Lauren Seidel-Baker

They're being more social than ever, and they're prioritizing that, and they're spending money when they do it.

Though even if February was a bright spot, she says, With March and the level of uncertainty, I don't know that it's a sustained bright spot.

We'll have to wait and see.

Take the war in Iran, for example.

While consumers are feeling the effects immediately in gas prices, they might not see other impacts until the second quarter and beyond, according to Rick Miller at Big Chalk Analytics.

Well, this was a beat on a headline basis.

More jobs created than had been expected.

However, we're probably still feeling some of the shakiness from 2025 in these hiring decisions.

But overall, it's a good report.

It shows that wages are still outpacing inflation.

So that's good news for our consumer.

We are seeing more stability.

The consumer is in a pretty strong position.

Overall, manufacturing, the industrial economy are starting to show signs of life, starting to show signs of pickup.

So we will see that feed through into more demand and into more need to hire more people.

We're not at a point yet where AI can completely replace it.

Healthcare is still one of the best performers.

This report, actually, construction came in pretty strongly.

Now, that's an area where we have seen more need for workers, and we just haven't seen available labor, especially with some of the immigration trends going on.

But overall, the other big differentiator right now is where you are located geographically.