Evelyn Reynolds

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    How the Jackson Hole Conference Became an Economic Obsession

    Investors and economists are watching the event this week closely. How did a remote Wyoming conference become so central?Filmmakers have Cannes. Billionaires have Davos. Economists? They have Jackson Hole.The world’s most exclusive economic get-together takes place this week in the valley at the base of the Teton mountains, in a lodge that is a scenic 34 miles from Jackson, Wyo.Here, in a western-chic hotel that was donated to the national park that surrounds it by a member of the Rockefeller family, about 120 economists descend late each August to discuss a set of curated papers centered on a policy-relevant theme. Top officials from around the world can often be found gazing out the lobby’s floor-to-ceiling windows — likely hoping for a moose sighting — or debating the merits of a given inflation model over huckleberry cocktails.This shindig, while a nerdy one, has become a key focus of Wall Street investors, academics and the press. The conference’s host, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, seems to know a thing or two about the laws of supply and demand: It invites way fewer people than would like to attend, which only serves to bid up its prestige. But even more critically, Jackson Hole tends to generate big news.The most hotly anticipated event is a speech by the Fed chair that typically takes place on Friday morning and is often used as a chance for the central bank to send a signal about policy. Jerome H. Powell, the current Fed head, has made headlines with each and every one of his Jackson Hole speeches, which has investors waiting anxiously for this year’s. It is the only part of the closed-door conference that is broadcast to the public.Mr. Powell will be speaking at a moment when the Fed’s next moves are uncertain as inflation moderates but the economy retains a surprising amount of momentum. Wall Street is trying to figure out whether Fed officials think that they need to raise interest rates more this year, and if so, whether that move is likely to come in September. So far, policymakers have given little clear signal about their plans. They have lifted interest rates to 5.25 to 5.5 percent from near zero in March 2022, and have left their options open to do more.People will pay close attention to Mr. Powell’s speech, but “I think it’s about the tone,” said Seth Carpenter, a former Fed economist who is now at Morgan Stanley. “What I don’t think he wants to do is signal or commit to any near-term policy moves.”For all of its modern renown, the Jackson Hole conference, set for Thursday night to Saturday, has not always been the talk of the town in Washington and New York. Here’s how it became what it is today.It’s set in the formerly wild West.Jackson used to play host to a very different cast of characters: The town was once so remote that it was a go-to hideaway for outlaws.In 1920, when Jackson’s population was about 300, The New York Times harked back to a not-so-distant era when “whenever a serious crime was committed between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast, it was pretty safe to guess that the man responsible for it was either headed for Jackson’s Hole or already had reached it.”Jackson’s seclusion also meant that the area’s towering, craggy mountains and rolling valley remained pristine, making it prime territory for conservationists. The financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. stealthily acquired and then donated much of the land that would eventually become the Jackson Hole section of Grand Teton National Park. And around 1950, he began to construct the Jackson Lake Lodge.The lodge’s modern architecture was not initially beloved by the locals. (“‘A slab-sided, concrete abomination’ is one of the milder epithets tossed at the massive structure,” The Times quipped in 1955.) Among other complaints, Rockefeller’s donation to the park lacked resort perks: no golf course, no spa.But by 1982, its ample space and sweeping vistas had caught the eye of the Kansas City Fed, which was looking for a new location for a conference it had begun to hold in 1978.The gathering has happened there since 1982.The Jackson Lake Lodge was built by the financier John D. Rockefeller Jr. on land he had donated to Grand Teton National Park.David Paul Morris/BloombergHigh on its list of charms, the Jackson Lake Lodge was close to excellent fly fishing — a surefire way to appeal to the Fed chair at the time, Paul A. Volcker. He came, and between the A-list attendees and the location’s natural beauty, Jackson Hole quickly became the Fed event of the year.“About one-half of the 137 people invited this year attended, a remarkably high response,” The Times reported in 1985.The size of the conference has not changed much since: It averages about 115 to 120 attendees per year, according to the Kansas City Fed. The response rate has gone up markedly since 1985, though the Fed branch declined to specify how much.But the local context has shifted.Teton County, home to Jackson (now a bustling town of 11,000) and Jackson Hole, hosts more millionaires than criminal cowboys these days. It has become the most unequal place in America by several measures, with gaping wealth and income divides. The event, billed as rustic, now struggles to pretend that its backdrop isn’t posh.And the Fed gathering itself has gained more and more cachet. Alan Greenspan delivered the opening speech at the conference in Jackson Hole in 1991, when he was Fed chair, and then kept up that tradition for 14 summers until he stepped down.His successors have mostly followed suit. Mr. Powell has used his speeches to caution against overreliance on hard-to-determine economic variables, to unveil an entirely new framework for monetary policy and to pledge that the Fed would do what it took to wrangle rapid inflation.But it’s changing.Attention to Jackson Hole also deepened because of the 2008 global financial crisis, when central banks rescued markets and propped up economies in ways that expanded their influence. In the years that followed, uninvited journalists, Wall Street analysts and protest groups began to camp out in the lodge’s lobby during proceedings. Speaking at or presiding over a Jackson Hole session increasingly marked an economist as an academic rock star.Esther George, president of the Kansas City Fed between 2011 and early 2023, was in charge as the event garnered more notice. She and her team responded to the intensified spotlight partly by shaking up who got to bask in it.Far fewer banking and finance industry economists have gotten invites to the event since 2014, partly in response to public attention to the Fed’s Wall Street connections after the financial crisis. The people who make the list tend to be current and former top economic officials and up-and-coming academics. Increasingly, they are women, people from racially diverse backgrounds and people with varying economic viewpoints.Ms. George started to hold an informal happy hour for female economists in 2012, when there were so few women that “we could all sit around a small table,” she recalled. It made her think: “Why aren’t these other voices here?”Last year, the happy hour included dozens of women.But the Jackson Hole conference could be entering a new era. Ms. George had to retire in 2023 per Fed rules, so while she helped to plan this conference, she’ll be passing the baton for future events to her successor, Jeffrey Schmid, a university administrator and former chief executive of Mutual of Omaha Bank. He started as Kansas City Fed president on Monday and will make his debut as a Fed official at the gathering this week. More

