Strategies: The Greater the Turmoil, the Stronger the Dollar. Again.

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House Prices Rise Again, but the Pace Could Slow

In 2013’s last glimpse at the housing market, figures released on Tuesday showed that home prices in major metro areas kept rising in October. Year-over-year, prices were up 13.6 percent, the biggest gain in more than seven years.

After plummeting during the housing bust, prices have increased steadily since the spring of 2012. Prices in 20 major American metro areas increased a modest 0.2 percent between September and October, without seasonal adjustment, evidence that the quick rebound in prices is slowing, according to the closely watched S&P/Case-Shiller data. Higher mortgage rates might continue to slow the pace of improvement going forward, analysts say.

Nationally, the increase in home prices is moderating, the S&P/Case-Shiller analysis said. Prices decreased in nine metro areas between September and October, including Denver, Chicago and Washington, whereas just one saw price decreases between August and September.

“Monthly numbers show we are living on borrowed time and the boom is fading,” said David M. Blitzer of S&P Dow Jones Indices in an analysis of the new data. A big question, he said, is how quickly the Federal Reserve pulls back from its extraordinary efforts to keep rates low.

“The key economic question facing housing is the Fed’s future course to scale back quantitative easing and how this will affect mortgage rates,” Mr. Blitzer said. “Other housing data paint a mixed picture suggesting that we may be close to the peak gains in prices.” He added: “Most forecasts for home prices point to single-digit growth in 2014.”

In many metro areas where prices declined sharply — particularly those encompassing Sun Belt and Rust Belt cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Detroit — similarly sharp rebounds followed. But generally, prices have not touched their pre-bust heights, with prices across the country remaining about 20 percent lower, the S&P/Case-Shiller data show. In Dallas and Denver, however, prices have hit new peaks, the report said.

Many economists expect price increases to moderate next year, with higher prices and higher mortgage costs making homes less affordable, even though the labor market recovery might pick up some steam and inventory might increase in some areas.

In December, the Fed said that improving economic conditions warranted the central bank starting to ease up on its stimulus efforts. The Fed said it would cut its monthly purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities to $75 billion a month from $85 billion a month.

“Even after this reduction, we will be still expanding our holdings of longer-term securities at a rapid pace,” Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, said at a December news conference, his last before Janet L. Yellen takes over, pending Senate confirmation. “Our sizable and still-increasing holdings will continue to put downward pressure on longer-term interest rates, support mortgage markets, and make financial conditions more accommodative, which in turn should promote further progress in the labor market.”

But mortgage rates have risen, and the pace of sales has slowed in many metro areas. According to the National Association of Realtors, the government-backed mortgage finance company, existing-home sales dropped 4.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.9 million in November. New-home sales dropped 2.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 464,000, the Census Bureau said.

“While most housing markets still remain affordable, rising mortgage rates and rising house prices over the past six months are making it more challenging for the typical family to purchase a home without stretching beyond their means,” said Frank Nothaft, chief economist at Freddie Mac, in an analysis. “We expect mortgage rates to rise over the coming year, so it’s critical we start to see more job gains and income growth in the coming year.”

In some areas, limited housing supply has pushed prices high. “Home sales are hurt by higher mortgage interest rates, constrained inventory and continuing tight credit,” said Lawrence Yun of the National Association of Realtors, in an analysis. “There is a pent-up demand for both rental and owner-occupied housing as household formation will inevitably burst out, but the bottleneck is in limited housing supply, due to the slow recovery in new home construction.”

In a separate report released Tuesday, the Conference Board, a research group, said that consumer confidence jumped to 78.1 in December, from 72.0 in November, with sentiment about current economic conditions reaching its highest level since the spring of 2008. “Despite the many challenges throughout 2013, consumers are in better spirits today than when the year began,” said Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at the Conference Board.

Many economists do expect jobs and income growth to improve, and to have a resulting effect on housing. “We expect that the improving employment picture next year will be accompanied by a sustained increase in interest rates, which in turn will roll over into the mortgage market,” said Doug Duncan, chief economist at Fannie Mae. He said the housing recovery might continue on a “modest upward trend.”

In the S&P/Case-Shiller report, a survey of 10 major metro areas, as well as a broader survey of 20 major metro areas, showed year-on-year price increases of about 13.6 percent in October, the biggest such rise since early 2006.

