Macro Minute
The emergence of a new COVID-19 variant poses risks to next year's economic outlook, especially if a spike in cases leads to supply disruptions in China and higher prices for Chinese imports.
Despite an impressive drop in the unemployment rate in November 2021, looking at the breakdown of the unemployed shows that the labor market is not back to normal.
Americans have spent less and saved more during most of the COVID-19 pandemic. What will happen to these accumulated savings is an open question.
Doing a deep dive into inventory-to-sales ratios can yield insights into supply chain issues during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the post-COVID-19 labor market, there is still an inverse relationship between the unemployment rate and the job openings rate, expressed as the Beveridge curve. But it takes a lot more openings to get to the same level of unemployment. This shift suggests a high degree of labor market mismatch.
Average hourly earnings continue to grow strongly. With inflation running high, however, real wage growth has been more muted. Inflation has even outpaced wage growth in a few sectors.
Household savings have been elevated since the start of the pandemic, especially among high-income households. This is expected to fuel the seasonal burst of demand ahead of the holidays.
Recent data from the Institute for Supply Management and other sources offer early indications of whether and how much supply chain disruptions have eased.
How consumers respond to the ongoing Delta variant outbreak has been a key question facing the economy. Fortunately, consumer spending is holding up better than sentiment surveys would have suggested.
There could be multiple explanations for why more workers are staying on the sidelines compared to the pre-COVID-19 days. One reason could be that some people have reconsidered the costs and benefits of working.
The housing market has boomed during the pandemic, but data over the past few months have been more mixed. Is this bumpiness the result of weaker demand or lower supply?
The number of people working from home increased substantially in 2020, as many employers changed their work arrangements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Household spending fell sharply, especially on services, during the early days of the pandemic. That story is expected to change significantly as the recovery continues.
The two main employment surveys can present differing views of the health of the labor market in any given month, adding to the challenges of determining how far the economy has recovered from last year's severe downturn.
Employers are reporting they are unable to find workers. But is every industry experiencing the same difficulties, and are the industries having more trouble raising wages in response?
The recent acceleration in the prices people pay for housing might have more lasting implications for the path of core inflation ahead.
Policymakers have been using the trimmed mean PCE inflation rate to get a better sense of the overall direction of prices in the long term. But does using this metric risk missing anything that short-term price hikes might be telling us?