U.S. consumer prices soared 6.2 percent in past year, most since 1990

Prices for U.S. consumers jumped 6.2 percent in October compared with a year earlier as surging costs for food, gas and housing left Americans grappling with the highest inflation rate since 1990.

The year-over-year increase in the consumer price index exceeded the 5.4 percent rise in September, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. From September to October, prices jumped 0.9 percent, the highest month-over-month increase since June.

Inflation is eroding the strong gains in wages and salaries that have flowed to America’s workers in recent months, creating political headaches for the Biden administration and congressional Democrats and intensifying pressure on the Federal Reserve as it considers how fast to withdraw its efforts to boost the economy.

Job gains and pay raises have been much healthier during the pandemic recovery than they were after the Great Recession roughly a decade ago. But in contrast to the years that followed that downturn, inflation is now accelerating and diminishing Americans’ confidence in the economy, surveys have found.

Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, so-called core prices rose 0.6% in from September to October. Core prices are now up 4.6 percent compared with a year ago.

Energy costs soared 4.8 percent just from September to October, with gasoline, natural gas and heating oil surging for the same reason that many other commodities have grown more expensive: Demand has risen sharply as Americans are driving and flying more, but supplies haven’t kept up.

Economists still expect inflation to slow once supply bottlenecks are cleared and Americans shift more of their consumption back to pre-pandemic norms. As COVID-19 fades, consumers should spend more on travel, entertainment and other services and less on goods such as cars, furniture, and appliances, which would reduce pressure on supply chains.

But no one knows how long that might take. Higher inflation has persisted much longer than most economists had expected. And inflation is spreading well beyond items like appliances and new and used vehicles that are directly affected by the pandemic.

“The inflation overshoot will likely get worse before it gets better,” said Goldman Sachs economists in a research note Sunday.

For months, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell had described inflation as “transitory,” a short-term phenomenon linked to labor and supply shortages resulting from the speed with which the economy rebounded from the pandemic recession. But last week, Powell acknowledged that higher prices could last well into next summer.

The Fed chair announced that the central bank will start reducing the monthly bond purchases it began last year as an emergency measure to boost the economy. Investors now expect the Fed to raise its benchmark interest rate twice next year from its record-low level near zero — much earlier than they had predicted a few months ago.

Many large companies are passing on the cost of higher pay to their customers, and in some cases, consumers are paying up rather than cutting back.

To attract workers, for example, McDonald’s boosted hourly pay 10 percent to 15 percent over the past year. To help cover those higher labor costs as well as more expensive food and paper, the company said last month that it raised prices 6 percent in the July-September quarter from a year earlier. Yet even so, company sales leapt 14 percent as virus restrictions eased.

Other companies have been more cautious. One of them, Wayfair, an online furniture retailer, said last week that its costs are rising as factories in Asia have shut down amid COVID outbreaks, ports are jammed, and labor costs have surged. But the company isn’t necessarily passing along all those higher costs.

“We are in a mass-oriented business where the average customer does not have an unlimited discretionary budget,” said Michael Fleisher, Wayfair’s chief financial officer. “Inflation is rampant across the economy, and there are competing demands for their time and wallet share.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/10/consumer-prices-soar-520574
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Climate on track to devastate world’s poorest economies: Study

Some 65 nations will see GDP drop 20 percent by 2050 if temperatures rise, new report released at COP26 says.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/8/climate-on-track-to-devastate-worlds-poorest-economies-study
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U.S. hiring rebounded in October, with 531,000 jobs added

America’s employers stepped up their hiring in October, adding a solid 531,000 jobs, the most since July and a sign that the recovery from the pandemic recession may be overcoming a virus-induced slowdown.

Friday’s report from the Labor Department also showed that the unemployment rate fell to 4.6 percent last month, from 4.8 percent in September. That is a comparatively low level but still well above the pre-pandemic jobless rate of 3.5 percent.