Economists have said foreclosures and short sales are making up a smaller proportion of sales, making housing price gains look larger, since those homes can trade at steep discounts.

DealBook: Justice Dept. Again Signals Interest to Pursue Financial Crisis Cases

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You're the Boss Blog: Today in Small Business: Amy’s Baking, Again

Newsweek, Sold in 2010, Is Changing Hands Again

The announcement, which was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, was made on Saturday evening. Etienne Uzac, co-founder and chief executive officer of IBT Media, said in a statement: “We are thrilled to welcome this iconic brand and global news property into our portfolio. We believe in the Newsweek brand and look forward to growing it, fully transformed to the digital age.”

Justine Sacco, a spokeswoman for IAC/InterActiveCorp, which currently owns Newsweek, confirmed the sale, but declined to comment further.

At Newsweek’s peak in 1991, when The Washington Post Company owned it, its circulation was 3.3 million, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. But the magazine suffered many of the troubles facing the print media industry as more readers migrated to the Web for news.

Sidney Harman, a billionaire investor, bought Newsweek from The Washington Post in 2010 for $1 and assumed $40 million in liabilities. He then merged it with The Daily Beast, the Web site owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp. Both entities were run by Tina Brown.

But in 2011, Mr. Harman died, leaving IAC and Ms. Brown to handle the burden of keeping the magazine afloat. Last fall, Newsweek announced that it would stop publishing a print edition at the end of the year. In May, Ms. Brown told her staff that the company planned to sell now to concentrate on building up The Daily Beast.

A statement released by IBT stressed that the sale did not involve the purchase of The Daily Beast. It also noted that the company planned to return Newsweek to its original Web site, www.newsweek.com, in the coming weeks and build Newsweek’s global online franchise.

“We are 100 percent digital with a track record of successfully growing online media properties,” said Johnathan Davis, co-founder and chief content officer of IBT Media, in a statement. “The Newsweek brand is strong around the world, and we believe there is significant potential to leverage that.”

DealBook: Debating, Yet Again, the Worth of Law School

Harry Campbell

In the debate over whether law schools are worth what they cost students, sober analysis often seems to give way to angry rhetoric.

The heated response to the recently released paper titled “The Economic Value of a Law Degree,” which found that a law degree on average had $1 million in value, thus was no surprise. The indomitable Elie Mystal at the Above the Law blog, called the study “garbage,” stating that it was an “advertising piece for law schools still hoping that they can trick prospective law students into making bad choices.”

What does this study do that it can inspire such anger? The paper looks at what a law school graduate can expect to earn from a law degree. The authors, Michael Simkovic, a law professor, and Frank McIntyre, a labor economist, find that the “mean annual earnings premium of a law degree is approximately $53,300” a year, and that the average pretax value of a law degree over a lifetime was $1 million. In other words, the average law school graduate can expect to earn about one million dollars more than if they had not gone to law school.

Averages, though, are only part of the story, as they can be biased upward by a small number of high earners while many others make nothing. Mr. Mystal’s critique strongly focused on this point.

But the authors also found that median additional lifetime earnings for those with a law degree were $610,000. That means half of law school graduates made more and half less than this amount over their lifetime. So even at the 25th percentile, lifetime additional earnings were $350,000.

Thus, the earnings for 75 percent of law school graduates easily exceeded the amount of tuition paid, even with tuition at about $50,000 a year. The authors also found that the median law degree holder earned 60 percent more than the median college graduate.

This data refutes some of the arguments made by those who say law school is a “scam.” It is no surprise that this study would be attacked by many of the same people. After all, the law school scam industry has been bountiful for some, just like being a Kardashian.

To be fair, this criticism is also well intentioned. These commentators are springing to the defense of real law students who cannot find jobs. But it is simply that, and when the rhetoric dies down, perhaps this paper will turn to a more serious and needed study of what is going on in the law market and what the true value of a law degree really is. (And yes, in fair disclosure, my bias is that of a tenured professor at a major law school.)

In particular, even beyond its salary points, the paper by Professors Simkovic and McIntyre makes a number of new points that should inform the debate. Bureau of Labor Statistics data on lawyer salaries is often cited to justify the assertion that law school is not economically justified based on current lawyer salaries.

