Monthly GDP through March is up, while April CPI-deflated retail sales are down. The industrial and manufacturing production release is tomorrow.

Figure 1: NFP employment (bold blue), civilian employment with smoothed population controls (bold orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding current transfers in Ch.2017$ (bold light green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2017$ (black), and monthly GDP in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDP (blue bars),  all log normalized to 2025M01=0. Source: BLS via FRED, BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA 2026Q1 Advance release, S&P Global Market Insights (nee Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Markit) (5/13/2026 release), and author’s calculations. 

Figure 2: Civilian employment adjusted to NFP concept smoothed population controls (bold orange), manufacturing production (red), ADP private nonfarm payroll employment (light green), real retail sales, CPI deflated (black), freight services indexes (brown), and coincident index in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDO (blue bars), all log normalized to 2025M01=0. Source: BLS, ADP,via FRED,  Philadelphia Fed [1], Philadelphia Fed [2], Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Federal Reserve via FRED, BEA 2026Q4 3rd release, and author’s calculations.

Retail sales are down in CPI-deflated terms. Given the spike in gasoline prices, it makes sense to decompose retail sales into gasoline station and non-gasoline stationn sales, as in this post. Real ex-gasoline station sales appear to have fallen in April.