The economy’s emergence from the pandemic, by most measures, remains on course. Services companies in such areas as retail, banks and warehousing have reported a sharp jump in sales. More Americans bought new homes last month. And consumer confidence rose in October.

Still, the recovery would gain strength from a sustained acceleration in hiring. The economy grew at a healthy 6.5 percent annual rate in the first half of the year as vaccinations spread and Americans showed themselves more willing to travel, shop, eat out and attend entertainment events. Yet the delta variant held economic growth in the July-September quarter to just a 2 percent annual rate and sharply slowed hiring.

Recent economic gauges have cast a hopeful picture. After several rounds of stimulus checks and other government support payments, Americans as a whole have amassed about $2.5 trillion more in savings than they had before the pandemic. As that money is spent, it will likely fuel further economic activity.

The Conference Board, a business research group, said that in its October consumer confidence survey, the proportion of Americans who said they planned to buy cars, homes or major appliances all rose. And nearly half the survey respondents said they planned to vacation in the next six months — the highest such proportion since February 2020, before COVID-19 ripped through the economy.

Yet some companies say they still can’t find enough workers to fill jobs. Many parents, particularly mothers, haven’t returned to the workforce after having left jobs during the pandemic to care for children or other relatives. Defying the predictions of some, the expiration of a $300-a-week federal unemployment supplement hasn’t caused more people to look for work. Roughly 5 million fewer people have jobs now than did before the pandemic.

Most economists say they’re hopeful that with vaccinations helping to suppress the delta wave, more people will seek and find jobs because they’re no longer sick or caring for someone who is or because they no longer fear becoming infected. Those health issues had sidelined more people in September than in previous months.

America’s workers, who now enjoy greater leverage in the job market than they have in decades, are receiving solid pay increases. The draw of higher income could entice more people to come off the sidelines and look for work again. Wages and salaries in the July-September quarter, compared with a year earlier, jumped by the most in 20 years. Most of that gain, though, went to already employed people who left their jobs: The number of people who quit, mostly to take new positions, has reached a record high.

Rising inflation, though, has eroded much of the value of those pay increases and has become the most serious headwind for the U.S. economy. Higher costs for food, heating oil, rents and furniture have burdened millions of families. Prices rose 4.4 percent in September compared with 12 months earlier, the sharpest such increase in three decades.

That inflation surge was a key reason why the Federal Reserve announced this week that it would begin winding down the stimulus it has given the economy since the pandemic recession struck last year. The Fed will do so by reducing its monthly bond purchases, which have been intended to hold down long-term interest rates to spur borrowing and spending.

Chair Jerome Powell suggested that it won’t be possible to gain a clear picture of the job market’s health until the impact of COVID-19 declines further, which could take months.

Yet in the meantime, there are plenty of signs that the economy is healing: The number of people applying for first-time unemployment benefits fell for a fifth straight week, to a level nearly as low as the pace of jobless claims before the pandemic struck 20 months ago.

And while hiring has slowed for now, consumers as a whole have solid financial cushions. After several rounds of stimulus checks and other government support payments, Americans overall have amassed about $2.5 trillion more in savings than they had before the pandemic. As that money is spent, it will likely fuel further economic activity.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/05/hiring-october-rebound-519678
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US Congress passes $1 trillion infrastructure bill

Package will fund the biggest upgrade of America’s roads, railways and other transportation infrastructure in decades.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/6/update-10-u-s-democrats-pass-1-trln-infrastructure-bill-ending-daylong-standoff
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New York City aiding taxi drivers after hunger strike

After New York City taxi taxi drivers staged a hunger strike demanding the city gaurantee their loans, officials announced an expanded deal Wednesday to help drivers crippled by debt.The deal involved the Taxi Work…

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/580013-new-york-city-aiding-taxi-drivers-after-hunger-strike
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Federal Reserve set to announce start of its withdrawal of emergency support for the economy