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    Biden Incentives for Foreign Investment Are Benefiting Factories

    Early data suggest laws to increase semiconductor production and renewable energy technology have shifted the makeup of foreign direct investment — but not increased it.Lucrative new tax breaks and other incentives for advanced manufacturing that President Biden signed into law appear to be reshaping direct foreign investment in the American economy, according to a White House analysis, with a much greater share of spending on new and expanded businesses shifting toward the factory sector.Data that include the first months after the enactment of two pieces of that agenda show that a key measure of foreign investment fell slightly from 2021 to 2022, adjusted for inflation.The numbers suggest that, in the early months after the bills were signed, the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars that Mr. Biden is directing toward manufacturing have not increased the overall amount of foreign direct investment in the economy. Instead, the laws appear to have shifted where foreign investment is being directed.A new analysis by the White House Council of Economic Advisers shows the composition of what’s known as capacity-enhancing spending on new structures or expansions of existing ones shifted rapidly toward factories, in line with one of Mr. Biden’s top economic goals.The analysis shows that two-thirds of foreign direct investment, excluding corporate acquisitions, was in manufacturing in 2022. That was more than double the average share from 2014 to 2021.The surge is small in the context of the overall economy. But administration officials call it an encouraging sign that multinational companies are being enticed to America by Mr. Biden’s industrial policy agenda. In the last year, the analysis notes, construction spending on new manufacturing facilities in the United States has increased significantly faster than in England, continental Europe or other wealthy Group of 7 nations.Administration officials say a Commerce Department survey of new foreign investment suggests investors pouring money into America’s factories are largely concentrated in Britain and continental Europe, along with Canada, Japan and South Korea. Half of 1 percent of the investment appears to be associated with China.That foreign investment is flowing largely to computer and electronics manufacturing, particularly of semiconductors, which were the centerpiece of a bipartisan industrial policy bill that Mr. Biden signed into law last summer. He also signed a climate, health and tax bill later that summer that included large new subsidies for renewable energy technology manufacturing.Since those laws were signed, companies have announced a flurry of planned investments in the United States. The administration tallies them at more than $500 billion. They include semiconductor plants in Arizona, advanced battery facilities in Georgia and much more. Many of the announced projects are from foreign companies, like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.Administration officials say shifting investment toward factories — even if the overall level of investment does not change — can produce positive spillovers for the economy. The White House analysis cites higher wages in manufacturing jobs and potential increases to productivity from foreign firms sharing knowledge with existing domestic manufacturers.“Foreign direct investment in manufacturing doesn’t just help us build up this critical sector in key focal areas of Bidenomics, such as semiconductors and clean energy,” said Jared Bernstein, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. “It also allows us to learn valuable production lessons from international companies in these and other areas.” More

