Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand, with news the long-anticipated weaknesses in the American labour market may now be starting to show. American producer prices rose +2.7% in the year to March, a sharpish drop from the February +4.9% on the same basis. More interestingly, the annualised rate of change between February and March was a deflationary -6.0%, a twist no-one saw coming. The continuing strength of their labour market puts more RBA rate rises back on the table as they may have turned dovish too soon. And perhaps we should also note that natural gas prices are back to very low levels, levels we had prior in the 1990s.