When the Federal Reserve wraps up its meeting today, the central bank is expected to announce that it will begin to wind down one of its biggest and most

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/federal-reserve-set-announce-withdrawal-emergency-support-economy-rcna4423
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School cafeterias forced to scramble amid supply chain woes

The supply chain shortages hitting the entire country are leaving school cafeterias short of items from utensils to syrup packets.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/supply-chain-woes-hit-school-cafeterias-leaving-administrators-scrambling-make-n1281560
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Teaganne Finn

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The ABCs of Big Oil: How Big Oil Killed Our Political Imagination

On The ABCs of Big Oil, a new podcast miniseries produced in collaboration with Drilled, my co-host Amy Westervelt and I have been exploring the oil and gas industry’s infiltration of grade school curricula to promote the false idea that humanity needs fossil-fueled capitalism to survive. This week, we’re moving on up…

Read more…

Source: https://gizmodo.com/the-abcs-of-big-oil-how-big-oil-killed-our-political-i-1847868351
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New bipartisan bill to counter China’s economic coercion

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has announced a new bill that would establish an interagency task force to craft a response to China’s use of economic measures to further its geopolitical goals.

Why it matters: The draft bill represents growing awareness in the U.S. that economic coercion is a cornerstone of the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to project authoritarianism beyond its borders.

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• The bill, spearheaded by Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, and Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), also underscores deepening bipartisan agreement that China is America’s top foreign policy challenge.

Details: The bill lists numerous examples of China’s economic coercion, including:

• Its block on Norwegian salmon imports after a Chinese dissident lawyer received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.
• Restricting Chinese tourism to South Korea after Seoul deployed a U.S. missile defense system.
• China’s tariffs on Australian barley and wine after the Australian prime minister called for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

The task force would include appointments from within the Departments of Justice, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, and State, as well as the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, and consult with the private sector, industry groups, and NGOs.

• It would be required to submit a report of its findings, including an analysis of the tools the Chinese government uses to conduct economic coercion, and a list of recommendations on how the U.S. should push back.

What they’re saying: “The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) increasing use of economic coercion against foreign governments, companies, organizations, other entities, and individuals requires that the United States better understand these measures in order to devise a comprehensive, effective, and multilateral response,” the bill states.

• “PRC coercive economic measures [create] pressures for the private sector to behave in ways antithetical to United States national interests and competitiveness.”

Between the lines: It’s a thorny issue for liberal democracies to formulate policies to counter the Chinese government’s use of trade ties and economic dependencies to push its security and political objectives.

• Liberal political and economic systems are designed to give businesses the freedom to make their own commercial decisions, often making it difficult to regulate the behavior of firms.
• Many industries are heavily dependent on China for resources, manufacturing, or markets, and don’t want to be caught between rival superpowers.

Go deeper:

• Read the bill
• Global capitalism abets China’s repression

Source: https://www.axios.com/china-economic-coercion-democrats-legislation-49461c1d-a64a-4783-b6d6-6e281394a24d.html
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White House vows to treat climate change as “systemic” financial risk

A new White House report released Friday morning says climate change poses “systemic risks” to the U.S. financial system, and presents a “roadmap” to building a “climate-resilient” economy.

Why it matters: Top aides emphasized that framing to promote wide-ranging moves that will weave climate risk into many agencies’ new policies and regulations.

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Driving the news: The roadmap describes a series of existing and upcoming efforts, including …

• White House plans to consider the effects of climate change in long term budget forecasts.
• Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to weave climate risks into federally insured or guaranteed mortgages.
• Federal Emergency Management Agency plans to revise building standards in flood zones.
• Labor Department plans to ensure retirement fund managers can weigh climate change in investment decisions, reversing Trump-era policies.

The big picture: The report asserts that “U.S. financial markets and institutions face systemic risks from climate change.” Senior officials called the conclusion significant.

