The only way to address the primary driver of high shelter costs is to build more apartments and houses. High interest rates prevent that. It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that today’s high interest rates will fuel shelter inflation down the road. After all, the Federal Reserve has tightened monetary policy to stamp out price pressures ...

A rise in the number of existing houses for sale should soften prices, making the environment more competitive for new construction. Homebuilders were one of the big surprise winners in the US economy last year as record-low inventory of existing houses for sale and gently rising prices allowed companies such as KB Home and Lennar Corp. to ...

Lending and bond-market activity are climbing as bankers and investors focus on the salubrious effects of rate cuts to come. The timing and pace of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts will consume economists and market commentators for months to come. But an emerging story in 2024 is that lenders and borrowers are jumping the gun well in advance ...

Sellers are finally giving up the wait, driving up inventory levels and handing negotiating power back to would-be buyers in many markets. If you need to sell your home in the next few months, I’d get on with it. As we enter the spring selling season, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the period during which sellers had the leverage in ...

Businesses and consumers can withstand overly restrictive borrowing costs for only so long. Stocks and bonds rallied at the end of last year on the hope of a seemingly improbable combination of dynamics playing out to support financial assets in 2024 — cooling inflation, solid economic growth, a resilient labor market, and as much as 150 ...

The sticker shock of the pandemic is in the rearview mirror and consumers are back to their buying ways again. Economic growth in the US is off to a better start than expected this year, thanks largely to a long-awaited pickup in consumers buying “stuff” again after they shifted spending to experiences in 2022. Shoppers have been spurred by ...

Moderating inflation and still tepid demand are a difficult combination for corporate America. Corporate America has greeted 2024 with a run of job-cut announcements. The reductions, though modest, seem puzzling at a time when the stock market is flirting with all-time highs and real gross domestic product growth continues to be healthy. Think ...

Moderating inflation and borrowing costs are just what households need to lift their mood. The unhappiness of American consumers despite rapid job and economic growth in the past few years is a hotly debated topic. Is it inflation? High borrowing costs for homes and automobiles? Crowded airports and packed airplanes? For better or ...

The payrolls data still looks fine, but under the hood are signs of deterioration for the growing number of people who are unemployed or keen to switch jobs. It’s easy to look at the rise in the unemployment rate over the past six months and attribute it to a growing labor force, as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. argued over the weekend, or a ...

New construction was the sector’s only bright spot. Mortgage rates near 8% have wrecked homebuilder sentiment and buyer appetite. For the first time since the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates, every part of the housing market is now poised to worsen. The resale market has been slumping since early 2022 as potential sellers sit ...

Frustrated US homebuyers may finally catch a break as rising inventories and motivated sellers may hold down prices next year. Home prices are once again on the rise following a brief decline. But before would-be homebuyers start to worry about prices zooming higher from here, note the emerging evidence of a shift in the balance of power in ...

Companies need to decide how they will deal with increasing pressure on profit margins — setting the direction for the economy. Consumers might still be benefiting from inflation pressures abating, but the same is no longer true for corporations.Categories that provided relief to companies’ bottom lines over the past year — freight and ...

Households are still reaping the benefits of a surge in home equity and aren’t in the mood to save. That’s good news for the economy. Arguably, the biggest question about the US economy right now is whether consumers can maintain their pace of spending. Student loan payments resume in October. Pandemic-era excess savings are expected to run out ...

Just as there were reasons a year ago to think growth would pick up in 2023, there are now reasons to think it will slow over the next six months. Halfway through the third quarter, the economy is looking surprisingly strong. A tracker from the Atlanta branch of the Federal Reserve has real gross domestic product growth, based on the limited ...

There are growing signs that the supply of new and resale homes on the market will pick up in 2024, taking some of the steam out of prices. The story of US housing for hopeful buyers in 2023 has been one of frustration. A lack of supply has stabilized a market where affordability remains challenging.Homeowners with low mortgage rates have ...

