10 Things You Need to Know: April 7, 2026
Key data releases this week include: ISM Services (Mon), FOMC meeting minutes (Wed), personal income and spending (Thu), PCE Price Index (Thu), Q4 GDP revision (Thu), CPI (Fri), durable goods orders (Fri), and consumer sentiment (Fri).
Haver
March 31, 2026
U.S. house prices inched up 0.1% m/m (+1.6% y/y) in January after rising 0.3% in December, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index. January marked the fifth m/m increase in six months and the smallest of four consecutive m/m gains.
Haver
March 31, 2026
Total job openings declined 4.9% m/m (-5.0% y/y) to 6.882 million in February from 7.240 million in January. The number of unemployed has exceeded the number of openings for seven consecutive months, highlighting the softening of labor market conditions over that period.
Haver
April 1, 2026
Total retail sales rebounded in February, rising by 0.6% m/m (+3.7% y/y) following a 0.1% decline in January. The Action Economics Forecast Survey expected a 0.4% monthly increase. The control group of sales increased 0.5% m/m in February following a 0.2% increase in January.
WSJ
April 2, 2026
The U.S. added 178,000 jobs in March, the best month for job growth in more than a year. The numbers also beat the gain of 59,000 jobs that economists had expected. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, from February’s 4.4% The decline in the unemployment rate came with an asterisk: The labor force shrank by nearly 400,000 people.
Barron’s
April 6, 2026
In general, corporations are much more profitable than they used to be. Across the economy, their cumulative profit margin has recently been around 12%, even before the AI binge. For the four decades through 2000, it averaged 5.3% and topped 7% only once—around when the dot-com stock bubble peaked.
Barron’s
April 6, 2026
The S&P 500 index has returned a stupendous 273% over the past decade, or more than 14% a year. A normal return for stocks over long periods is closer to 10% a year. The Case-Shiller index of U.S. home prices is up 87% in a decade, or about 6.5% a year. The best estimate of a normal return there is the rate of inflation, which was 3.3% a year over the past decade.
Barron’s
April 6, 2026
By 2030, people over 65 will outnumber those under 18 for the first time in U.S. history. The number of jobs that need to be added monthly just to keep unemployment stable has fallen from 150,000 a year ago to 77,000 today because there aren’t enough new workers entering the labor force. The assumption was always that the U.S. would tend to the retirement of the boomers through immigration.
Barron’s
April 6, 2026
The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow estimate for first-quarter growth has slid since the war started, but it’s still positive at 1.6%. Falling oil prices would alleviate fears about inflation, allowing the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates steady. Rate cuts could be back on the table if the economy continues to weaken.
Capital Economics
March 30, 2026
Assuming energy shipments through the Strait begin to normalize by the end of April, the damage remains limited and a global recession is avoided. In an adverse scenario, where the conflict persists through the first half of this year and disruptions to energy supplies are more extensive, the US would probably avoid an outright recession. The slowdown in world GDP growth would be sufficient to meet most definitions of a global recession.