The study’s first major point is that these Bureau of Labor Statistics figures are probably biased downward. The reason is that the numbers do not include the salaries of self-employed lawyer, who are not only sole practitioners but also mostly law firm partners.

Among the AmLaw 100, the top 100 grossing law firms in the country, the average partner earned $1.47 million in 2012. This study corrects this downward bias by using broader-based data compiled by the Census Bureau.

Projections by the statistics bureau are often cited as supporting a shortage of jobs for law school graduates. But to my knowledge no one has actually looked back at prior years to see how accurate these forecasts have been. It may well be that the statistical projections are unreliable or it may not, but no one has even looked.

The study’s second major point is that loan default rates for law graduates are much lower than for college graduates. The Department of Education only reports default rates for independent law schools.

Using these figures, which go through the recession into 2011, the authors project that the average default rate for law school students who graduated in 2009 was roughly 3 percent. By contrast, the default rate for students with an undergraduate education or less was 19.2 percent.

The default rate among law schools varies significantly, and some, like Vermont Law School, had a 0 percent default rate. The authors cite this finding as justifying the conclusion that most law school graduates are earning enough to cover their debt, refuting a common claim made by commentators.

Because this data is based on numbers provided by independent law schools, which tend to rank in lower tiers, default rates at more highly ranked schools may be even lower.

The study’s third major point is that about 40 percent of lawyers currently do not practice law. Much has been said about the number of law school graduates who are not finding law jobs, and surely there are many who do want law jobs but cannot find one.

The full-time employment rate for law graduates who obtained legal jobs was only at 56.2 percent last year, according to the American Bar Association. But given these figures, it appears this has always been the case, and it is hard not to conclude that many lawyers do not go to law school to be lawyers (again, no one has really looked to see if this is true or not, though). Indeed, according to the Simkovic-McIntyre study, 50 percent of senators and 10 percent of chief executives at large companies are lawyers.

While the attacks on the article will probably continue, it would be more beneficial to everyone if the paper instead inspires a deeper look at the data. To my knowledge, this is the first study performed by a professional labor economist to look at this issue since the financial crisis.

Much of the previous research has been akin to forecasting the weather during a hurricane. The biggest critics of law schools have looked at the current data and simply assumed it would always be the case.

To be sure, the job market for lawyers has historically been a cyclical, and it is currently at a low. Law jobs are harder to find, and law school graduates have too often been left struggling. This is one thing that has always been the case, but it is more so now.

Still, no graduate program promises its graduates a job. Just look at those offering doctorates in English. But even if 75 percent of students have an economic justification for law school, not everyone does. In this light, every potential student should do a real cost-benefit assessment in light of the law school tuition he or she will be paying.

This study steps outside the current tempest to look at data over a period of decades. Since only 2 percent of a law school graduate’s lifetime earnings come in the first year after graduation, the longer term is arguably a better measure; looking at current employment rates is only one part of that picture.

Ultimately, that is what the debate over law school boils down to these days. Will the recent turbulence persist, or will the historical data win out? If the current figures represent the new normal, something about law has changed and there will be fewer jobs going forward.

But that may not be the case. The market may recover, as markets tend to do and as the population grows. There may even be more legal jobs if, for example, the Dodd-Frank Act becomes a full-employment act for lawyers.

As for the argument that technology has changed everything in the law market, I was struck by a quote in a study from the Harvard Law Review in 1901, decrying modern technology by stating, “[t]he stenographer and the typewriter have monopolized what was his work … and he sits outside of the business tide.”

This quote from a hundred years ago shows that claiming change is afoot – bringing obsolescence and wholesale disruption in the law market – is a century-old phenomenon. The question is whether this time is different.

DealBook: Taking Dole Food Private Again Is Latest Challenge for 90-Year-Old Billionaire

Fred Prouser/ReutersDavid Murdock, the chief of Dole Food, with the actress Helen Mirren. Her 2010 film ‘The Tempest’ filmed on his private Hawaiian island.

David H. Murdock once took Dole Food private. Now the self-made billionaire is betting he can do it again.

On Tuesday, Mr. Murdock, the chairman and chief executive, offered to buy the 60 percent of Dole he did not already own for about $645 million, valuing the company at nearly $1.1 billion. It is the latest audacious move by the nonagenarian in a life full of them.

