TC Global Commercial | Blog

U.S. - Rising COVID-19 Cases Put a Damper on Re-openings

• The rising number of COVID-19 infections gained momentum this week, with most of the rise occurring in the South and West. The rise in infections is larger than can be explained by increased testing alone and is slowing re-openings.
• Home sales continue to show a surprising degree of

U.S. - May Retail Sales Surge, but Other Data Disappoint

• Retail sales kicked off the week with a bang, rising 17.7% month-over-month in May. The increase was larger than every single one of the 74 forecast submissions.
• The factory data were not as encouraging. Industrial production growth was just 1.4% in May, below the 3.0% consensus. On

The Federal Reserve doesn't expect a quick rebound.

The Fed expects to hold interest rates near zero through the end of this year, perhaps well into next year, and maybe even into ’22.

The World Bank is less optimistic than the Fed.

The bank expects the global economy to shrink 5.2 percent this ye

U.S. - The Risk of a Second Wave

• Lock downs began to be lifted across most of the country by the end of May and the total amount of daily new coronavirus cases has been trending lower. But the flattening case count has not been consistent across the country.
• Re-opening the economy without a vaccine always entailed the risk of a second wav

U.S. - Was April the Bottom?

• Data this week continued to suggest the U.S. economy hit rock bottom in April. Still, it is a long road to recovery and the pickup in economic activity will be gradual.
• In what was a surprising jobs report, the U.S. labor market added 2.5 million jobs in May and the unemployment rate fell to 13.3%. The bottom

U.S. - The U.S. Economy Appears to Have Bottomed in April

• The beginning of this week saw some optimism that the economic downturn could be relatively short-lived, but data through the rest of the week provided grim reminder of the economic damage from COVID-19.
• Jobless claims declined for the eighth straight week, but continuing claims po

Employment fell in all 50 states and 43 states saw their unemployment rate rise to a record in April. The damage is already hard to fathom-a 28% unemployment rate in Nevada and still another month of job losses ahead.

With 20.5 Million Job Losses, There is Nowhere to Hide 

• There was no escaping the economic carnage resulting from t

U.S. - Wait and See

• The re-opening of the country is getting underway, with all 50 states starting to roll back restrictions.
• It remains too early to assess the effect of the re-opening on corona virus case growth, which continues to slow in a fairly broad-based manner, despite an impressive—albeit late-in-the-game—ramp-up in

U.S. Outlook

The U.S. is in a severe recession caused by the sudden shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the lock down began, the nation has lost 21.4 million jobs. Employers cut 881,000 in March and another 20.5 million in April, the largest one-month loss in the nation’s history. Losses already exceed those of the Great Recession, in which 8.7 million A

U.S. - April Employment Plummets

• April nonfarm payrolls confirmed what we already knew—the labor market is collapsing. By the survey week of April 12, net employment had fallen by 20,500,000 jobs.
• The unemployment rate jumped 10.3 percentage points to 14.7%, the highest since World War II, but the BLS suggested the true rate was nea