Signs of an economic rebound are mounting, pointing to a return of policy angst for the Fed next year. Signs of abating inflation have lifted the spirits of investors, the White House and the general public this month. While a welcome relief, inflation tends to be a lagging rather than a leading economic indicator. More forward-looking measures ...

The housing market is so tight, any relief on borrowing costs will just drive up prices, providing little help to buyers. Homebuyers can't catch a break. Sharply higher mortgage rates made houses more expensive and weakened demand without doing much to lower prices in most of the US. The supply of existing homes shrunk as owners hung on to ...

Jittery homebuilders aren’t ramping up construction fast enough to ease what’s already a severe housing shortage. Homebuilders continue to finish homes faster than they're starting new ones. Improved supply chains are allowing them to work through backlogs built up during the pandemic when they couldn't keep up with demand. But as mortgage ...

Younger people entering the workforce are shoring up growth and helping offset the slide in office jobs. Knowledge workers in technology, finance and elsewhere in corporate America are used to having the most options and leverage in the labor market. They are still far from facing hard times, but recent data suggest their fortunes ...

Past declines have been about unwinding excesses in investment, hiring or construction. This one is about unwinding excessive belief in low interest rates. We've been watching slumps ripple through various parts of the economy over the past 18 months: technology startups and stocks, regional banks and growing concern about commercial real ...

After a year of dragging down GDP, homebuilders are showing strength just when the economy may need it most. Ready for a little good news? As investors take stock of the fallout from the Silicon Valley Bank failure and wonder about broader fallout for the economy in the coming months, the housing market has delivered some reason for optimism. ...

Biden is tying startup funding to his national and social policy priorities. That’s probably an improvement over Silicon Valley values. Higher interest rates, slumping stock prices and corporate America's shift in focus from growth to profitability has taken the air out of one of the main drivers of innovation and new company formation in ...

With current owners staying put thanks to cheap mortgages, existing homes for sale are hard to find. That puts homebuilders in the catbird seat. After the housing market's surprise rebound in January, 30-year mortgage rates have risen to nearly 7%, cooling things back off. Mortgage applications have slumped to a 28-year low. But that's not ...

CEOs need to stop trash-talking the economy unless they want to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. The official economic forecast is still chilly for 2023, but a host of indicators suggest things were heating up, not cooling, in the first month of the year. Auto sales had their best month since the first half of 2021. The housing market ...

Price cuts on new houses will be more plentiful in a few months as construction backlogs begin to ease and costs continue to come down. After 30-year mortgage rates surged past 7% in October, a decline to near 6% in recent weeks has made the start of 2023 look less awful than some had feared. So what does this mean if you're looking to buy ...

A strong labor market and lower prices for housing and consumer goods will help keep the economy growing this year, but brace for a rebound back into "too hot" territory. One of the main questions for the US economy in 2023 is how the trajectory of inflation will unfold. While the Federal Reserve's forecast for core inflation this year ...

While investors were focused on fears of a collapse in the homebuying industry, a crash in the apartment market has been taking shape. For most of the past year, investment risk in the housing market has been focused on the for-sale segment. That was largely because the huge run-up in home prices during the pandemic led to a mentality of ...

Easing inflation and mended supply chains are translating into more buying power for Americans despite a softer labor market. The red-hot labor market is cooling. Monthly US job growth has slowed to around 270,000 from more than 500,000 at the start of the year. Employers are staffing up, returning average work weeks to pre-pandemic ...

A supply chain broken by the pandemic is slowly getting back on its feet, and improvements will continue rippling through the markets well into the new year. Two data releases came out last week that told seemingly conflicting stories about the state of the economy. The ISM Manufacturing survey , a key bellwether of ...

With inflation easing, the current upside-down nature of market rates support the idea of a soft landing for the economy as much as they do a downturn. An inverted yield curve — when longer-term interest rates like the 10-year yield are lower than short-term interest rates like the 2-year yield — has historically been one of the most ...

The car market contributed to supply chain turmoil, and soaring prices helped drive up inflation. Now it’s returning to normal. If you had to point to one culprit holding back the economy over the past 18 months, it would be the auto industry. Supply chain problems like the shortage of semiconductors have contributed to weak economic ...