Mr. Murdock is credited with building Dole into a fruit behemoth, beginning with his 1985 deal to buy troubled Castle & Cooke, once one of Hawaii’s agricultural giants. It was the company that brought Hawaiian pineapples to the United States while also running one of the state’s biggest sugar cane operations.

Under his leadership, the company became an enormous real estate developer, with properties throughout the country. And its Dole arm, named for one of the state’s leading families, became one of the world’s biggest sellers of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Dole separated from its historical parent in 1996, and seven years later Mr. Murdock agreed to buy it for $2.3 billion. The company went public again in 2009, in an offering that valued Dole at $1.1 billion.

But Dole has sought to shake up its business in recent years, including by selling its packaged goods and Asian fresh produce arms to Itochu of Japan for $1.7 billion to focus on other parts of the world.

The business has proved volatile, however, subject to unexpected bouts of bad weather that have weighed on earnings. Last year, it lost $144.5 million, while sales declined 11 percent, to $4.2 billion.

Mr. Murdock may view Dole’s current slump as only one more obstacle for him to overcome. His life reads like a Horatio Alger story, from a modest childhood in which he dropped out of school at 14, to his period of homelessness after leaving the Army. A chance encounter with a loan company employee gave him $1,200 in loans to buy a local diner, which he sold within a year and a half for $1,900.

Mr. Murdock then turned to real estate development in the Southwest, building affordable housing, before turning to investments.

It also inspired a hard-charging entrepreneurial streak in him.

“I never had a boss in my whole life,” he told The New York Times Magazine in 2011. “I’ve totally destroyed anybody’s ability to tell me what to do.”

Mr. Murdock has parlayed that career into great wealth. Forbes estimated his fortune at about $2.4 billion as of March, ranking him No. 613 on its billionaires list.

Those riches have underpinned his other great preocuppation of late, health. He was instrumental in the construction of a 5.8-million-square-foot nutrition research facility dedicated to the proposition that a largely plant-based diet is the key to longevity.

His devotion to nutrition perhaps reflects the same tough-mindedness that he may bring to his efforts to take Dole private. From The Times Magazine article:

I experienced this during a visit in early February to his California ranch, where I joined him for lunch: a six-fruit smoothie; a mixed-leaf salad with toasted walnuts, fennel and blood orange; a soup with more than eight vegetables and beans; a sliver of grilled Dover sole on a bed of baby carrots, broccoli and brown rice.

“How did you like your soup?” he asked me after one of his household staff members removed it. I said it was just fine.

“Did you eat all your juice?” he added, referring to the broth. I said I had left perhaps an inch of it.

He shot me a stern look. “You got a little bit of it,” he said. “I get a lot — every bit I can.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s O.K. You’ll go before me.”

Soothing Back Pain by Learning How to Sit Again

Mr. Drudge, 46, hasn’t just been sitting for two decades. Like so many workers chained to their technology, he has been hunched over desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets, and it’s all taken a toll on his body. He tries to limit the time he spends sitting to four or five hours a day, but sometimes he sits for up to 17 hours.

To ease his back, neck and shoulder pain, Mr. Drudge says he has learned how to adjust his posture. Whether he’s typing in the car, from the wooden folding chair in his Miami home office, or from a boardwalk bench at the beach on cloudy days, he makes sure to tilt the top of his pelvis forward, roll his shoulders back, elongate his spine and straighten his craned neck.

Mr. Drudge is one of thousands of people who have trained with Esther Gokhale, a posture guru in Silicon Valley. She believes that people suffer from pain and dysfunction because they have forgotten how to use their bodies. It’s not the act of sitting for long periods that causes us pain, she says, it’s the way we position ourselves.

Ms. Gokhale (pronounced go-CLAY) is not helping aching office workers with high-tech gadgets and medical therapies. Rather, she says she is reintroducing her clients to what she calls “primal posture” — a way of holding themselves that is shared by older babies and toddlers, and that she says was common among our ancestors before slouching became a way of life. It is also a posture that Ms. Gokhale observed during research she conducted in a dozen other countries, as well as in India, where she was raised.

For a method based not on technology but primarily on observations of people, it has been embraced by an unlikely crowd: executives, board members and staff members at some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies, including Google and Oracle; and heavy users of technology like Mr. Drudge.

