U.S. Regional Manufacturing Activity Expanded In March

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Meanwhile, here are the major headlines from the last week:

• According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, manufacturing activity in the Central Atlantic region heated up in March. The bank’s composite manufacturing reading rose from +1 in February to +13 in March due to increases in all three of the component indexes: shipments, volume of new orders, and number of employees. Read the full report here.  The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City said manufacturing activity in the Midwest also expanded this month. Its composite index rose from +29 in February to +37 in March. The improvement was driven by growth in printing and paper, plastics, electrical equipment, furniture and related product manufacturing, and transportation equipment. The pace of growth for food and machinery manufacturing declined, however. Read that report here.
• The U.S. employment picture continues to brighten. Only 187,000 individuals filed for federal unemployment benefits during the week that ended March 19. That number represented a 28,000 decline from the previous week’s level and was at its lowest level since September 6, 1969. During the week that ended March 12, 1.35 million individuals collected federal jobless benefits, a decrease of 67,000 from the previous week’s level and the lowest level since January 3, 1970.
• In other economic news: the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s National Activity Index, a key gauge of future growth, fell slightly last month, from +0.59 in January to +0.51 in February; new home sales in the United States fell two percent between January 2022 and February 2022 and 6.2 percent between February 2021 and February 2022; and the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index ended March 2022 at 59.4, down by 0.5 percent from the previous decade-long low of 59.7 recorded in the first half of March.