Preston Mui

The labor market is really softening now.

The Fed will leave its target range for the Federal Funds Rate at 5.25%-5.50%. The big news between the last meeting and this is the large raise in long yields, which has several committee members thinking that there will be less need to hike.

This week saw another flurry of Fedspeak, with committee members continuing to react to the rise in long-term yields.

The September 2023 labor market data continued to show a strong labor market. The headline unemployment rate remained steady at 3.8%, and the establishment survey showed an eye-popping 336,000 jobs added in September—alongside an upwards revision of 79,000 and 40,000 jobs in July and August.

This is the first of our Fed Research Roundup series. In this post, we examine the question of whether monetary policy constrains the supply-side, and what that means for inflation.

An earlier version of this piece erroneously attributed this to the wrong author. The author is Preston Mui. Last Friday, we learned that the unemployment rate in August 2023 increased to 3.8% to 3.5%. The employment-to-population ratio was flat at 60.4%, and labor force participation increased to

The August 2023 labor market data points to a labor market that, while strong and not recessionary, is certainly slowing down more starkly than earlier this year. The headline unemployment rate increased to 3.8% from 3.5%, and the establishment survey showed 187,000 jobs added in August (albeit

In a recent Barron’s article, I examined why last year’s predictions that fighting inflation would require an increase in the unemployment rate went so wrong. The flaws in these predictions can be traced back to three ideas: first, that vacancies are a good measure of labor market tightness; second