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Skanda Amarnath

Executive Director skanda@employamerica.org

About

As co-founder and Executive Director of Employ America, Skanda both leads our economic policy advocacy and ensures the long-term sustainability of the organization. Skanda’s commitment to our mission of full employment informs all of his work, from regular analyses of price and jobs data, to interpreting and forecasting market conditions, to developing new frameworks for Federal Reserve policy, strategy, and communication.

Skanda draws on a foundation of knowledge and career experience at the intersection of finance and policy. He was Vice President at MKP Capital Management operating as a market economist and strategist, and previously served as an Analyst within the Capital Markets function of the Research Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He has undergraduate degrees in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Columbia, and holds a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School.

A frequent media guest and commentator, Skanda has been featured or quoted in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Heatmap News, Politico, Vox, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the American Prospect, the Washington Post, and more. He is also a regular contributor to Bloomberg’s Odd Lots newsletter. Skanda is based in Jersey City, NJ, and enjoys cooking, tennis, and cycling in his spare time.

Skanda Amarnath's Work

692 Posts
Skanda Amarnath

The prime-age employment rate rose by 0.5% in November 2021 to 78.8%, but this was abnormally low relative to the not seasonally adjusted (NSA) estimate of 79.3%. The 2019Q4 peak was 80.3%. The next employment report will feature seasonal factor revisions in the household survey (the

Critical to the Fed successfully achieving maximum employment over the short run and the longer run is a commitment to, and a communication of, “maximum employment” that is Credible, Broad, and Inclusive.

If the Fed wants to stay true to the "maximum employment" component of its forward guidance, and the "broad and inclusive" nature of that goal, it is imperative that their interest rate policy actions reflect a full recovery on both of these measures.

Labor Force Participation Is Already Recovering: Look At The Prime-Age Cohorts

Chair Powell and others have bemoaned the allegedly sideways trajectory of labor force participation, while other commentators have taken an even more pessimistic view, assuming that a large swath of people who were employed just two years ago to be permanently unavailable now. To evaluate the recovery correctly (and measure

The policy mistake worth worrying about isn’t the speed of taper per se; it's the signal that taper sends about the timing of liftoff in interest rate policy.

Critics are claiming the American Rescue Plan was too ambitious as fiscal stimulus. The data suggests today's inflation is due to the speed with which the economy is adding jobs, not the number of jobs added. As such, critics are really wishing for a slower recovery with a slower pace of job growth.

It means that the White House and Congress should, where feasible, use targeted fiscal policies and structural reforms to equitably address the demand- and supply-side challenges that contribute to inflationary pressure.

Healthcare policy interventions could provide downward pressure on core PCE both in 2022 and in the years ahead. Given the salience of inflation, disinflationary healthcare policies should be a key priority for Congress and the Biden Administration alike.

Whenever inflation becomes a part of political or economic discourse, policymakers and commentators instinctively reach for narratives and models drawn from the experience of the 1970s inflation. However, these models offer little explanation for even adjacent experiences of inflation.

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