Mark Whitehouse U.S. job growth rebounded in June from a brief slump that had many concerned about the outlook for the economy. The crucial question now: How long can it go on? The employment report for June suggests that U.S. employers were doing well in the weeks before Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. The Labor Department’s establishment …

One of the U.S.’s biggest economic challenges is the slump in productivity. After climbing steadily for many decades, productivity has slowed dramatically since 2011: Productivity is the key to long-term prosperity. It represents a hard ceiling on the amount of valuable things that a society is able to produce. If productivity flatlines, it means that the pie isn’t growing, and …

  BLOOMBERG A surge in prices for existing homes in Vancouver and Toronto is fueling new construction in Canada’s two most expensive cities. Housing starts jumped to an annualised pace of 218,333 units in June, the Canada Mortgage & Housing Corp. said, the highest since September and a 17 percent increase from a month earlier. The data suggests that builders …