No matter who controls Congress, the infrastructure bill and cash-flush state budgets will provide fresh inflation fuel to the economy next year. The outcome of the midterm elections has left lingering uncertainty in Washington, including the question of what fiscal policy might look like in the new Congress. But even if Republicans regain ...

Abundant jobs have cushioned the blow of higher interest rates, raising the chance for a soft landing despite the Fed’s aggressive stand against inflation. Higher interest rates are no doubt causing pain to investors and consumers, but the economy has been able to handle them better than anyone thought possible six months ago. The ...

Companies are shielding their workforces from efforts to cool inflation, squeezing profit with the hope of a faster recovery later. All the tightening moves by the Federal Reserve this year to rein in inflation are supposed to lead to less hiring and spending by companies. But there is no law that says the biggest, most profitable companies ...

We're months away from certainty on inflation, so market signals are all we've got — and one is pointing to an interest rate north of 5%. After a widely expected fourth straight 0.75% interest-rate increase next week, there's a growing view that the Federal Reserve will step down to a 0.50% bump at their December meeting. Even ...

Unlike previous crashes, multifamily rentals remain strong, with ample construction to provide jobs and a backlog that should last well into 2023. Surging mortgage rates and uncertainty about the economy have put the housing market on ice. Mortgage purchase applications dropped Wednesday morning to their lowest level in 25 years ...

Inflation watchers have focused on pulling back the labor market, but tenants blinking in the face of higher rents might be the first step toward cooling off the economy. There's been an assumption that before inflation can be tamed and housing prices ease, unemployment must rise significantly. But what if it's the other way around? The ...

Investors may have lots to worry about, but consumers are feeling more confident as gas prices fall, the housing frenzy calms and jobs remain plentiful. It's been three months since the elevated May consumer prices report led the Federal Reserve to adopt a "whatever it takes" mentality to fight inflation. Markets are now bracing for an ...

It might be a sign there will be no broader economic slowdown, but it might also signal faster inflation ahead. It's been a messy year for macroeconomic analysis. Wild swings in inflation, energy prices, the stock market and consumer behavior have led to mistakes by companies and investors alike. Retailers have gotten caught in these shifts, ...

Falling gas prices and an inventory glut will help households that suffered the most as inflation surged. Surging inflation has been punishing for lower-income households over the past year. Two developments — falling gasoline prices and excess inventories of consumer goods — should bring some relief to those struggling the most with high ...

Americans are working more hours than before the pandemic, pointing to robust growth rather than a declining economy. Checking in on the health of the economy used to mean a quick glance at a handful of indicators: unemployment and inflation rates, a couple quarters of gross domestic product growth, housing market sales, maybe the ...

More layoffs used to be considered a bad thing for the economy, but that was before a shortage of workers began adding to inflation. The Federal Reserve has talked a lot about its goal of a soft landing for the economy as it raises interest rates to fight inflation, but there hasn't been as much talk about what that would look like for workers. ...

With the home becoming an increasingly acceptable office for white-collar employees, new graduates won't have to make a beeline for the big city to find high-paying jobs. It's now been two years since the rise of remote work enabled people to start moving out of the big cities, transforming the geographic demography of the United States. And ...

The company’s massive size and reach make it a good bellwether, and its latest earnings suggest supply and demand are coming back into balance. If you want to blame one company for the surge in inflation over the past year, blame Amazon. When e-commerce demand leaped at the onset of the pandemic in 2020, the retailer decided to expand capacity ...

Worker shortages have made companies realize mass layoffs shouldn’t be the automatic response to every recession. The economic rebounds following both the 2001 and 2008 recessions came to be known as jobless recoveries. Demand was slow to recover so employers held back on hiring — which for companies, at least, turned out to be the right ...

Rising prices will help some real estate markets avert a much worse potential outcome in a post-pandemic world. It's painful when prices are soaring for everything, but there are at least two segments of the real estate market where inflation may actually be easing the transition to a new status quo. As the U.S. embarks on its third year ...