“I need to do things that make sense and that I can see results from. Esther’s work is like that,” said Susan Wojcicki, 44, one of Google’s senior vice presidents, who has suffered from back and neck pain that she attributes to doing too much work at her desk.

Ms. Gokhale is not the first to suggest that changing posture is the key to a healthy spine. Practitioners of the Alexander Technique and the creators of the Aplomb Institute in Paris similarly help clients find more natural and comfortable ways to position themselves. Pilates and physical therapy can improve posture and bring awareness to it. A handful of companies, like Lumo BodyTech, now sell personal posture monitors, offering smartphone users constant feedback about the way they hold their bodies.

Ms. Gokhale’s methods have not been tested scientifically, though a doctor at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation is planning on conducting clinical trials by the end of the year.

But Ms. Gokhale, who was trained as a biochemist at Princeton University and studied at Stanford’s medical school, has some influence among medical professionals, particularly in Silicon Valley. Over 100 have referred patients to her, and a similar number have taken her course, she says.

FOR many office workers in the United States, sitting at a desk all day goes hand in hand with back, neck and shoulder discomfort. Stress and poor positioning can bring on aches or exacerbate injuries among workers faced with heavy computing, constant travel and long meetings. Regardless of occupation or lifestyle, backaches affect most Americans — about 8 in 10 deal with the pain at some point in their lifetimes, according to Dr. Richard Deyo, a professor of family medicine at Oregon Health and Science University.

The expenses are huge as well. By one estimate that appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the national cost of treating people with back and neck pain was $86 billion in 2005. And with back pain one of the top reasons for worker disability, missed work because of these aches may cost employers close to $7 billion a year, according to one study.

For the majority of people with back pain, the aches are short-lived and relief comes with rest and time, according to Dr. Deyo. But methods to help those with chronic pain are diverse. Using a standing desk at work has become a popular way to ease discomfort. Exercise, yoga, acupuncture and chiropractic have also been shown to reduce pain. Medical treatments like surgery and steroids continue to be important options, doctors say, even amid concerns that these have been overused.

Dr. Haleh Agdassi, a rehabilitation doctor with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation in California, sees back and neck pain so frequently among heavy users of computers that she calls it the “Silicon Valley syndrome.” She encourages clients to try a mix of nonsurgical strategies, but finds it frustrating that treatments for such a common problem are only modestly effective.

“There’s no magic bullet out there for back pain,” she says. “That can be overwhelming for patients. It’s an anxious, vulnerable crowd — they’re looking for solutions.”

Ms. Gokhale, 52, can relate to the anxiety of searching for an answer. She previously dealt with pain in her lower back, first as a college student practicing yoga, then as a young mother with sciatica. She eventually had surgery for a herniated disk, but it failed, she said.

When doctors suggested she try a second time, Ms. Gokhale began a search for other answers. Many of her own clients come to her similarly exasperated, she said.

Mr. Drudge read Ms. Gokhale’s book, “8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back,” before training with her in person. “I needed her touch, her observations and her humanity,” he said.

After a Strong Recovery, China’s Economy Unexpectedly Stumbles Again

HONG KONG — Brightly hued men’s underwear in a rainbow of colors is no longer selling well in Europe for the Zhongtian Garments Company in Xiamen, China. Exports are down 30 percent in the last year.

Children’s guitars with bodies resembling cats and cartoon characters are losing their charm for Yuesen Musical Instrument Factory in Huainan, China. And at the Yuzhongniao Outdoor Products Company in Jinjiang, domestic sales and exports alike are declining this year. The Canton Fair, China’s biggest export event, ended on Sunday with few new orders. “We are not even getting many people browsing this time,” said Alice Hong, Yuzhongniao’s sales manager.

After a powerful recovery through the autumn and winter from a V-shaped downturn last summer, China’s economy is unexpectedly faltering once again. Exports are weak. The country’s domestic economy is still growing mostly because of huge increases in lending by state-controlled banks and a surge in off-balance sheet lending. Consumer spending is rising, but not fast enough to offset weakness in other sectors.

That combination has prompted growing concerns among economists and business executives about the sustainability of even 7.5 percent growth in China in the coming years, the government’s current goal after three decades of double-digit growth with only a few interruptions.

