The hunt for evidence of stability in the US housing market and in industrial activity on both sides of the Atlantic provides one of the key themes of this week’s data releases, which will also bring a raft of important figures from China.
The US labour market has lost more than 5m jobs during this recession, so further weakness is highly likely in retail sales data for March, due tomorrow. The consensus forecast is for a fall of 0.1 per cent in the headline measure and a drop of 0.3 per cent excluding car sales. This would take the year-on-year decline from 6.1 per cent in February to 6.4 per cent in March. However, government help to households via increased tax refunds and income support from the fiscal package are boosting disposable income and should bolster consumer spending in the second quarter.