Labor demand is poised to ease, which will help the Federal Reserve tame inflation with less risk of triggering a recession. The U.S. has been creating more than 400,000 jobs every month for a year now, but we should expect that pace to start slowing, probably beginning this quarter. And while normally a slowdown in job creation would be seen ...

Mortgages are safer, homebuilders and banks are more conservative and interest rates don't wield the same economic power as they did in the 2000s. The Federal Reserve is getting more hawkish as it seeks to control inflation, but that's not necessarily going to translate to a faster, bigger impact. The U.S. economy has evolved since the ...

The top end of the wealth scale won't need to curb spending thanks to soaring home equity and fattened savings, while higher prices squeeze renters at the bottom. Remember back in 2020 when everyone was talking about a K-shaped economic recovery? White-collar workers who could do their jobs from home stayed employed, while lower-income ...

Soaring prices and low inventory are causing headaches for homebuilders and buyers but benefiting owners — and therein lies the Fed’s predicament as it seeks to lower inflation. If you want to know what stagflation looks like, check out the housing market. The conditions that existed during the 1970's — high inflation and stagnant output — ...

War in Ukraine is combining with persistent inflation to create a new political dynamic in Washington where only bipartisan proposals for the economy will stand a chance. The short-lived era of progressive economic policy making is dead. War in Ukraine has led to at least a short-term surge in the price of commodities like oil, and has made ...

There's understandably a lot of concern about inflation — and consumers want to know who to blame for it. U.S. companies are showing that they've got pricing power and know how to use it in this environment. That makes them an easy target for consumers — and politicians' — ire. But for the most part they're merely raising prices to keep up ...

Letting inflation run hotter than planned is a better outcome than crushing economic growth with overly severe interest rate increases. Coming into this year, the hope was that supply chain improvements and modest interest-rate increases from the Federal Reserve would return the U.S. economy to the healthy expansion mode it enjoyed in ...

Some of the country's largest urban areas have recovered more slowly from the pandemic. Now rising interest rates will hurt them most. The pandemic hit the U.S. economy unevenly, with some places hurting more than others and recovering at different speeds. As the Federal Reserve gets ready to start raising interest rates, we're about to see ...

Home to corporate behemoth Walmart, a rising state university, and awash in philanthropy money, this Texas neighbor is home to a new crop of urban hotspots.Ambitious young college graduates are looking for an affordable home base where they can build their families and careers. Here's a place that may not (yet) be on their list: Arkansas. For ...

The labor market is recovering at lightning speed, and by next summer full employment will be just another reason to raise interest rates. Debate has intensified in the past several months over whether the elevated level of inflation will lead the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy sooner than expected: winding down asset ...

Rapid increases in worker incomes are less likely to be temporary than other peculiarities of the pandemic, raising pressure on the Fed to respond. Inflation debates have been dominated by fallout from the pandemic and economic reopening, most of which has been viewed as transitory: lumber and used car prices in the first half of the year, ...

Money saved from relief checks and rising property values provide lots of cash still waiting to be spent. Some of it should go to fill jobs. As Democrats struggled to find agreement on a pair of infrastructure bills, some have been concerned that the waning impact of fiscal stimulus will act as a drag on economic growth just when the economy ...

The pandemic tormented homebuyers and builders with blistering demand, soaring prices, supply shortages, and then a slump. Next year those bumps should smooth out. After a year of soaring home prices and problems getting essential materials such as lumber, buyers and builders took a moment earlier this year to catch their breath and reassess ...

The U.S. should be able to sustain stronger rates of growth for years to come thanks to the pandemic unlocking trends we might not otherwise have seen. The U.S. remains in a deep employment hole, with 6.7 million fewer jobs in June than there were in February 2020. But that overstates the weakness in the economy, with last week's ...

Futurists have talked for years about an economy based on more automation and artificial intelligence. Thanks to the pandemic, we might finally get it. Current labor shortages might be temporary as workers re-enter the labor force over the next several months, but the higher pay they're earning won't be, given the tendency for wages to be ...