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    U.S. Jobs Total 300,000 Less Than in Earlier Data Through March

    Revised figures for the year that ended in March show 300,000 fewer jobs at the close of the period than previously reported.The red-hot American job market might be just a couple of degrees cooler than previously believed.There were 306,000 fewer nonagricultural jobs in the United States in March than initially reported, according to revised data released by the Labor Department on Wednesday. That suggests employers added jobs at a slightly slower rate in 2022 and early 2023 than more timely — but less accurate — monthly data suggested.The revisions, which are preliminary, don’t change the big picture: Job growth has slowed since the initial wave of post-lockdown reopening, but has remained surprisingly resilient. Even after the latest revision, there were 2.8 million more jobs in March than before the pandemic began. (Employers have added another 870,000 jobs since then, according to the Labor Department, although those figures, too, will eventually be subject to revision.)The data released Wednesday is part of an annual process in which monthly estimates, which are based on a survey of employers, are brought into alignment with more definitive data from state unemployment insurance records. The revisions will be formally incorporated into government figures early next year.The recent strength of the job market has surprised economists, who expected the rapid increase in interest rates to lead to a more significant slowdown in hiring. Some forecasters thought that the monthly jobs figures were overstating hiring, and that the annual update would show a substantial downward revision.That didn’t happen: The Labor Department lowered its estimate of employment by just 0.2 percent, which is in line with historical revisions.The revisions were larger for certain industries. Employment in transportation and warehousing, which boomed during the pandemic but has since slowed, was revised down by nearly 150,000 jobs, or 2.2 percent. White-collar industries like information and professional services also added fewer jobs than initially reported. Retail and wholesale companies, on the other hand, hired more workers than monthly figures suggested, as did employers in the public sector. More

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    In a Hot Job Market, the Minimum Wage Becomes an Afterthought

    The federal wage floor of $7.25 is increasingly irrelevant when even most teenagers are earning twice that. But what happens when the economy cools?Under New Hampshire law, Janette Desmond can pay the employees who scoop ice cream and cut fudge at her Portsmouth sweet shop as little as $7.25 an hour.But with the state unemployment rate under 2 percent, the dynamics of supply and demand trump the minimum wage: At Ms. Desmond’s store, teenagers working their first summer jobs earn at least $14 an hour.“I could take a billboard out on I-95 saying we’re hiring, $7.25 an hour,” Ms. Desmond said. “You know who would apply? Nobody. You couldn’t hire anybody at $7.25 an hour.”The red-hot labor market of the past two years has led to rapid pay increases, particularly in retail, hospitality and other low-wage industries. It has also rendered the minimum wage increasingly meaningless.Nationally, only about 68,000 people on average earned the federal minimum wage in the first seven months of 2023, according to a New York Times analysis of government data. That is less than one of every 1,000 hourly workers. Walmart, once noted for its rock-bottom wages, pays workers at least $14 an hour, even where it can legally pay roughly half that.Hardly anyone makes $7.25 anymoreAverage number of workers earning federal minimum wage

    Note: 2023 data is through July.Source: Current Population Survey, via IPUMSBy The New York TimesThere are still places where the minimum wage has teeth. Thirty states, along with dozens of cities and other local jurisdictions, have set minimums above the federal mark, in some cases linking them to inflation to help ensure that pay keeps up with the cost of living.But even there, most workers earn more than the legal minimum.“The minimum wage is almost irrelevant,” said Robert Branca, who owns nearly three dozen Dunkin’ Donuts stores in Massachusetts, where the minimum is $15. “I have to pay what I have to pay.”As a result, the minimum wage has faded from the economic policy debate. President Biden, who tried and failed to pass a $15 minimum wage during his first year in office, now rarely mentions it, although he has made the economy the centerpiece of his re-election effort. The Service Employees International Union, which helped found the Fight for $15 movement more than a decade ago, has shifted its focus to other policy levers, though it continues to support higher minimum wages.Opponents, too, seem to have moved on: When Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives voted this year to raise the state’s $7.25 minimum wage to $15 by 2026, businesses, at least aside from seasonal industries in rural areas, shrugged. (The measure has stalled in the state’s Republican-controlled Senate.)“Our members are not concerned,” said Ben Fileccia, a senior vice president at the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association. “I have not heard about anybody being paid minimum wage in a very long time.”The question is what will happen when the labor market cools. In inflation-adjusted terms, the federal minimum is worth less than at any time since 1949. That means that workers in states like Pennsylvania and New Hampshire could struggle to hold on to their recent gains if employers regain leverage.Congress hasn’t voted to raise the minimum wage since George W. Bush was president — in 2007, he signed a law to bring the floor to $7.25 by 2009. It remains there 14 years later, the longest period without an increase since the nationwide minimum was established in 1938.As the federal minimum flatlined, however, the Fight for $15 campaign was succeeding at the state and local levels. Cities like Seattle and San Francisco adopted a $15 minimum wage, followed by states like New York and Massachusetts. And while Republican legislatures opposed raising minimums, voters often overruled them: Missouri, Florida, Arkansas and other Republican-dominated states have passed increases through ballot measures in the past decade.Nationwide, the number of people earning the minimum wage fell steadily, from nearly two million when the $7.25 floor took effect to about 400,000 in 2019. (Those figures omit people earning less than the minimum wage, which can in some cases include teenagers, people with certain disabilities or tipped workers.)Then Covid-19 upended the low-wage labor market. Millions of cooks, waiters, hotel housekeepers and retail workers lost their jobs; those who stayed on as “essential workers” often received hazard pay or bonuses. As businesses began to reopen in 2020 and 2021, demand for goods and services rebounded much faster than the supply of workers to deliver them. That left companies scrambling for employees — and gave workers rare leverage.The result was a labor market increasingly untethered to the official minimum wage. In New Hampshire, the 10th percentile wage — the level at which 90 percent of workers earn more — was just above $10 in May 2019. By May 2022, that figure had jumped to $13.64, and local business owners say it has continued to rise.Making more than the minimumLow-wage workers are making more than their state’s minimum wage nearly everywhere, but especially in states that haven’t raised their wage floors above the federal level of $7.25 an hour. (The 10th percentile wage is the pay rate at which 90 percent of workers in a state earn more.)

