Bohanon & Curott: Dual-family income to single income is not ‘bad’ outcome
The economic principle of revealed preference comes into play: what people do reveals their preferences. In the family’s own estimation, they are better off!
The economic principle of revealed preference comes into play: what people do reveals their preferences. In the family’s own estimation, they are better off!
As any American who has bought a carton of milk, a gallon of gas or a used car could tell you, inflation has settled in. And economists are now voicing a more discouraging message.
Fifth Third Bank’s Chief Investment Strategist Jeff Korzenik told an Indianapolis audience Wednesday that the workforce crunch and sudden glut in downtown office space remain vexing problems, but Indiana is in solid position to take advantage of the return of manufacturing from overseas.
Applications for unemployment aid have been falling mostly steadily since topping 900,000 in early January and are gradually nearing prepandemic levels of around 220,000 a week.
Inflation is eroding the strong gains in wages and salaries that have flowed to America’s workers in recent months, creating political headaches for the Biden administration and congressional Democrats and intensifying pressure on the Federal Reserve.
The Labor Department reported Tuesday that its producer price index—which measures inflation before it hits consumers—rose 0.6% last month from September, pushed higher by surging gasoline prices.
Friday’s report from the Labor Department also showed that the unemployment rate fell to 4.6% last month, from 4.8% in September.
After two disappointing months of hiring, a key question overhanging Friday’s U.S. jobs report for October will be whether companies found more success this time in filling millions of open positions.
Overall, 2.1 million Americans were collecting unemployment checks the week of Oct. 23—down from 7.1 million a year earlier when the economy was still reeling from the coronavirus outbreak.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Fed was sticking by its bedrock economic forecast. Yet, the nation’s leading economic figure acknowledged that it isn’t at all clear when or even whether things will play out the way he and other Fed officials hope.
The Fed’s likely decision this week to taper its bond purchases comes as high inflation is bedeviling the U.S. economy for much longer than Federal Reserve Chair Powell and many other officials initially expected.
Just 35% of Americans now call the national economy good, while 65% call it poor, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
American consumers slowed their spending in September, a cautionary sign for an economy that remains in the grip of a pandemic and a prolonged bout of high inflation.
In all, 2.2 million people were collecting unemployment checks the week of Oct. 16, down from 7.7 million a year earlier.
Consumer spending, which fuels about 70% of overall economic activity, slowed to an annual growth rate of just 1.6% after having surged at a 12% rate in the previous quarter.
The absence of reliable and affordable child care limits which jobs people can accept, makes it harder to climb the corporate ladder and ultimately restricts the ability of the broader economy to grow.
The slowdown has been attributed to a surge in cases from the delta variant over the summer and supply chain problems, which disrupted manufacturing output in many sectors, especially auto production and helped send consumer prices rising at the fastest pace in 13 years.
Economists point to a range of factors that are likely keeping millions of former recipients of federal jobless aid from returning to the workforce. Many Americans in public-facing jobs still fear contracting COVID-19, for example. Some families lack child care.
Unemployment claims are increasingly returning to normal, but many other aspects of the job market haven’t yet done so. Hiring has slowed in the past two months, even as companies and other employers have posted a near-record number of open jobs.
In its latest survey of business conditions around the nation, the Fed said a majority of its 12 regions viewed consumer spending, the main driving force for the economy, as remaining positive despite the various speed bumps.