The latest sign of trouble came on Wednesday, when China’s General Administration of Customs announced export and import figures for April. On the surface, they looked fairly respectable: exports were up 14.7 percent from a year earlier, and imports were up 16.8 percent.

But April 2012 was an exceptionally bad month for Chinese exports and imports — indeed, dismal trade statistics for that month were the first sign that economic weakness during the preceding winter was turning into a precipitous decline.

This April’s trade figures appeared even weaker when economists looked closer and found that the export growth had been largely propelled by growth in exports to Hong Kong, up 57 percent, and to special customs zones in China for export later, up even faster.

Since Hong Kong’s own data has not been showing large increases in imports from China so far this year, the Chinese government has already opened an investigation into whether exporters are overinvoicing for shipments. Overstating exports can allow companies to evade currency controls and move money into China to profit from the gradual appreciation of the renminbi against the dollar.

Louis Kuijs, an economist in the Hong Kong office of the Royal Bank of Scotland, estimated that with the exclusion of overinvoicing, export growth came to only 5.7 percent.

Over the last few years, economists have tended to pay less attention to China’s exports because they were declining as a share of the country’s total economic output, because of weak overseas demand. But newer research suggests that China may still be dependent on exports.

The reason is that multinationals have been rapidly localizing their purchases of various items like computer chips and auto parts in China instead of importing them from other Asian neighbors. So while total exports may not have been rising quickly in recent years in China, the Chinese content in each dollar of exports has been increasing.

Mr. Kuijs estimated that 20.7 percent of China’s economic output came from exports last year, a figure that had bottomed out in 2009 at 19.7 percent.

In a bad sign for exports in the months ahead, the Canton Fair announced this week that export orders placed at this year’s spring session had fallen 1.4 percent from a year ago. It was the latest sign that steeply rising blue-collar wages in China and a gradually appreciating currency are starting to erode the country’s international competitiveness; foreign investment in China has also begun to level off, while surging in lower-wage countries in the region, like Cambodia and Vietnam.

Li Yong, the general manager at Yuesen Musical, said that many Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean companies in his industry had recently moved to Indonesia as costs climbed in China.

Hilda Wang contributed reporting.

Lawsuit Against Walgreens Remanded to Phila. Court, Again

Walgreens missed its window to remove a case against it to federal court and U.S. District Judge Gene Pratter of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania wasn't persuaded that its second notice of removal would qualify for an exception to the 30-day removal deadline.

Rating Agencies Watching Debt Ceiling Limit Again

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New Enrollment Drops Again in U.S. Graduate Schools

New enrollment in graduate schools fell last year for the second consecutive year, according to a report from the Council of Graduate Schools.

The declines followed surges in enrollment in 2008 and 2009 as many unemployed workers sought a haven during the recession. Financial considerations probably played a role in the shift. Students may be dissuaded from continuing their education in part because of the increasing debt burden from their undergraduate years.

Additionally, state budget cuts are forcing public institutions to reduce aid for graduate students, who in some disciplines have traditionally been paid to attend postgraduate programs.

The number of students enrolled in master’s and doctoral programs (excluding law and certain other first professional degrees like M.D.’s) declined by 1.7 percent from the fall of 2010 to fall 2011.

Among American citizens and permanent residents, matriculation fell by 2.3 percent. In contrast, temporary residents increased their enrollment by 7.8 percent.

Temporary residents made up 16.9 percent of all students in American graduate schools, and that figure has been growing as foreign governments pay for more of their citizens to obtain education in the United States, particularly in technical areas. Temporary residents represented 45.5 percent of all students enrolled in engineering graduate programs in the United States, and 42.4 percent of those in American mathematics and computer science graduate programs.

The changes in 2011 varied by discipline, with education having the biggest drop-off in new graduate enrollment at 8.8 percent.

“The states are in financial stress,” said Debra Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. “The school systems especially are in financial stress. Teachers are no longer being provided time off to get graduate degrees, and schools are no longer funding principals to go back and get principal certificates.”

The next sharpest decline was in programs for arts and humanities, where new graduate enrollment fell by 5.4 percent, perhaps reflecting that career prospects for such graduates are becoming more limited as colleges lay off even tenured faculty members in these areas.

Health sciences, on the other hand, experienced a big increase in enrollment. The health care industry has been hiring consistently and robustly during the recession and the weak recovery.

