Unemployment remains low
The Bureau of Labor Statistics unveiled April's unemployment figures this week, which showed a better-than-expected addition of 177,000 jobs (compared to an average monthly gain of 152,000 over the prior 12 months). Employment trended up in health care, transportation and warehousing, financial activities, and social assistance, per BLS. Government employment declined, as DOGE cuts continue to take effect.
Meanwhile, the latest BLS numbers show the unemployment rate remained the same as last month (4.2 percent), with an estimated 7.2 million people out of work.
It was a busy week in building materials industry financial news. Week 18 saw Stanley Black & Decker, BlueLinx, Simpson Manufacturing, Builders FirstSource and several others release their respective Q1 numbers. Tariffs were once again the talk of the town, with most companies' reports reflecting the cloud of trade-war uncertainty that's conspiring to raise prices and muddy projections for the rest of the year.
Also on the Week 18, 2025 edition of the Quikrete Industry Dashboard, the nationwide average price for a gallon of gas is now $3.18 (up slightly from last week). That’s down from last month’s U.S. average of $3.23, and pump prices remain much lower compared to last year's eye-watering nationwide average of $3.67 in early-May 2024, according to AAA's daily data. California ($4.77), Hawaii ($4.50) and Washington ($4.26) once again have by far the highest average gas prices in the U.S., while Mississippi ($2.66), Louisiana ($2.72) and Tennessee ($2.73) have the cheapest average price for a gallon of gas right now.
Week 18 also saw the release of The Conference Board's April Consumer Confidence Index report. The CCI slumped for the fifth month in a row, hitting the lowest level registered since the early COVID days of May 2020. Stephanie Guichard, senior economist of global indicators at The Conference Board, explained:
“The decline was largely driven by consumers’ expectations. The three expectation components—business conditions, employment prospects and future income—all deteriorated sharply, reflecting pervasive pessimism about the future. Notably, the share of consumers expecting fewer jobs in the next six months (32.1%) was nearly as high as in April 2009, in the middle of the Great Recession. In addition, expectations about future income prospects turned clearly negative for the first time in five years, suggesting that concerns about the economy have now spread to consumers worrying about their own personal situations.”
As for stocks, Sherwin-Williams (+17.1%) and Home Depot (+9.4%) are the only companies on our list that are up over the course of the last year. Over the past month, every stock monitored on the Dashboard (except for Sherwin-Williams (+0.2%) dipped. This week also saw QXO finalize its deal to acquire Beacon, and Beacon shares ceased trading on April 29. As a result, PPG Industries will replace Beacon on HBSDealer's top 10 stocks to watch on the Quikrete Industry Dashboard.
See the up-to-the minute stock prices of 30 industry companies tracked by HBSDealer here.
