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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

759 Posts
Skanda Amarnath

What the data tells us to expect for Friday: * Interpreting nonfarm payroll employment numbers will be messy due to the benchmark revision: The BLS folds in more comprehensive data each February on job creation. That can be especially substantial at the sectoral level and recast what the true employment trajectory

Summary: Today's FOMC Statement and press conference shows high continuity with the thinking reflected in the December FOMC meeting. The Fed does not appear to be impressed by the deceleration in wage growth in 2022H2 enough to explicitly rethink the inflation, unemployment, or interest rate outlook right now.

Wage growth slowed in Q4 faster than consensus forecasts–-at an annualized rate just over 4%. We already noted in our preview that this would be very consistent with what the other Q4 macroeconomic & wage data was signaling. The scenario poised to trigger a hawkish overreaction did not materialize.

As we await the Q4 Employment Cost Index (ECI) release tomorrow (forecasting consensus: 1.2% QoQ, 4.9% CAGR; Q3: 1.2% QoQ, 4.8% CAGR), two key points to keep in mind. 1. The Q4 Data Showed Slowing Across Many Wage and Wage-Relevant Indicators, Potentially To 4.2% annualized.

The Fed is arguing that inflation is driven by the cost-push impacts of wage growth on service prices. This is a traditional view, but the pandemic recovery has been anything but textbook. In our view, the primary nexus is a demand-pull relationship. The core question for the Fed ought to

Is productivity worryingly low right now? Some commentators have argued it is, going on to argue that the "disappointing" productivity data should be a primary factor in the Fed's upcoming policy decisions. By their logic, disappointing realized productivity performance in 2022 increases the likelihood of further

For those who have followed my Twitter feed, you will know that I have long pointed out that "narrow vs broad-based," "transitory vs persistent," and "supply vs demand" are not three ways of saying the same thing.

In the coming weeks, we hope to discuss in greater detail what kinds of labor market and inflation outcomes the Fed should be aiming for. Here is an initial layout of how some of our macroeconomic views tend to differ from senior Fed officials. The Fed has increasingly gone back

Today, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it will conduct a “pilot” acquisition of three million barrels of crude oil using the SPR’s new authority to engage in fixed-price contracts. It’s a good start to make sure that the DOE is ready to fulfill the President’s

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