The number of new graduate students studying health care rose by 6.4 percent, which was slightly slower growth than the average in the last decade. The average annual change in new graduate enrollment in health sciences from 2001 to 2011 was 9.8 percent.

Enrollment showed more tepid growth in business, which was up by 2.6 percent, and in mathematics and computer sciences, up by 1.6 percent.

While overall enrollment for graduate school declined, the number of applications rose by 4.3 percent. It was the sixth consecutive increase in application volume.

The Council of Graduate Schools did not have data on how many schools the typical applicant applies to, so it was unclear if there were more people applying in 2011 than in the previous year. But there was an increase in the number of people taking the Graduate Record Examinations (G.R.E.), a test that many graduate schools require as part of student applications.

As the number of grad school applications has risen, the share of those applications leading to offers of admission has been falling. In 2007, the acceptance rate across all master’s and doctoral programs was 44.6 percent, whereas in 2011 it was 40.8 percent.

Women continued to outnumber men in the nation’s postgraduate programs, 58 percent to 42 percent, in the 2011 report.

The Council of Graduate Schools, a membership organization for institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada, based its findings on an annual survey of American graduate schools. The latest report reflected the responses from 655 institutions, which collectively award 81 percent of the master’s degrees and 92 percent of the doctorates each year.

Euro Watch: Europe Forecast Uncertain as Business and Consumer Confidence Fall Again

The European Commission reported that its economic sentiment indicator for the 17 European Union members that use the euro fell by 1.1 points, to 85.0, the seventh consecutive month of decline.

For the 27-member European Union, confidence fell by 0.9 points in September, to 86.1. An indicator of more than 100 shows more confidence than not about the economy in five sectors surveyed.

The commission attributed the weakening to declining confidence in the services, retailing, industrial and consumer sectors. It cited increased optimism in the fifth sector, construction, as a promising sign.

The data is “another warning that the euro zone economy is sinking further into recession,” Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics, wrote in an analysis, adding that the results dashed hopes that the European Central Bank’s pledge on Sept. 6 “to take more decisive policy action might have improved sentiment towards the broader economy.”

Mr. Loynes said the confidence results were consistent with an annual contraction in the euro zone economy of about 2.5 percent.

Figures from the core euro zone economies were mixed.

In Germany, the Federal Labor Agency said the number of unemployed rose for the sixth consecutive month. Although the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate held steady at 6.8 percent in September, there were 9,000 more people out of work than in August.

As a result of structural changes in the early 2000s, the German labor market has remained resilient during the crisis in much of Europe. But the Labor Agency predicted the German job market would cool in the rest of 2012 as growth slowed and the impact of the euro zone crisis began to take a toll.

Germany’s labor market has been one of the main drivers of its growth this year, Carsten Brzeski, an economist with ING in Brussels, wrote, and the data Thursday suggests that the slowdown of recent months “seems to have come to at least a temporary halt.” Nonetheless, he added, hiring is losing momentum and manufacturers will probably begin to shed jobs soon. He estimated that the German unemployment rate would return to 7 percent by the end of 2012.

On Wednesday, the Labor Ministry in France said the number of jobless there rose for a 16th consecutive month in August to reach more than three million, its highest level since June 1999.

On Friday, President François Hollande’s government will present its proposed 2013 budget. The finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, has said that the government will cut the deficit to 3 percent of gross domestic product, in line with European rules, from the 4.5 percent expected this year.

Data from the European Central Bank showed that growth in M3 money supply, a measure of lending activity, decelerated significantly in the euro zone in August, to 2.9 percent, from 3.6 percent in July. That was well below market expectations, according to Michael Schubert, an economist at Commerzbank in Frankfurt.

More important, Mr. Schubert wrote in a note, was the decline in lending to nonfinancial companies, which dropped 0.8 percent from a year earlier, while loans to households rose 0.2 percent.

“The E.C.B. probably sees fragmented financial markets as one reason for the low loan momentum,” he wrote, and it therefore believes the new bond purchase program announced by the bank’s president, Mario Draghi, is justified.

Mr. Draghi said on Sept. 6 that the European Central Bank was prepared to buy the bonds of embattled euro zone countries in “unlimited” quantities to quell the crisis, which has driven some members’ financing costs to levels seen as unsustainable.

Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin.