In Friday’s monthly cattle report, the USDA said feedlot inventories on April 1st were 11.58M head, down 0.5% from a year ago. New placements onto feedlots in March were 7.2% below last year. New world screwworm disease in Mexico continues to show no signs of abating.

Friday’s CPI report may be the first hint of big trouble ahead. The consumer price index for March was 3.3% above a year ago, up from 2.4% in February. Gasoline was the big driver in March, up 18.9%. Taking out the food and fuel categories, the core CPI was up 2.6%.

The employment market is not dead yet. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that U.S. employers added 178,000 net new jobs in March, after averaging just 17,000 per month for Jan/Feb. Additionally, the unemployment rate dropped from 4.4 to 4.3%.

In its quarterly report, the USDA said that all hog and pig inventories in the U.S. on March 1st (74.3M head) were 0.4% higher than a year ago but 1.5% below last quarter (Dec 1). A 0.6% increase (year-over-year) in market hogs and a 2.1% jump in pigs per litter, offset by a 1.5% decrease in the breeding herd…