    Notes: Minimum wages are as of January 2022. Pay data is as of May 2022. Minimum wages in some cities and localities may be higher than the state minimum.Source: Labor DepartmentBy The New York Times“Today you’re looking at $15 an hour and saying I wish that’s all we had to pay,” said David Bellman, who owns a jewelry store in Manchester, N.H.The unemployment rate in New Hampshire was low before the pandemic; at 1.7 percent in July, it is now among the lowest rates ever recorded anywhere in the country. Competition for workers is fierce: The Wendy’s on Mr. Bellman’s drive home from work advertises wages of $18 an hour. At his own store, he is paying $17 to $20 an hour and recently hired someone away from the local bagel shop — his son had noticed that she seemed like a hard worker.“Basically the only way to hire anybody is to take them away from somebody else,” Mr. Bellman said.New Hampshire is surrounded by states where the minimum wage is above $13, so if Granite State employers tried to offer substantially less, many workers could cross the border for a bigger paycheck. But even in states like Alabama and Mississippi, where the cost of living is lower and where few neighboring states have minimum wages above the federal standard, most employers are finding they have to pay well above $7.25.Paige Roberts, president and chief executive of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce in Mississippi, said she was “nearly laughed out of a job” when she started asking members about paying the minimum wage. Entry-level jobs there pay about $12 an hour, according to the local unemployment office.In states with higher minimums, the picture is more nuanced. Faster hikes in the wage floor in the late 2010s forced up long-stagnant wages in fields like restaurants and retail. And some businesses, such as summer camps, say they are still paying the minimum wage for entry-level workers or those in training. But for the most part, the minimums no longer exert the strong upward pressure on pay that they did when they were adopted.When New Jersey passed a minimum-wage law in 2019, many businesses complained that the increases were too aggressive: The floor would rise by at least a dollar an hour every year until it hit $15 in 2024. But recently, the hot job market has levitated the wage scale even more.Jeanne Cretella starts workers in her New Jersey restaurants and event venues at $15 an hour, though the state’s minimum won’t reach that figure until next year.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“Covid kind of shifted things around a bit, as did inflation,” said Jeanne Cretella, whose business, Landmark Hospitality, operates 14 venues in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.Before the pandemic, dishwashers and other entry-level employees at Landmark typically made the minimum wage. These days, Ms. Cretella starts workers in New Jersey at $15 an hour, though the state’s minimum won’t hit that mark until next year.When the Fight for $15 movement began, many economists warned that raising the minimum wage too high or too quickly could lead to job losses. Some studies did find modest negative effects on employment, particularly for teenagers and others on the margins of the labor market. But for the most part, researchers found that pay went up without widespread layoffs or business failures.Some economists still wondered what would happen as $15 minimum wages spread beyond high-cost coastal cities. But that was before the pandemic reshaped the low-wage labor market.“We’re kind of in different territory now,” said Jacob Vigdor, an economist at the University of Washington who has studied the issue.Washington has the highest statewide minimum wage, at $15.74. Yet when Mr. Vigdor recently visited Aberdeen, a small town near the Pacific coast, all business owners wanted to talk about was how to retain workers.“I did not really hear a lot of concern about those minimum wages,” he said. “There the concern is that they’re losing people.”Still, economists say the minimum wage could become relevant again when the labor market eventually cools and workers lose bargaining power.David Neumark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, said states with high minimum wages could be at a disadvantage in a recession, because employers would have to keep pay high as demand softened, potentially leading to layoffs.Other economists have the opposite concern: that workers in states where the minimum wage remains $7.25 could see their recent gains evaporate when they no longer have the leverage to demand more.“It’s as tenuous as it gets,” said Kathryn Anne Edwards, a labor economist and policy consultant. “The labor market has gained ground, but policy has not cemented that territory.”Despite the strong labor market, many workers say they barely get by.KaSondra Wood has spent much of her adult life working for the minimum wage, from the army depot where she held her first job, earning $5.15 an hour, to the Little Caesars where she made $7.25 as recently as last year.But not anymore: This summer, she started a job cleaning rooms at a local hotel, earning $12 an hour. Even in Oneonta, Ala., a rural area with few job opportunities, employers know better than to try hiring at the minimum wage.“They wouldn’t advertise for it, knowing they wouldn’t get anyone in there,” she said.But Ms. Wood, 38, hardly feels that she is getting ahead. The hotel is a 45-minute drive from her home, so gas eats up much of her paycheck, even though she car-pools with her mother. Groceries keep getting more expensive.“A couple years ago, $12 an hour would’ve been killer money,” she said. But now, it isn’t enough to pay her bills.“I don’t ever get caught up,” she said. “I’m broke by the time I get paid.” More

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    UPS Workers Avert Strike by Approving New Contract