• “That term, systemic risk, carries a lot of weight,” Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director at the National Economic Council, told reporters Thursday night.
• “Its inclusion in this roadmap reflects our belief that because many financial models and investment portfolios still rely on out of date assumptions of climatic stability, climate change is already creating severe disruptions to our economic and financial system,” he said.

What we’re watching: The report is among multiple analyses and strategy documents called for under a May executive order on climate-related financial risk.

• A separate strategy later this year is expected to focus more heavily on federal oversight of how banks and other financial institutions address the topic.
• The May order tasks the Treasury Department, as head of the multi-agency Financial Stability Oversight Council, with crafting analysis on improving risk disclosures and stitching climate-related financial risks into regulation and supervision.

Source: https://www.axios.com/white-house-climate-change-systemic-risk-finance-caeac699-4f8d-460f-8d0f-d5ab691db1db.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Ben Geman

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Mustang GT sits atop the American-made auto index

Researchers at the Kogod School of Business have released the 2021 version of the American Auto Index. The American Auto Index looks at which vehicles sold in the US have the most domestic content in their construction. Sitting at the top of last year’s list was the Ford Ranger. The Ford Ranger is no longer at the top of the … Continue reading

Source: https://www.slashgear.com/mustang-gt-sits-atop-the-american-made-auto-index-15695305/
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U.S. unemployment claims fall to lowest level since pandemic

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell to its lowest level since the pandemic began, a sign the job market is still improving even as hiring has slowed in the past two months.

Unemployment claims dropped 36,000 to 293,000 last week, the second straight drop, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s the smallest number of people to apply for benefits since the week of March 14, 2020, when the pandemic intensified, and the first time claims have dipped below 300,000. Applications for jobless aid, which generally track the pace of layoffs, have fallen steadily since last spring as many businesses, struggling to fill jobs, have held onto their workers.

The decline in layoffs comes amid an otherwise unusual job market. Hiring has slowed in the past two months, even as companies and other employers have posted a near-record number of open jobs. Businesses are struggling to find workers as about three million people who lost jobs and stopped looking for work since the pandemic have yet to resume their job searches. Economists hoped more people would find work in September as schools reopened, easing child care constraints, and enhanced unemployment aid ended nationwide.

But the pickup didn’t happen, with employers adding just 194,000 jobs last month. In a bright spot, the unemployment rate fell to 4.8 percent from 5.2 percent, though some of that decline occurred because many of those out of work stopped searching for jobs, and were no longer counted as unemployed. The proportion of women working or looking for work fell in September, likely because of difficulties finding child care or because of schools disrupted by Covid-19 outbreaks.

At the same time, Americans are quitting their jobs in record numbers, with about 3 percent of workers doing so in August. Workers have been particularly likely to leave their jobs at restaurants, bars, and hotels, possibly spurred by fear of the delta variant of Covid-19, which was still spreading rapidly in August.

Other workers likely quit to take advantage of higher wages offered by businesses with open positions. Average hourly pay rose at a healthy 4.6 percent in September from a year earlier, and for restaurant workers wage gains in the past year have topped 10 percent.

The number of people continuing to receive unemployment aid has also fallen sharply, mostly as two emergency jobless aid programs have ended. In the week ending Sept. 25, the latest data available, 3.6 million people received some sort of jobless aid, down sharply from 4.2 million in the previous week. A year ago, nearly 25 million people were receiving benefits.

The emergency programs provided unemployment payments for the first time to the self-employed and gig workers, and those who were out of work for more than six months. More than 7 million Americans lost weekly financial support when those two programs expired Sept. 6. An extra $300 in federal jobless aid also expired that week.