After a year of soaring prices, some builders — and homebuyers — are beginning to step back. The rest of the economy may follow suit. Something seems to have changed in housing market psychology over the past month. Prospective buyers who find themselves in bidding wars might not have noticed it yet, but there are multiple signs that the market ...

Blistering growth will cool as inventories are restocked. Now investors will turn their attention to other questions looming over the markets. Economic growth in the U.S. is strong right now. We'll get more evidence with the April jobs report later this week, which could show as many as two million more jobs created. But an important ...

Wage wars could be brewing in the e-commerce world as the nation's second-biggest employer sees higher pay as its next chance to dominate, and perhaps reshape, the marketplace. For the past generation, Amazon.com Inc. has been the centerpiece of a prevailing view that the growth of the internet has had a deflationary impact. Online ...

Democrats and Republicans will be arguing endlessly over which plan created more jobs and growth. By the time we know, it won't really matter. When Republicans passed deep tax cuts in 2017, Democrats howled, seeing it as a giveaway to corporations and the rich that would enlarge the federal budget deficit while doing very little for ...

No matter how disruptive the shock -- from GameStop to Archegos -- the economy has kept chugging along as a new growth strategy takes shape. A lesson learned after the 2008 financial crisis was that financial market shocks can turn into real economy shocks if they're not nipped in the bud by policymakers. That led to a decade of the ...

Supply and demand got so out of whack during the pandemic, we won't know until 2023 whether looming price gains across the economy are just temporary. Dallas Federal Reserve President Robert Kaplan this week became the first Fed official to say that he anticipates a rate increase in 2022. Lots of investors agree, convinced that the passage of ...

In a decade defined by the nation's need to invest in infrastructure, Berkshire Hathaway is uniquely positioned to help. From a new presidential slogan of "Build Back Better" to an economy strained by supply chain problems everywhere, it's never been more clear that America is consumed with the need to invest heavily across a variety of ...

The focus should be on bolstering production, not worrying about price increases that are a normal part of the business cycle. Inflation worries have flared as Congress pushes forward with a $1.9 trillion fiscal relief package amid rising commodity prices and long-term interest rates. But if the old adage is that inflation is "too much ...

One reason for the drop in unemployment is a wave of people 55 and older leaving the labor force, which is bad news for the economy. Employment growth has slowed over the past few months as the winter spike in Covid-19 led to new restrictions and more people unable to go to their jobs because they're sick or quarantining. But one important ...

Big cities and office-settings may be most appealing to early-career professionals who need the networking. Cheap rents offer a golden opportunity. The pandemic accomplished in 10 months what internet technologies have been promising for decades: a shift away from high-cost cities as the dominant centers of workforce talent and business ...

New fiscal stimulus should give buyers more options — as long as they can find a home for sale. For years following the Great Recession, households faced a number of financial hurdles hindering their ability to buy a home. The three biggest were: a weak labor market that didn't give workers enough income to purchase a house; elevated levels ...

Stricken by falling enrollment and budget cuts, universities count on the sport more than ever for marketing and fundraising. The 2020 pandemic has accelerated a lot of long-term trends affecting institutions of all kinds. Higher education is no exception. From moving classrooms online to shrinking enrollment and budget cuts, there's ...

With more reasons to stay home, consumers will need to be lured with fewer, but more luxurious venues. As cities struggling with a surge in apartment and commercial vacancies think about their post-pandemic futures, one disruption that's likely to benefit them is the shift happening now in the movie industry. There have been signs for awhile ...

Record-low housing inventories, rising demand and higher prices will strengthen the argument for renting next year. As coronavirus vaccines approach a widespread rollout, the next six months of economic activity are going to be dominated by the impact of society's growing immunity — and easing fears. Combined with historically low levels ...

What's better in Texas won't necessarily work in Nevada. October state employment data, released Friday, underscored the lopsided way the pandemic is hitting state economies. Even with an effective vaccine on the horizon, we should expect this performance divide to continue in the months ahead until activities can get back to normal. That ...

