Until recently, the prevailing view of the US economic recovery on Wall Street and in Washington focused on the economic boom fuelled by consumers' resurgence of the vaccine-led economy. The reality that can be seen from the latest data is that the economic rebound is prone to accidents.

No matter how you look at unemployment benefits making Americans reluctant to go back to work, or how worrying the recent price increases are. But the Fed says it's not serious, which seems to warn that the U. S. economy is sending a messy signal.

Stagnant retail sales and rising inflation expectations ended a tumultuous week on Friday after the consumer price index and employment report fell sharply below expectations in April.

At the heart of the problem is the labour market: 1/3 of the US workforce changed or lost their jobs during the COVID-19 epidemic, and it takes time to get about 10 million people back to work. It will be a chaotic recovery.

In addition, a hacker attack led to a gasoline shortage on the east coast of the United States, which reminded Republicans of the energy crisis of the 1970s.

In addition to dragging down supply chain bottlenecks for automakers and other manufacturers, the hacker attack also proves that the US economic recovery is still fragile to unexpected shocks. President Joe Biden's ambitious plan to create millions of high-paying jobs is part of a $4 trillion package that faces huge hurdles at both the federal and state levels.

There is no doubt that the US economy is rebounding. But the K-shaped rebound that many predict is turning into a multi-headed monster.

Like many of his peers, economist Edelberg remains optimistic about the future:

As the epidemic is brought under control in the United States, accumulated household savings and pent-up demand will be released in the coming months.

However, as demand for services such as tourism is expected to surge, there will be more supply mismatches. They will cause prices to soar, as reflected in consumer price data on Wednesday that used-car prices rose 10 per cent a month, the highest since 1953.

"I fully believe that airline prices will soar all the way," Edelberg said.

Other data indicators also show the uneven recovery.

Jobs were added by 8.1 million in March, an all-time high, underscoring the rapid reopening of many companies but masking the fact that layoffs continue in other regions.

In the past two weeks, Ohio officials have received layoffs from Sunbeam products and OPW Engineering Systems. "the shutdown is expected to be permanent," an OPW official wrote in a letter to state officials, announcing that he would cut 103 jobs this summer. At the same time, small businesses, which employed nearly half of the private workforce before the outbreak, rebounded much more slowly than large ones.

Data from Opportunity Insights, a research group at Harvard University, show that total revenue for small companies as of May 5 was about 29% lower than it was before the pandemic in January 2020.