Many business executives and Republican politicians said the extra $300 was discouraging those out of work from taking jobs. Yet in about half the states, the additional checks were cutoff as early as mid-June, and those states have not seen faster job growth than states that kept the benefits.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/14/unemployment-claims-lowest-level-515984
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Sanders blaming spending bill delay on corporate lobbying

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday said that efforts to finalize and vote on a roughly $3.5 trillion dollar Democratic spending bill is being delayed because of corporate lobbying.In a new …

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/576595-sanders-blaming-spending-bill-delay-on-corporate-lobbying
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Social Security checks to rise 5.9 percent, most in decades

About 64 million people who receive Social Security benefits will begin to receive a bigger check from the federal government in January.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/social-security-checks-going-5-9-percent-highest-increase-decades-n1281414
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Walmart, FedEx, UPS will move to operate ’24/7′ to ease supply chain bottlenecks, WH says

Backups at key U.S. ports in California have doubled the time it takes for some products to arrive from Asia. Biden’s administration promises a “90-day sprint.”

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/white-house-announce-walmart-fedex-ups-will-increase-services-help-n1281387
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White House scrambles to address looming Christmas crisis

President Joe Biden is rushing to relieve congestion across the nation’s complex shipping supply chain as it threatens to disrupt the holiday season for millions of Americans.

With just over 10 weeks until Christmas, the White House is leaning heavily on port operators, transportation companies and labor unions to work around the clock unloading ships and hauling cargo to warehouses around the country. Biden will meet virtually Wednesday with industry leaders before delivering a speech on the administration’s efforts to address the bottlenecks.

The supply-chain mess risks creating new economic and political turbulence for Biden in the coming months. Empty store shelves could undermine the administration’s economic recovery plans and weigh on consumer confidence. And memories of a disappointing Christmas could linger into 2022, with supply-chain problems expected to last much longer than many officials and economists expected just a few months ago.

There’s a growing fear among retailers that Washington’s efforts can do little at this point to save the all-important holiday shopping season.

“There’s no political intervention that’s going to get this done, and there may not be a human intervention that gets this done because this issue is now going to last well into next year,” said Steve Pasierb, the president and chief executive of the Toy Association.

To date, the Biden administration has put much of the onus on the private sector to fix the snarls, despite calls from some industry groups to marshal more federal resources. Senior administration officials say the government has limited oversight of ports and shipping companies. Instead, it has used its heft to convene players throughout the supply chain and put pressure on them to expand their operating hours.

“The supply chain is essentially in the hands of the private sector, so we need the private sector to step up to help solve these problems,” a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the White House will announce that the Port of Los Angeles will remain open 24/7, moving to a schedule that the Port of Long Beach adopted three weeks ago. Together, those California ports have the worst backlog in the country, with 80 ships waiting to dock as of Tuesday night, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California.

FedEx, UPS, Walmart, Samsung, Target and Home Depot will also begin sending drivers to ports during night shifts and for longer hours to transport more shipping containers each week. Labor unions attending the White House gathering will commit to providing the necessary workers.

Administration officials acknowledge those steps alone won’t clear the backlog, which has only continued to grow over the past several months. They’re hoping Wednesday’s announcements will prompt additional retailers, long-haul trucking firms and train operators to act until the entire supply chain is working nonstop.

“By taking these steps, they’re saying to the rest of the supply chain: ‘You need to move, too. Let’s step it up,’” the official said.

Industry groups want to see the administration do its own stepping up. Some have suggested shipping containers be temporarily moved off docks and onto federal or state land so ships can unload faster, while others have called for military resources and defense funding to be brought to bear.

The challenges stressing global supply chains have been months, if not years, in the making. The pandemic created a staggering surge in demand for consumer products. What’s more, factories and ports in Asia have experienced temporary closures due to Covid-19 outbreaks, extreme weather and electricity outages in China, all of which contribute to shipping delays, product shortages and higher costs.

It’s not that less cargo is moving. In fact, ports are processing record levels of imports, and the cost of shipping containers has skyrocketed to unprecedented heights in recent months due to demand. The supply chain simply cannot keep pace with the elevated demand for goods — and industry players expect that strain to persist.