Big, high-cost cities were hurt the worst by the pandemic, and they'll probably be the last to return to normal. With vaccines — and economic recovery — on the horizon for early 2021, there's still room for caution. High-cost cities like New York and San Francisco will probably see their fortunes lag behind suburban and lower-cost metros. Even ...

If passenger flight traffic can avoid backsliding as the virus surges, then a winter recession might be avoidable, too. The latest spike in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations has people worried about more than just the public health impacts. There's also the threat that renewed constraints on activity could drag the economy backward as ...

To lure employees back, companies will be able to offer more space in premium places. Perhaps no part of the economy has a more uncertain future right now than office buildings. The pace of workers coming back into offices is more of a trickle than a flood. And enough tenants are choosing not to renew as leases come due that vacancy rates ...

The K-shaped recovery applies to geography too. In the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic, the conventional wisdom was that economic recovery hinged on controlling the disease. For a while, that appeared to be the case, with the economies of most states feeling similar levels of pain as consumers, businesses and public officials ...

Robust demand for housing and an uptick in manufacturing increase the chances for the kind of employment recovery we haven’t seen in decades. Ahead of Friday's jobs report, evidence has grown to suggest that while total U.S. unemployment remains high, the manufacturing and construction industries may be poised for the kind of ...

A vaccine or treatment may shift consumer spending so dramatically it upends markets. There's been a lot of talk about the U.S. experiencing a K-shaped recovery, with large companies and the rich recovering while smaller companies and lower-paid service workers struggle. But this divide also shows up in the way Americans are shopping. ...

Consumer behavior will probably change dramatically when the coronavirus threat fades. The latest earnings season showed retailers of all stripes, not just e-commerce companies, have been winners in the pandemic. Amazon.com Inc. is reaping a windfall, as are emerging e-commerce stars such as Wayfair Inc. and Etsy Inc. But physical giants such ...

Soaring stock and home prices can make this recovery much stronger than the last one. A paradox of this economic crisis is that while U.S. employment remains 13 million below its pre-pandemic peak, the net worth of American households may be at a record high, thanks to the soaring prices of stocks and homes. This doesn't discount the need ...

Even without a new stimulus package, there are reasons for optimism. Economic data keep reinforcing the picture of an economy that has bounced meaningfully from its spring lows but is still fragile. The expiration of enhanced unemployment benefits at the end of July and the removal of other fiscal support measures by Congress, combined with ...

A surge in online shopping demand has led to supply bottlenecks and higher prices. E-commerce stocks were some of the biggest winners in the second quarter, with such companies as Shopify, Wayfair and Etsy reporting year-over-year revenue growth of about 100%, thanks to consumers ordering things online in the pandemic. A decade of ...

Growth that’s shipped in from elsewhere probably isn’t sustainable. Much has been written about the shortcomings of China's export-dependent economic model, which has emphasized growth by selling to other countries rather than generating its own domestic demand. But the U.S. has similar drawbacks with its model, some of which have become ...

Transportation and warehousing, where they dominate, have held up. Retail and hospitality, with lots of women workers, haven’t been so lucky. Working-age men have had it rough in postwar recessions when the economy typically sheds manufacturing and construction jobs. Then, in recoveries, men have been slow to find work as health care and ...

The Great Recession showed that more stimulus is better than too little. With Congress set to tackle the next phase of economic relief this month, Thursday's jobs report provided more evidence of how much permanent damage is being done to the labor market by the coronavirus pandemic. The number of workers being permanently laid off ...

As the weeks go by, the timeline for a coronavirus vaccine is getting shorter and driving optimism. The Nasdaq Composite hit a record Wednesday, as the S&P 500 rose for the third straight day. This happened even with the Covid-19 pandemic growing in multiple states, and on the same day California and New York rolled back plans to ...

Consumers seem willing to spend again, but production is a long way from catching up. New data suggest that the economy has been growing for the past two months, although the distribution of that growth has been uneven. Consumption has been recovering more quickly than production, a divergence that will need to be resolved during the next ...

