March retail sales, industrial production, and new home construction; February’s business inventories

Major monthly reports released this past week included the Retail Sales report for March and the associated Business Sales and Inventories report for February , both from the Census Bureau, the March report on Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization from the Fed, and the March report on New Residential Construction from the Census Bureau….In addition, the week also saw the release of the Regional and State Employment and Unemployment Report for March from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a report which breaks down the two employment surveys from the monthly national jobs report by state and region …while the text of that report provides a useful summary of the state and regional data, the serious statistical aggregation can be found in the tables linked at the end of the report , where one can find the civilian labor force data and the change in payrolls by industry for each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.. This week also saw...