In August, the administration tapped John Porcari, a former deputy secretary of transportation, for a six-month post tasked with alleviating congestion at ports — a key choke point in the supply chain. Porcari’s job is to “knock the heads and get the immediate backlogs cleared up,” as the White House’s senior director for international economics and competitiveness, Peter Harrell, put it.

But Porcari’s primary recourse has been to call meetings with companies at different steps along the shipping process and encourage them to extend their hours and share information about obstacles.

Those calls are happening frequently. Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, is on the phone with administration officials multiple times per day, he said, providing status updates on the port’s operations and coordinating on new White House initiatives with others in the supply chain.

“Everything we’ve done is incremental,” Seroka said, but those small changes are yielding results, such as reducing the amount of time cargo sits before being taken away on trains.

Porcari is working under the Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force that Biden established in June. That group has been looking for short-term solutions to ease the strain. But the summer start date left little time to do much before the busy season for holiday shipments started in earnest in September.

In the meantime, large retailers like Costco, Walmart, Amazon and Home Depot are chasing their own workarounds. Seroka said some companies placed holiday orders early in anticipation of delays and dispatched regional delivery drivers to transport cargo away from the ports. Others have chartered vessels to transport their own shipping containers or re-routed their deliveries to ports outside California to reduce delays.

“The larger companies have more leverage and flexibility to do more within their supply chain than smaller companies do, so you’re certainly seeing a variety of impacts on companies across the board,” said Jonathan Gold, the National Retail Federation’s vice president of supply chain and customs policy.

Independent analysts predict the crunch will last well into the future, forcing the administration to work on long-term solutions as well.

“We might not be able to achieve short-term solutions right now, but focusing on it now so we don’t run into these kinds of issues in the future is critical,” Gold said.

The Biden administration has highlighted the bipartisan infrastructure package, which contains more than $200 billion in new spending for transportation upgrades to ports, airports, railways, roads and bridges.

The package enjoys widespread support from industry groups who say U.S. systems have fallen behind rival economies. China, for instance, has invested incredible sums in its own infrastructure in recent decades and continues to do so. But even if the legislation wins House approval and lands on Biden’s desk before year’s end, it won’t help companies weather the current crisis.

“That’s kind of like planting an orchard to deal with hunger today,” said Steve Lamar, CEO of the American Apparel & Footwear Association, whose members heavily rely on deliveries from Asia.

Biden also signed an executive order in July targeting consolidation in the shipping container industry, which he said has harmed American exporters. It instructed the Federal Maritime Commission, an independent federal agency that regulates ocean transportation, to prevent shippers from imposing excessive charges. The order also asked the commission to probe competition concerns in coordination with antitrust authorities.

Dan Maffei, chair of the Federal Maritime Commission, acknowledges that investigations into excessive fees and market consolidation aren’t solutions to the holiday crunch, either. Maffei said he is sympathetic to the plight of parents as the father of a 7-year-old child, but he expects they can find alternatives even if stores sell out of the hottest toys.

“The bottom line is that there are challenges — because of the demand, because of the systemic issues — that affect the supply chain,” Maffei said. “They are not going to cancel Christmas but are maybe going to make it so that you can’t get the exact toy you want for your kids.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/13/supply-chain-christmas-crisis-515874
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Steven Overly

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The pandemic is causing labor, product and service shortages

Whatever it is you might want or need — at work, at play or at home — you’re going to have to wait.

Why it matters: There is simply no escaping the complex web of labor, product and service shortages unleashed by the pandemic, and this era of disruption is nowhere close to ending.

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The big picture: The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson put it well: “This is the Everything Shortage.”

Jobs are going unfilled: Storefronts and restaurant windows across the country are still full of “help wanted” signs, often for multiple positions.

• And workers across almost every industry are still feeling the effects of spending more than a year at home, often with kids also stuck at home, as Zoom and Slack obliterated what was left of a line between work and life.

Getting away is not much easier, though. You can forget about a quick, affordable weekend to unplug, unless you want to plan it a year in advance.

