Economy: U.S. Consumers Are Gaining Fire Power

This morning we got more news that the recovery of the U.S. economy is gathering speed. Employment in the U.S. nonfarm private business sector increased by 216,000 from January to February on a seasonally adjusted basis (January plus 173.000), reported the payroll giant Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) (foxbusiness). Because government payrolls have been shrinking, the ADP report suggests close to 200,000 nonfarm payroll jobs were added in January, calculates the blog Calculatedrisk (calculatedriskblog).

The private job report is a good omen for the official job market report due on Friday and suggests that the comeback of the U.S. job market is accelerating. This is also good news for U.S. retailers because more jobs create more spendable income and are granting more fire power to the U.S. consumers.

Last week U.S. retailers already reported surprisingly strong rising sales numbers for February (drivebycuriosity). The 18 retailers that reported same-store-sales posted an average 6.4% year over year growth, the best performance since June. The gains on the job market suggest that the growth of the retail sector will continue in the coming months in spite of the high gasoline prices.