“There are some green shoots appearing this spring in the economic data which makes us more confident that 2016 is going to be a good year,” said Chris Rupkey of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

Rupkey circulated that message in an email after Tuesday’s US economic data releases, which included a surprisingly strong ISM services report.

The ISM services index climbed to 54.5 in March from 53.4 in February. This was stronger than economists’ forecast for 54.2. Any reading above 50 signals growth in the US services sector, which includes finance, food services, retail, and entertainment.

Measures for new orders and new export orders showed improvement. The employment index, which had been signalling contraction, climbed to 50.3 signalling expansion.

“Overall, we take a positive signal from this morning’s March report and expect that the US service sector will prove durable to continued headwinds from abroad,” Barclays’ Jesse Hurwitz said.

It’s all coming together

Tuesday’s ISM services report complements Friday’s ISM manufacturing report, which reflected growth for the first time since August.

“On the whole, the impressive rebound in the ISM service sector report rounds out the equally buoyant performance in the manufacturing sector counterpart last week, and collectively they point to a robust rebound in growth momentum in March,” TD Millan Mulraine said.

“If the strong rebound in the March ISMs is corroborated in the activity data it could be an indication that the weakening in economic growth momentum may be reversing course.”

There are political implications

All of this flies in the face of US presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, whose platorms are based on how bad things are in the economy. Trump has explicitly argued that the US economy is doomed for a “very massive recession.”

“Politicians and market experts keep saying the economy is trouble, but the data keep telling us that is just not the case,” Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors said.

“Those who downplay the economy's strength should really just quit the exaggeration, trying to scare the already angry electorate into putting themselves into office,” Rupkey said. “Just quit it.”

“The economy is stronger than you think.”

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Sam Ro is managing editor at Yahoo Finance.

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