The US economy continues expanding vigorously, despite the central bank’s restrictive monetary policy. This justifies the wait and see posture adopted by the monetary authorities, to gain confidence that inflation is trending down together with strong job creation. That will be the culmination of the so called “soft landing,” with the achievement of the goal of 2 percent inflation, which supposedly does not stimulate or restrains economic performance.
Overcoming almost all expectations, the Labor Department informed last week that 303,000 new jobs were created in March, an increase from the revised figure of 270,000 in February. Therefore, 15 million nonfarm new jobs have been created in the last three years.
Healthcare and education, with hospitality and government were the best performing sectors in March, adding almost 200,000 new jobs, while construction and retail contributed another 100,000. Only business services and manufacturing lagged with incipient job creation. Average hourly earnings increased slightly 4.1 percent from a year earlier.
This will be the last employment figures available before the next meeting of the Open Market Committee, scheduled for April 30-May 1. Another indicator that will be released in two days is the March consumer price index. It is closely watched because during January and February this index revealed a slight increase, which interrupted last year’s second half downward trend in prices.
