Monday's Scoop: Waiting🌤️

Hey friend - I hope you got to see a little of the eclipse today. It was a little cloudy and anticlimactic in NYC.

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Here’s what you need to know today to inform your work, spending, and investments…

1. Unemployment is still near record lows, and hiring picked up in March.

2. Wages are rising again.

3. Americans grow more concerned about the cost of living and borrowing.

Unemployment Rate: 3.8%
^{Still near the lowest rate in 50+ years}

Unemployment is still near historic lows, and hiring picked up last month. The Labor Department reported employers added 303,000 more jobs last month, far more than economists expected. The unemployment rate declined slightly to 3.8%. The decline in the unemployment rate was driven by more people entering the workforce, boosting the participation rate to 62.7%. Much of the hiring occurred in health care, government, and construction.

Wages have started climbing again. The Labor Department also reported that average hourly earnings rose by 0.3% in March, up 4.1% from a year ago. The cost of living rose 3.2% in the 12 months through February. While it’s a great sign to see wages rising faster than inflation, there’s still a long way to go before incomes catch up to the cost of living increases of the past few years.

Inflation Rate: +3.2% (YoY), +0.4% (MoM)
^{Policymakers aim for 2% YoY inflation (CPI)}

Americans are worried about living costs worsening, particularly the cost of borrowing. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey, US consumers expect prices to rise by 2.9% over the next three years, up from 2.7% last month. Inflation expectations are important because they can be self-fulfilling. If consumers and businesses expect higher costs, they’ll buy more and raise prices now in anticipation. Although the prices of goods and services aren’t rising as quickly as last year, inflation is still higher than policymakers want.

The five-year outlook improved, but more people feel the strain from higher interest rates. More people expect to have trouble paying their debt. The average perceived probability of missing a minimum debt payment over the next three months rose to the highest level since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Market: ⬇️ -0.04%
S&P 500: 5,202.39
1Mo: +2% | 1Yr: +27% | 5Yr: +79%

The market didn't do much on Monday as investors waited for the flurry of updates coming later this week, including the March inflation report on Wednesday and the start of first-quarter corporate financial reports.