• One Axios editor’s recent efforts to find a decent Airbnb within a few hours’ drive of Washington, D.C. yielded only a $3,000 per night mansion or a nicer-than-average tent that may or may not have had access to a bathroom.
• A shortage of rental cars has also made longer trips unaffordable. As individual car owners try to fill the void by renting out their personal vehicles, it can now cost the same amount to rent a Ford Fiesta from a rental agency as it does to rent a Maserati from a guy who owns a Maserati.

Everyday necessities are facing their own daunting supply-chain issues.

• COVID outbreaks have swept through factories all across Southeast Asia, slowing down production of clothes, shoes, electronics and furniture.
• And by the time those goods reach the U.S., it can take weeks for ships to be unloaded at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports before waiting — again — for truck drivers to move deliveries to warehouses, sorting centers and final destinations.

Home improvement projects might theoretically be a nice alternative to a vacation, but they’ll be even more stressful than usual right now.

• Would-be customers are running into shortages of large appliances as well as long waits for repairs. In the market for a new mattress? Some of the nicer ones are backordered until spring of 2022 — and the ones that are available now are significantly marked up.
• Earlier in the pandemic, skyrocketing lumber prices and surging demand made it hard for all but the wealthiest and most patient Americans to fix up the home that was now their office or the backyard that became their only safe place to socialize.

What’s next: These same supply-chain issues will wreak even more havoc at the holidays. Travel is still likely to be significantly disrupted, and analysts are also anticipating a shortage of both children’s toys and Thanksgiving turkeys.

Source: https://www.axios.com/shortages-delays-clothing-furtinutre-everything-c52da05c-314c-4a3a-895d-b518a862135c.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Sam Baker

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U.S. employers add a weak 194,000 jobs as Delta maintains hold

U.S. employers added just 194,000 jobs in September, a second straight tepid gain and evidence that the pandemic still has a grip on the economy with many companies struggling to fill millions of open jobs.

Friday’s report from the Labor Department also showed that the unemployment rate fell sharply to 4.8 percent from 5.2 percent in August.

The economy is showing some signs of emerging from the drag of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, with confirmed new Covid-19 infections declining, restaurant traffic picking up slightly and consumers eager to spend.

But new infections remained high as September began, and employers are still struggling to find workers because many people who lost jobs in the pandemic have yet to start looking again. Supply chain bottlenecks have also worsened, slowing factories, restraining homebuilders and emptying some store shelves.

Many economists still think that most of the roughly 3 million people who lost jobs and stopped looking for work since the pandemic struck will resume their searches as Covid wanes. It took years after the 2008-2009 recession, they note, for the proportion of people working or seeking work to return to pre-recession levels. The government doesn’t count people as unemployed unless they’re actively looking for jobs.

Some of the factors that have kept many jobless people on the sidelines may be starting to ease. According to a survey by the Census Bureau, for example, the number of people who aren’t working because they must stay home to care for a child declined by half in September compared with June. That figure had barely dropped last fall, when many schools remained closed and conducted virtual learning. The new census figures suggest that more parents, particularly mothers, might have rejoined the workforce last month as the school year began and their children returned to school.

In addition, an August survey by the job listings website Indeed found that the proportion of unemployed Americans who said they’d like to find a job once the school year began had more than doubled from just two months earlier.

Yet there are also signs that it might be too soon to expect a flood of parents to have rejoined the labor market. Lael Brainard, a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, noted in a recent speech that Covid-19 outbreaks in late September caused 2,000 schools to close for an average of six days in 39 states.

Several enhanced unemployment benefits ended in early September, including a $300-a-week federal supplement as well as programs that, for the first time, covered gig workers and people who were jobless for six months or more. So far, the ending of those programs appears to have had only a small effect on the number of people seeking work.

