Week in Review: Mar. 6-10

Job openings, jobs, & more

This week was all about the jobs report (Friday, read our full post from earlier today here), but we also got new data on job openings (Wednesday), some housing stats, and consumer sentiment (Friday). The next post in our new Monday Morning Optimism series will go out to all subscribers on Monday (who would’ve guessed?). If you missed the first one, you can see it here.

Monday

Factory Orders

New orders for manufactured goods fell 1.6% in January, an indication that demand is slipping lower. While supply chain issues seem to be improving, unfilled orders increased for the twenty-ninth straight month.

Gas Prices

Gas prices increased to $3.505/gallon during the week ending March 6, 2023. That ends a streak of four straight weekly decreases, but prices remain well below the June 2022 peak.

TSA Checkpoint Travel Numbers

Travel numbers for the week ending 3/5/2023 were about 4.2% below 2019 levels (we’re looking at 2019 because 2020-2022 were much lower because of the pandemic).

Tuesday

Jerome Powell Congressional Testimony

Jerome Powell gave the Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to Congress on Tuesday, and the big takeaway is that a 50 basis point rate hike is very much on the table for their mid-March meeting. Whether we get a 0.25 or 0.50 percentage point hike will depend on Friday’s jobs data and next week’s inflation data.

Wednesday

Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS)