Macro and Markets
Summary 1. Friday's Q3 ECI release showed a modest slowdown in the pace of wage growth. Coupled with what we already knew about Q3 employment growth, we are continuing to see a slower—though still highly respectable and resilient—pace of gross labor income growth (~6.1% annualized
As of the first quarter of 2022, we have effectively recovered the jobs and wages lost to the pandemic-induced recession.
If we are trying to describe the nature of the real constraints that the economy has been facing over the past 6-12 months, we need a richer economic vocabulary than one that reduces every inflationary constraint to a domestic labor constraint.
This is meant to be a quick "micropost" and may be light on linking & original charts I was recently quoted saying that oil prices surging past $150 was "not implausible" in 2022. The reasons for my concern remains, but through delivering greater demand certainty and
More problems with "Real Wages"
Energy security has taken on new importance in wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We can use existing tools to confront these challenges without sacrificing our climate goals.
Conventional wisdom has held that rate hikes slow inflation long enough that straightforward accounts of how exactly one turns into the other are hard to find. Today, everyone needs to be on the same page about how exactly it is that Fed policy in particular can slow inflation.
“Real wages” are often presented as a neutral measure of the ability of households to buy definite quantities of real goods after adjusting for changes in both prices and wages. In reality, "real wages" explain far less about household economic well-being than these stories confidently imply.
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.
