Spokane County unemployment rate dropped in March

Spokane County’s preliminary unemployment rate dropped to 5.1% in March, according to non-seasonally adjusted data from the Washington state Employment Security Department.

The Spokane metropolitan statistical area, which includes Spokane, Stevens and Pend Oreille counties, added 1,800 nonfarm jobs and 1,500 private sector jobs in March.

The service sector gained the greatest number of jobs, with 1,300 last month, followed by education and health services, which added 800. The food services and drinking places sector gained 400 jobs.

The professional and business services sector lost 200 jobs, while the general merchandise stores sector lost 100.

The county’s unemployment rate was 5.4% in February and 6.5% in March 2021.

Wall Street has best gains in five weeks on Tuesday

NEW YORK – Stocks overcame a weak start and finished broadly higher Tuesday, giving the major indexes on Wall Street their best day in nearly five weeks.

The S&P 500 rose 1.6%, enough to recoup almost all of its losses from last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.5% and the Nasdaq gained 2.2%.

The last time the indexes mounted a bigger rally was March 16. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq came into this week with two straight weekly losses, while the Dow has fallen three weeks in a row.

Stocks have mostly struggled this year amid uncertainty over how the economy and Corporate America will be affected as the Federal Reserve moves to reverse low-interest rate policies that helped markets soar in recent years.

“We’re just getting a little bit of a bounce back from what’s been a tough couple of weeks,” said Bill Northey, senior investment director at US Bank Wealth Management.

The S&P 500 rose 70.52 points to 4,462.21. The Dow recovered from a 17-point drop and climbed 499.51 points to 34,911.20. The Nasdaq gained 287.30 points to 13,619.66.

IMF downgrades global economy forecast with war

WASHINGTON – The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday downgraded the outlook for the world economy this year and next, blaming Russia’s war in Ukraine for disrupting global commerce, pushing up oil prices, threatening food supplies and increasing uncertainty already heightened by the coronavirus and its variants.

The 190-country lender cut its forecast for global growth to 3.6% this year, a steep falloff from 6.1% last year and from the 4.4% growth it had expected for 2022 back in January.

It also said it expects the world economy to grow 3.6% again next year, slightly slower than the 3.8% it forecast in January.

The war – and the darkening outlook – came just as the global economy appeared to be shaking off the impact of the highly infectious omicron variant.

“The war will slow economic growth and increase inflation,” IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told reporters on Tuesday.

Now, the IMF expects Russia’s economy – battered by sanctions – to shrink 8.5% this year and Ukraine’s 35%.

US economic growth is expected to drop to 3.7% this year from 5.7% in 2021, which had been the fastest growth since 1984.

The new forecast marks a downgrade from the 4% the IMF had predicted at the beginning of the year.

From staff and wire reports

Hobbling US growth this year will be Federal Reserve interest rate increases, meant to combat resurgent inflation, and an economic slowdown in key American trading partners.

Europe, heavily dependent on Russian energy, will bear the brunt of the economic fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war.

For the 19 countries that share the euro currency, the IMF forecasts collective growth of 2.8% in 2022, down sharply from the 3.9% it expected in January and from 5.3% last year.

The IMF expects the growth of the Chinese economy, the world’s second biggest, to decelerate to 4.4% this year from 8.1% in 2021.

Beijing’s zero-COVID strategy has meant draconian lockdowns in bustling commercial cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Some commodity-exporting countries, benefiting from the rising price of raw materials, are likely to defy the trend toward slower growth.

For example, the IMF raised its growth forecast for oil producer Nigeria – to 3.4% this year from the 2.7% the fund said it expected back in January.

The world economy had bounced back with surprising strength from 2020’s brief but brutal coronavirus recession.

But the rebound presented problems of its own: Caught by surprise, businesses scrambled to meet a surge in customer orders, which overwhelmed factories, ports and freight yards. The result: long shipping delays and higher prices.

The IMF forecasts a 5.7% jump in consumer prices in the world’s advanced economies this year, the most since 1984. In the United States, inflation is running at a four-decade high.