    The vote by members of the Teamsters union removes a potential threat to the economy.Averting a strike that could have shaken the U.S. economy, the union representing more than 300,000 United Parcel Service employees announced Tuesday that its members had ratified a new labor agreement with the shipping giant.The union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said that its UPS members approved the five-year contract with more than 86 percent support.The Teamsters have said that the agreement includes wage gains of at least $7.50 an hour for current employees over its five-year term. It also raises the minimum pay for part-time workers to $21 an hour from under $17, and raises the top rate for full-time delivery drivers to about $49 on average.Under the previous contract, which expired on Aug. 1, full-time drivers made an average of about $42 an hour after four years on the job.In a statement, the union’s president, Sean O’Brien, said the contract was the most lucrative ever at UPS and would serve as a model for other workers that the union is seeking to organize. “This is the template for how workers should be paid and protected nationwide, and nonunion companies like Amazon better pay attention,” Mr. O’Brien said.The Teamsters have made unionizing Amazon a top priority in recent years, and Mr. O’Brien said while running for the union’s presidency in 2021 that doing so would first require big, concrete gains at other companies.Despite the ratification, the new UPS contract will not take effect immediately. The union said in its statement that a group of workers in Florida voted down a supplement to the national contract that covers about 175 members — one of 44 supplements that the union also negotiated.The union said its negotiators would immediately meet with UPS to resolve the remaining issues so that those Florida members can vote again. The national contract will take effect once the supplement is approved.UPS declined to comment beyond a brief news release noting the ratification vote and stating that the Florida supplement would be “finalized shortly.”The Teamsters had been aggressive in mobilizing members and ratcheting up pressure on the company in recent months, including picket-line practice and training sessions for strike captains. Mr. O’Brien has frequently referred to corporate leaders as a “white-collar crime syndicate” and argued that “this multibillion-dollar corporation has plenty to give American workers — they just don’t want to.”UPS moves about one-quarter of the tens of millions of packages shipped in the United States each day, according to the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index. Its adjusted net income rose more than 70 percent from 2019 to last year, reaching more than $11 billion.The negotiations on a national contract began in April, and the union announced in mid-June that its members had voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.The two sides resolved many key issues by early July, including eliminating a lower-paid category of full-time driver that had angered many UPS employees, and requiring air conditioning in new trucks to improve heat safety. But then negotiations broke down, with the Teamsters arguing that the company had not offered sufficient improvements in pay for part-time workers, who make up more than half of the union’s UPS members.Mr. O’Brien and the union spent the next few weeks condemning what they sometimes referred to as “part-time poverty” jobs, before the sides resumed negotiating in late July and quickly finalized a tentative deal.UPS employees represented by the union began voting on the agreement in early August. While some part-time workers continued to argue that the wage gains should have been even larger and urged a “no” vote, the final margin suggested that most were satisfied with the deal. More

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    Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to Visit China Next Week

    The trip by Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce, comes at a tense moment for the U.S.-China relationship and the Chinese economy.Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce, will travel to Beijing and Shanghai for a series of meetings next week, becoming the latest Biden official to visit China as the United States seeks to stabilize the relationship between the countries.Ms. Raimondo will meet with senior Chinese officials and American business leaders between Aug. 27 and Aug. 30, the Department of Commerce said in an announcement Tuesday. The department said that Ms. Raimondo was looking forward to “constructive discussions on issues relating to the U.S.-China commercial relationship, challenges faced by U.S. businesses, and areas for potential cooperation.”The visit comes during a period of tensions between Washington and Beijing, and amid extreme volatility in the Chinese economy, which is struggling with stalling growth, a real estate crisis and lackluster consumer confidence.The Biden administration has dispatched a series of officials to China in recent months in an attempt to restore some stability to the bilateral relationship, after the flight of a Chinese surveillance balloon across the United States early this year left ties badly frayed.Since June, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and the presidential climate envoy, John Kerry, have made trips to meet with counterparts in China. The meetings could potentially pave the way for a visit by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to the United States this fall.As the cabinet official most responsible for promoting the interests of American businesses abroad, Ms. Raimondo is likely to try to expand some commercial relations, and express concerns about a recent crackdown on firms with foreign ties in China. A Chinese statistics agency announced that it has imposed fines of nearly $1.5 million on the Mintz Group, an American corporate investigations firm that had been raided in March, after finding that the company had engaged in “foreign-related” surveys without official permission.The meetings are also expected to touch on the technology restrictions that Ms. Raimondo’s department oversees, which have prohibited companies in fields like artificial intelligence and quantum computing from sharing their most advanced technology with China. China has strongly objected to those restrictions.Last month, U.S. officials said Chinese hackers, likely affiliated with the country’s military or spy services, had obtained Ms. Raimondo’s emails, in a hack that was discovered in June by State Department cybersecurity experts. The hackers had penetrated email accounts belonging to State and Commerce Department officials, the U.S. officials said.Li You More

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    Could U.S. Toughness on Chinese Business Have Unintended Consequences?

