With the 2021 holiday shopping season approaching, one financial expert says the U.S. economy is showing very promising signs of a full recovery from the COVID pandemic-induced doldrums it has experienced since the second quarter of 2020.
“I think that the economy is in a better place. I think it will be in a better place. And I think there’s a reason to believe that, economically, we’re not going to have the same sort of slow-down in the winter here that we had last year by necessity,” Mark Hamrick of Bankrate.com told WWL Radio.
He also said that the unemployment numbers are nearing the sweet spot economists look for.
“The unemployment rate is down to 4.6% nationally, and that’s getting close to where the Federal Reserve recently said that full employment would be at 4%.”
Hamrick said that it’s impossible to tell exactly when the numbers reach 4% until unemployment starts to rise again, but that the jobs added in the past month are a very good sign.
“With respect to the monthly employment report, we’re in a better place than what we thought we would be just a few days ago,” Hamrick said. “We added 531,000 jobs in total in October, and that also takes into account the loss of 65,000 in state and local education. So the private payroll’s number was just north of 600,000.”
Hamrick admitted that Americans are still showing concern over inflation, specifically the rising cost of gas prices, but that retailers are still optimistic for a big fourth quarter.
“Those have real impacts on consumer confidence or sentiment. When you see some of the surveys that point to at least the intentions of consumers who are of lower income basically saying they think they may be cutting back on their holiday spending because of that… the National Retail Federation basically says, ‘We’ll be able to make it through anyway,’ because they’re expecting an 8 ½ to 10 ½% increase in holiday sales,” Hamrick said.
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