Welcome to Thoughts on the Market.

I'm Ellen Zentner, Chief U.S. Economist for Morgan Stanley Research.

And I'm Sarah Wolf, also a Morgan Stanley's U.S. economics team.

And on this episode of the podcast, we'll be talking about the budding return to normal

among the most COVID-sensitive areas of the U.S. economy.

It's Tuesday, April 6th at 8 a.m. in New York.

Sarah, we've talked a lot on the podcast about how resilient the economy has been over

the past year, with perhaps a faster recovery than many would have thought.

But given your focus on the U.S. consumer, I wanted to have you on today to talk a little

bit about the green shoots that we're seeing in the services sector like dining, air travel,

hotels.

You know, maybe start off with what you're seeing from the February and March data.

Over the last year, we've largely had a good spending-led recovery, but now it's finally

broadening out into a COVID-sensitive sector recovery.

I would say that if you look at the February and March data, we're seeing a rebound all

connected, but in three categories we're looking at.

One is actual engagement and activity.

So we're seeing dining, air travel, and hotels relative to pre-COVID levels increasing

by about 20 percentage points just in the last month.

The second way we're seeing it is in the consumer confidence data.

In March, the conference board consumer confidence survey jumped by nearly 20 points to a pre-COVID

high, bolstered by stronger income, business, and employment expectations.

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