    Businesses fear that efforts to look tough on Beijing, which have the potential to be more expansive than moves by the federal government, could have unintended consequences.At a moment when Washington is trying to reset its tense relationship with China, states across the country are leaning into anti-Chinese sentiment and crafting or enacting sweeping rules aimed at severing economic ties with Beijing.The measures, in places like Florida, Utah and South Carolina, are part of a growing political push to make the United States less economically dependent on China and to limit Chinese investment over concerns that it poses a national security risk. Those concerns are shared by the Biden administration, which has been trying to reduce America’s reliance on China by increasing domestic manufacturing and strengthening trade ties with allies.But the state efforts have the potential to be far more expansive than what the administration is orchestrating. They have drawn backlash from business groups over concerns that state governments are veering toward protectionism and retreating from a longstanding tradition of welcoming foreign investment into the United States.Nearly two dozen mostly right-leaning states — including Florida, Texas, Utah and South Dakota — have proposed or enacted legislation that would restrict Chinese purchases of land, buildings and houses. Some of the laws could potentially be more onerous than what occurs at the federal level, where a committee led by the Treasury secretary is authorized to review and block transactions if foreigners could gain control of American businesses or real estate near military installations.The laws being proposed or enacted by states would go far beyond that, preventing China — and in some cases other “countries of concern” — from buying farmland or property near what is broadly defined as “critical infrastructure.”The restrictions coincide with a resurgence of anti-China sentiment, inflamed in part by a Chinese spy balloon that traveled across the United States this year and by heated political rhetoric ahead of the 2024 election. They are likely to pose another challenge for the administration, which has dispatched several top officials to China in recent weeks to try to stabilize economic ties. But while Washington may see a relationship with China as a necessary evil, officials at the state and local levels appear determined to try to sever their economic relationship with America’s third-largest trading partner.“The federal government in the United States, across branches with strong bipartisan support, has been quite forceful in sharpening its China strategy, and regulating investments is only one piece,” said Mario Mancuso, a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis focusing on international trade and national security issues. “The shift that we have seen to the states is relatively recent, but it’s gaining strength.”One of the biggest targets has been Chinese landownership, despite the fact that China owns less than 400,000 acres in the United States, according to the Agriculture Department. That is less than 1 percent of all foreign-owned land.Such restrictions have been gathering momentum since 2021 after Fufeng USA, the American subsidiary of a Chinese company that makes components for animal feed, faced backlash over plans to build a corn mill in Grand Forks, N.D. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a powerful interagency group known as CFIUS that can halt international business transactions, reviewed the proposal but ultimately decided that it did not have the jurisdiction to block the plan. However, the Air Force, citing the mill’s proximity to a U.S. military base, said this year that China’s involvement was a national security risk, and local officials scuttled the project.Since then, states have been developing or trying to bolster their restrictions on foreign investment, in some cases blocking land acquisitions from a broad set of countries, including Iran and North Korea. In other instances, they have targeted China specifically.The state moves, some of which also include investments coming from Russia, Iran and North Korea, have raised the ire of business groups that fear the rules will be too onerous or opponents who view them as discriminatory. Some of the proposals wound up being watered down amid the backlash.This year, Texas lawmakers proposed expanding a ban that was enacted in 2021 on the development of infrastructure projects funded by investors with direct ties to China and blocking Chinese citizens and companies from buying land, homes or any other real estate. Despite the support of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, the proposal was scaled back to prohibit purchases of just agricultural land, quarries and mines by individuals or companies with ties to China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. The bill ultimately expired in the Texas Legislature in May.In South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, has been pushing for legislation that would create a state version of CFIUS to review and investigate agricultural land purchases, leases and land transfers by foreign investors. Ms. Noem has argued that the federal government does not have sufficient reach to keep South Dakota safe from bad actors at the state level.The legislation failed amid pushback from farming groups that were concerned about restrictions on who could buy or rent their land, along with lawmakers who said it would hand too much power to the governor.One of the most provocative restrictions has been championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican who is running for president. In May, Mr. DeSantis signed a law prohibiting Chinese companies or citizens from purchasing or investing in properties that are within 10 miles of military bases and critical infrastructure such as refineries, liquid natural gas terminals and electrical power plants.