Housing, consumers and banks are holding up, while oil and big cities are in trouble. The human inclination to compare the past and the present is irresistible. So looking for parallels between this economic downturn and the financial crisis of 2008-09 is natural, particularly given the alarming levels of unemployment and declines in ...

Remote work will help far-flung exurbs and second-tier cities in the South and West gain at the expense of pricey coastal cities. The coronavirus is going to change the way we work whether we like it or not -- at least for the short term and maybe longer. To take just one example: Twitter said it would let employees work from home even after ...

Cost-cutting will take precedence over gaining market share and profitless growth. For the past decade, Silicon Valley and its workers were big winners in a world of haves and have nots. But the economic shock caused by the coronavirus is accelerating a tech-industry shift from prioritizing growth to profitability, meaning rank-and-file ...

With the coronavirus making dining out, travel and attending big public events risky, people will spend more on a comfortable home life. One of the lasting effects of the Great Recession was a shift in consumer preferences from things to experiences. Homeownership, especially among millennials, fell out of favor amid distressed personal ...

Past rebounds had slow job growth. This time, persistent social distancing will make business less efficient. Reopening the U.S. economy is going to be a slow, painful process and nothing like turning a light switch back on. Economic activity and employment is going to be down significantly for a while. If there's any good news for workers ...

Growth could be sluggish unless older people laid off because of the coronavirus return to the labor force. The question on the minds of American workers in April will be when can we turn the economy back on. The underlying assumption in that question is that there will come a point when we can re-create the economy we had before the ...

If the government decides to give the economy a fiscal boost, that’s likely to raise rates and inflation. Treasury yields have plunged to record lows as investors brace for the impact of the worldwide spread of the coronavirus. With interest rates low or negative around the world, and with central banks struggling to hit their inflation ...

It helps to understand the trajectory of the virus. Coronavirus fears have escalated in the United States, with global conferences and international travel being canceled and consumers stocking up on bleach and disinfectants. As March begins, every economic data release will be scrutinized for signs of weakness. At the same time, China, the ...

The evidence suggests that more young people are choosing to work instead of pursuing educations of questionable value. Student loan debt has more than doubled over the past decade and now exceeds $1.5 trillion. If there is one bit of good news, it’s that new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that student loan debt has ...

It’s a promising contrast to the conventional predictions that have undershot the mark the past three years. President Donald Trump's new budget proposal makes some heady economic projections -- 3% annual real economic growth for the first half of the decade -- to justify his policies and make the budget deficit look smaller than it ...

Yes, financing costs are down, but rising demand and lack of supply is causing prices to surge. The Federal Reserve cut interest rates three times last year and pledged not to increase them absent meaningful increases in wages and inflation -- welcome news for the labor market and economic expansion. But in a twist, the shift wasn't welcomed ...

For President Trump, this is a pretty good place to be. With labor-market data for the 2010s behind us after Friday's employment report, the big takeaway for the decade is that a much higher level of employment was possible without generating inflation. President Donald Trump also has an argument to claim that not only is he presiding over ...

With no more idle labor to rejoin the workforce, something else is needed. As the decade winds down and we assess how the economy did, two things stand out: productivity growth has been disappointing since the Great Recession and yet economic growth hasn't been all that bad, compounding at a 2.3% annual rate. But we've only been able to ...

Expect faster growth amid lower interest rates and trade tensions. The economy has battled a lot of headwinds during the past year. Trade wars. The lagging impact of the Federal Reserve's interest-rate hikes. A government shutdown. The good news is that with those hiccups mostly out of the way, the economy may be poised for better performance ...

Raising them does fight inflation, but they don’t reduce risk in the financial system. The U.S. labor market poses a conundrum: The unemployment rate is at lows last seen 50 years ago, yet runaway wage growth or inflation is absent. This has left analysts and economists with a persistent and nagging question: When will the economy hit ...

