News Service Canada

WINNIPEG, April 13 – The following is a glance at the news moving markets globally.

– Statistics Canada released a bundle of domestic data on Thursday, ahead of the Good Friday holiday.

The New Housing Price Index (NHPI) rose 0.4 per cent in February compared with the previous month. Ontario accounted for the majority of the gain, as new house prices increased in all 10 of its surveyed metropolitan areas, Statistics Canada said in a report on Thursday.

In a separate report, StatsCan said job vacancies rose 6.3 per cent from the fourth quarter of 2015 to 375,000 in the fourth quarter of 2016, following little year-over-year change in the third quarter. Meanwhile, the job vacancy rate increased 0.1 percentage points to 2.4 per cent.

In a third report, StatsCan noted that manufacturing sales edged down 0.2 per cent in February to C$53.6 billion, following three consecutive monthly increases. Those declines were led by the motor vehicle assembly and petroleum and coal product manufacturing industries.

– US jobless claims dropped in the week ending April 8, according to reports out of the country on Thursday.

Initial claims for unemployment benefits in the US fell 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 234,000, marking the 110 consecutive week claims have been below 300,000.