The Census Bureau reported that retail and food services sales for March, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences—but not for price changes—came in at $433.9 billion, an increase of 1.1 percent from February.

The preliminary Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index for April came in at 82.6, according to the university, an increase from 80.0 at the end of March, and 79.9 in mid-March. The latest reading is the highest since last summer.

For the week ending April 5, initial unemployment claims came in at 300,000, a sharp decrease of 32,000 from the previous week’s revised level, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

According to the minutes of the most recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting the committee said (in central-bank language) that 6.5 percent U.S. unemployment was no magic number.

The International Monetary Fund said that the risk of another global recession isn’t as high now as it has been in recent years, attributing the declining risk to stronger-than-expected recoveries in the developed world, such as the United States, Germany and the U.K.

The federal government ran a budget deficit of $413 billion for the first six months of fiscal year 2014 (beginning Oct. 1, 2013), the Congressional Budget Office reported.

The increase in U.S. jobs in March (up 192,000) was welcome news to those worried that something more deleterious than cold weather had hit the economy during the winter.

The U.S. economy created 192,000 jobs in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.