So far, the slump in manufacturing is being offset by a real-estate rebound. Manufacturing data released Tuesday made two things clear: The Federal Reserve might be powerless to prevent the negative effects of the trade war from hurting economic growth, but it still has the juice to boost the housing market. The ISM Manufacturing Index ...

Like the Whopper and the Big Mac, it was born during an economic boom to help a fast-food chain discreetly raise prices. Strong economies and tight labor markets put strains on fast-food companies. How can they remain profitable when wages are rising? The social media frenzy over the new chicken sandwich at Popeyes shows the success of one ...

But you won’t yet find signs of trouble. The growing consensus is that even with all the trade tensions wreaking havoc in markets and global supply chains, as long as consumers stay resilient, the U.S. will probably avoid recession. But a big enough decline in business investment – prompted by trade tensions and global manufacturing ...

We don't know whether globalization will break down, or the fears will prove overblown. Either way, today's scramble for Treasuries will no longer make sense. Many nations in recent years are trying to wall themselves off from the rest of the world, but financial markets are immune: Money is moving freely, showing financial markets at least ...

The latest round would take $30 billion from households. Think back to some surges in gasoline prices for a sense of how that feels. One of the reasons investors are so alarmed about the escalating trade war between the U.S. and China is that there isn't an exact parallel in recent memory. It’s the fear of the unknown. But impending cost ...

Employment growth in the low-paid sectors of retail and hospitality is fading, but higher-paid knowledge work is in demand. Even if the rate of U.S. job growth is slowing this year, there’s encouraging news hidden in that overall number. A large chunk of the deceleration is attributable to a near halt in the growth of lower-paid jobs, ...

A personal saving rate of 8.1% shows that if the economy turns south, Americans have room to spend more. With markets focused on rate cuts from the Federal Reserve and what sorts of policy levers might be used in a downturn, we got good news this week in learning that Americans’ personal saving rate is higher than previously thought. Should ...

Finally. Soon many of the world's laggards can enjoy faster growth. China and the U.S. gave signs over the weekend that they've agreed to a truce on trade, if not a deal – which sounds encouraging and may in fact set into motion a series of events that turn out to be a bottom for this phase of the trade war. This could happen because ...

Emerging markets are pinched enough. The Fed is choosing to sacrifice some domestic growth to prevent a global crisis. Politicians and pundits spend lots of time talking about how to generate faster economic growth in the U.S. But the Federal Reserve’s actions this week and the past six months show that it is quietly responding to global ...

The anxiety might feel familiar, but the threat this time comes from tariffs, not excess investment in any sector. This moment’s anxiety may remind investors of the 2001 and 2008 recessions, as markets have now priced in two rate cuts by the end of the year. But this is not the last war, when recession brought investment busts and ...

Coming of age in a world full of "Now Hiring" signs, today's youngest voters could view capitalism much more fondly. The 2020 election will be the first one in which members of Generation Z are casting their vote for president, with candidates sure to be flocking to college campuses soliciting their votes. For now, polling suggests Gen Z, ...

Congress and the White House would not thank the central bank for that. Federal Reserve watchers have spent the better part of a decade arguing about what policy normalization should look like. Last week, in response to events over the past few months, the Fed declared monetary policy more or less normalized. With the Fed seemingly out of ...

The biggest gains are going to less educated workers, because there are fewer of them with each passing year. The perks and costs of strong economic growth don’t fall equally on all Americans.Friday’s jobs report showed that the GDP growth of recent quarters continues to benefit workers, with the highest wage growth reported during this ...

The U.S. can’t reprise the last downturn: This time there are strict lending standards and tight housing stock. Housing market softness in the back half of 2018 has investors and the public wondering how bad things might get. It’s understandable that people would be worried, considering that the last housing downturn led to the worst ...

Tax cuts this year were intended to benefit the wealthy and investorsbut instead jump-started wage growth. Tax reform early this year was expected to bring a windfall to corporations and the wealthy, but we’re finding instead that 2018 has been great for workers and, on some measures, the worst year for investors in decades. While it may be a ...