Labor Markets
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
Wage growth is slowing. Job openings are increasing, unemployment is holding, and wage growth is slowing. This was supposed to be impossible–so what does it mean that it’s happening?
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.
While layoffs are painful to workers, more attention needs to be paid to the threat of a rise in unemployment arising from a slowdown in hiring. In this report, we examine the important role that a fall in hiring rates plays during unemployment increases.
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
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
New data from December shows a labor market that remains strong all-around even as wages have begun to decelerate. The unemployment rate ticked down from 3.6% to 3.5%, while prime-age employment increased from 79.7% to 80.1%. The establishment survey continued to show growing employment, but at
The Fed says that the labor market needs to cool in order to bring inflation down. A key part of the case for maintaining the current pace of rate hikes is built on high measures of wage growth. Jay Powell cited the last average hourly earnings figure as one sign