Governors in about 25 states ended the $300 benefit before the nationwide expiration in September. Research by economists at Goldman Sachs found that unemployed people who were looking for work were much more likely to take jobs when their benefits ended. But the early cut-offs did not cause people on the sidelines to start searching again, Goldman concluded.

Another reason workers are scarce is a surge in retirements among older, more affluent workers whose home equity and stock portfolios have surged since the pandemic struck and who have managed to build up savings. Goldman Sachs estimates that about 1.5 million people have retired who wouldn’t have before the pandemic upended the economy. Many of these people will likely stay retired, economists expect.

In the meantime, fear of Covid continues to keep some would-be job seekers on the sidelines, notably those who previously worked in public-facing service jobs at restaurants, bars, hotels and retailers.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/08/september-jobs-report-gains-515662
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Associated Press

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What’s behind the rising energy prices

Energy prices are climbing around the world amid a perfect storm of extreme weather, rising power demand, and supply constraints. It’s roiling markets overseas, with China and India facing electricity crises while a dozen power companies in the U.K. have gone belly-up.

Driving the news: Oil prices jumped again Monday after OPEC decided not to boost production beyond the modest increase that it had previously outlined.

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• Prices for both oil and natural gas have roughly doubled over the last year, and gasoline at U.S. pumps is up by about 50% on average.

Why it matters: Commodities like oil and gas operate in global markets, so the U.S. isn’t immune to the effects of rising prices.

• Just look at the Consumer Price Index, one major gauge of inflation — its latest reading in September showed energy costs up 25% compared to a year ago.

The big picture: Higher energy costs impact our economic recovery. Every dollar that goes to electric and heating bills is a dollar that isn’t spent on holiday shopping or going out to eat.

• And prices may go up further this winter. Bank of America analysts estimate Brent crude oil could hit $100 per barrel — a price not seen since 2014.

What happened: The current price trajectory is the result of supply moderating while demand heads skyward, Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust, tells Axios.

• On the demand side, the reopening of the global economy over the last year sent energy needs up around the world, he says.
• High demand led to natural gas shortages in Europe and China. That prompted some power companies to swap gas for oil — pushing up prices of both.

The supply side is more complicated.

• For one, oil production dropped off at the start of the pandemic when demand cratered for everything from airplane fuel to gasoline. U.S. independent producers are far more cautious about cranking the spigot open every time prices inch up, thanks to a recent wave of bankruptcies and investors demanding more focus on returns.
• OPEC isn’t raising supply significantly, in a bid to keep prices at profitable levels.
• And production has been more constrained because the world’s largest economies have made transitioning to more renewable power a top priority, says Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Hermes.

The impact: “All of those different moving pieces took U.S. energy production down by about 2 million barrels a day over the course of the last year, at a time when demand has surged based on the global reopening trade,” Orlando adds.

• Be smart: The climate-related pullback in production is driven by investors in energy companies, as well as public sentiment, as much as it is by governments.

Our thought bubble, via Felix Salmon: The effect of oil companies refusing to raise output in response to higher demand is functionally identical to the effect of a carbon tax. The longer fossil fuels remain pricey, the more attractive the development of renewable alternatives will be.

Source: https://www.axios.com/energy-prices-rising-crisis-fd8ce2f0-53d6-43b9-8ff8-93107e109722.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Kate Marino

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In deep red West Virginia, Biden’s $3.5tn spending proposal is immensely popular

Working-class people – even Trump voters – understand the Build Back Better plan will benefit them

Elizabeth Masters isn’t a natural Joe Biden supporter. A self-described conservative who lives in Parkersburg, in deeply Republican West Virginia, she said she registered to vote in the last election so she could cast a ballot for Donald Trump.

Masters says she doesn’t approve when people “just stand for a handout” – she doesn’t think the United States should be spending money on undocumented immigrants, for example – but says anything that will “help people that are trying to do for themselves, I’m all for it”.

Continue reading…

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/28/west-virginia-joe-biden-spending-plan-popular
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Zack Harold

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