Not a fluke We’re continuing to see improvement in the employment market as last week’s unemployment claims came in at a new pandemic-low of 547k and well below economists’ expectations of 603k. The outlook is even more promising as companies are looking to resume hiring at a normal pace this summer as reopening continues with the better weather and vaccine distribution running at ~3m doses per day.  Moral of the story: This report confirms last week’s numbers weren’t driven by a one-time issue and it seems like we’re making some great strides in regaining employment. We still have to keep chugging along though given ~8m fewer people are employed today…

The stimmy effect  The path to an economic recovery is becoming clearer with every new month of economic data. March retail sales jumped 9.8% on the back of the latest round of stimulus checks. Spending was higher across many categories with sporting goods, clothes, and food & beverage leading the way. Last week’s new unemployment claims also fell to 576k, which is a pandemic-low.To put this into context, the weekly unemployment claims were sitting closer to ~200k pre-COVID, had jumped to a high of 6.15m during the worst part of the pandemic, and have been stuck in the 700k-900k range for a while. Moral of the story: It’s largely anticipated…

Global outlook  The IMF raised its global economic outlook this week, largely driven by a brighter picture ahead for the US economy. The IMF is expecting the US economy to grow 6.4% this year, followed by a slight decline (though still healthy) 4.4% growth rate in 2022 (this compares to the Fed’s expectations for 6.5% and 3.3%, respectively). Globally the IMF is expecting growth to be 6% this year followed by 4.4% next year. Moral of the story: The losses expected from the pandemic are not expected to be as severe as the IMF’s prior estimates, but there will be a bigger dispersion between emerging markets versus larger developed markets.…

The train has left the station  We added 916k new jobs in March, coming in well above expectations for 675k new jobs. Plus, the numbers for the last two months were revised upward by 156k. The leisure and hospitality sector saw the most job gains last month, adding 280k new jobs as improving weather and increasing vaccination rates have allowed cities to start easing restrictions and consumers to become more willing to venture out. Job gains were also strong in the government, construction, and health and education sectors. Moral of the story: This report indicates a nice little labor market recovery is in the works, and expectations are for this…