Kyle Rizdahl

Manufacturing is also being propped up by businesses boosting their inventory levels.

Van den Houten says a lot of businesses' inventories are too low right now.

On the negative side of the ledger, the Chicago Fed index also found that consumer spending has been slowing down.

Menzi Chen is an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin.

He says consumer spending had been boosted by last year's tax cuts, but then consumers got slapped by the side effects of the Mideast War.

The Chicago Fed index also found that employment slowed in April.

Peter Orozum at the University of Iowa says that's not necessarily a bad sign yet, considering that the labor market overall is in pretty good shape.

Put another way?

There's plenty of consumer demand to justify the number of jobs that are currently in the U.S.

economy.

But that also means the health of the labor market depends on consumer demand.

So signals that the consumer demand might be weakening is a little bit concerning.

Especially since consumer demand has been keeping the U.S.

economy strong over the last couple of years.

I'm Justin Ho for Marketplace.

Wall Street on this Tuesday that feels like a Monday.

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Tech stocks, baby.

We'll have the details when we do the numbers.

I'll tell you what, for all else that ails this economy, and it is not a short list, as you know, this is a good time to be a wholesale club.