Things seem to be picking up again as we added almost one million jobs last month.

If you listened to Chairman Powell of the Federal Reserve speak recently, you will extract a lot of optimism about where the economy is headed. The government has provided plenty of stimulus – not only helping individuals and businesses to survive this national crisis, but also giving us a foundation to bounce back.

As the nation gets vaccinated, this optimism will continue to grow as it should. But there was another message from Powell. There are still dangers lurking which could delay or derail the recovery. In other words, we will not get vaccinated, snap our fingers, and then go back to normal. Though the crisis hit us like a brick wall, stopping the economy in its tracks, we will not recover in a straight line.

Just look at the recovery of jobs. We added back millions of jobs in the early stages of the recovery, but the winter COVID surge caused a pause. Now things seem to be picking up again as we added almost one million jobs last month. Do we think there will be another pause? We hope not, but his caution is that we have a long way to go. We will not snap our fingers and get back to normal. With COVID, we are trying to figure out what normal will look like.