Aurelia Butler

Compared with February 2020, Arizona has added the most nonfarm jobs on its payrolls, followed by Florida, Utah, Wisconsin and Oregon, according to December data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In an additional 20 states, plus the District of Columbia, payrolls are within 50,000 jobs of recovering.The remaining states are collectively missing about 3.5 million jobs, concentrated in three of the most populous states — California, New York and Pennsylvania — as well as Michigan. California alone is about 750,000 below its pre-Covid level.The data show how uneven the recovery has been in the labor market, with most missing jobs located on the coasts.Population growth and pandemic migration help explain why. Prediction data from BLS show that a net 8,600 people over 16 left New York state every month over the last 22 months. By contrast, the population grew in Texas, Florida, and Arizona. The net gain in Texas equates to more than 950 people per day during the period.©2022 Bloomberg L.P. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An escalated conflict between Russia and Ukraine would likely further increase energy costs and commodities prices for many countries, keeping headline inflation rates elevated for longer, a top International Monetary Fund official said on Tuesday.First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath told Reuters the situation now was far different than in 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine, and energy prices fell quite sharply amid low demand and ample shale gas supplies.”This time around … if this conflict were to happen, you would see an increase in energy prices,” Gopinath told Reuters in an interview, noting the current crisis was unfolding in winter and natural gas reserves were much lower in Europe.Prices of other commodities exported by Russia were also rising, and could trigger a “bigger, broad-based increase” in commodities prices if the conflict ratcheted up, she told Reuters after the release of the global lender’s updated World Economic Outlook.Russia’s economy contracted by 3.7% in 2015 due to falling oil prices and international sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea. The IMF currently estimates that Russia’s economy will grow 2.8% in 2022, but that forecast does not include concerns about the conflict, Gopinath said.Gopinath told a news conference earlier that an escalation of the conflict and potential Western sanctions on Russia would likely push oil and natural gas prices higher, driving energy costs higher for many countries in the world.That meant headline inflation, already at extremely high levels across the globe, could stay “much more elevated for longer,” she said.That in turn, she told Reuters, could prolong “very high inflation numbers” and raised the risk that they could get entrenched and start feeding into wage-price spirals.Such a conflict would also have an impact on the Russian stock market and the Russian currency, the rouble, she said, adding that IMF officials still hoped for a peaceful resolution.The IMF on Tuesday revised up its 2022 inflation forecasts for both advanced and developing economies, and said elevated price pressures were likely to persist longer than previously forecast, but said prices should subside in 2023 as growth in fuel and food prices moderated. More

Firms signed up for $11.8 billion in new loans, leases and lines of credit last month, compared with $12.1 billion a year earlier. Borrowings, however, rose 49% from November.”The outlook for the industry, and indeed overall economy, is somewhat cloudy, with unabated inflation, the Fed poised to increase interest rates, equities markets in a recent tailspin,” ELFA Chief Executive Officer Ralph Petta said in a statement, adding that the Omicron coronavirus variant remains a concern in the United States.ELFA, which reports economic activity for the nearly $1-trillion equipment finance sector, said credit approvals totaled 78.6%, down from 77.2% in November.The Washington-based body’s leasing and finance index measures the volume of commercial equipment financed in the United States.The index is based on a survey of 25 members, including Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC), CIT Group (NYSE:CIT) Inc and financing affiliates or units of Caterpillar Inc (NYSE:CAT), Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) Inc, Siemens AG (OTC:SIEGY), Canon Inc and Volvo AB (OTC:VLVLY).The Equipment Leasing & Finance Foundation, ELFA’s non-profit affiliate, said its confidence index for January was at 63.9%, unchanged from December. A reading above 50 indicates a positive business outlook. More