Inflation
Throughout the pandemic recovery, high inflation has been attributed to tight labor markets and high wage growth. Fed officials have, for months, maintained that the labor market needs to soften in order to bring down inflation. Commentators have pointed to high wage growth as a source of cost-push inflation: My
Core-Cast is our nowcasting model to track the Fed's preferred inflation gauges before and through their release date. The heatmaps below give a comprehensive view of how inflation components and themes are performing relative to what transpires when inflation is running at 2%. Most of the Personal Consumption
Summary: The risks for May (CPI) are still tangibly to the upside, but developments from April CPI do shade favorably relative to what was the baseline headed into the April CPI preview.
Contrary to the expectations of Fed officials, labor force participation growth has been strong over the last six months. In this piece, I use Current Population Survey microdata, correct for measurement issues, and show that an increase in labor force entry played a significant role in this recent…