Week 5 Almost Brings March Even
The last week of March nearly turned the whole month around. Independent grocers are reporting that their same store sales were up 10.9 percent over the same period in 2017. Customer counts were up 5.96 percent. Why the huge jump? This year, week 5 of March were the last days leading up to Easter, whereas Easter 2017 occurred on April 16. In other words, enjoy the sales bump while it lasts, because week two of April will likely show a large decline.
For all of March, sales were down 0.26 percent and customer counts were down 0.84 percent compared to March 2017.
Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the March unemployment report, which showed that after a robust February, job gains cooled off in March, with 103,000 new jobs created and the unemployment rate held at 4.1 percent. The other indicators didn’t bring much good news, with the size of the labor force, participation rate, and job revisions for the previous two months down. Hourly earnings did increase by 8 cents, which was the only real positive to come out of the report. Still, when balanced with last month’s report, the economy is still averaging solid gains.