“Florida is taking action to stand against the United States’ greatest geopolitical threat — the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. DeSantis said when he signed the law, adding, “We are following through on our commitment to crack down on Communist China.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican presidential candidate, signed into law one of the most provocative restrictions against Chinese investments.David Degner for The New York TimesBut the legislation is written so broadly that an investment fund or a company that has even a small ownership stake from a Chinese company or a Chinese investor and buys a property would be violating the law. Business groups and the Biden administration have criticized the law as overreach, while Republican attorneys general around the country have sided with Mr. DeSantis.The Florida legislation, which targets “countries of concern” and imposes special restrictions on China, is being challenged in federal court. A group of Chinese citizens and a real estate brokerage firm in Florida that are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state in May, arguing that the law codifies and expands housing discrimination. The Justice Department filed a “statement of interest” arguing that Florida’s landownership policy is unlawful.A U.S. district judge, who heard arguments about the case in July, said last week that the law could continue to be enforced while it was being challenged in court.The restrictions are creating uncertainty for investors and fund managers that want to invest in Florida and now must decide whether to back away from those plans or cut out their Chinese investors.“It creates a lot of thorny issues not just for the foreign investors but for the funds as well, because some of these laws try to make them choose between keeping investors and being able to invest in those states,” said J. Philip Ludvigson, a partner at King & Spalding. “It’s really a gamble for the states that are passing some of these very broad laws.”Mr. Ludvigson, a former Treasury official who helped lead the office that chairs CFIUS, added: “You might want to get tough on China, but if you don’t really think through what the second- and third-order effects might be, you could just end up hurting your state revenues and your property market while also failing to solve an actual national security problem.”The state investment restrictions also coincide with efforts in Congress to block businesses based in China from purchasing farmland in the United States and place new mandates on Americans investing in the country’s national security industries. The Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of the measures in July, which still need to clear the House to become law.The combination of measures is likely to complicate diplomacy with China and could draw retaliation.“Officials in Beijing are quite concerned about the hostility to Chinese investments at both the national and state levels in the U.S., viewing these as another sign of rising antipathy toward China,” said Eswar Prasad, a former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division. “The Chinese government is especially concerned about a proliferation of state-level restrictions on top of federal limitations on investments from China.”He added, “Their fear is that such actions would not just deprive Chinese investors of good investment opportunities in the U.S., including in real estate, but could eventually limit Chinese companies’ direct access to American markets and inhibit technology transfers.” More

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    American workers are demanding almost $80,000 a year to take a new job

    The amount of money most workers want now to accept a job reached a record high this year.
    Employers have been trying to keep pace with the wage demands, pushing the average full-time offer up to $69,475, a 14% surge in the past year.
    The numbers are significant in that wages increasingly have been recognized as a driving force in inflation.

    Commuters arrive into the Oculus station and mall in Manhattan, New York, Nov. 17, 2022.
    Spencer Platt | Getty Images

    The amount of money most workers want now to accept a job reached a record high this year, a sign that inflation is alive and well at least in the labor market.
    According to the latest New York Federal Reserve employment survey released Monday, the average “reservation wage,” or the minimum acceptable salary offer to switch jobs, rose to $78,645 during the second quarter of 2023.

    That’s an increase of about 8% from just a year ago and is the highest level ever in a data series that goes back to the beginning of 2014. Over the past three years, which entails the Covid-19 pandemic era, the level has risen more than 22%.
    The number is significant in that wages increasingly have been recognized as a driving force in inflation. While goods prices have abated since pushing overall inflation to its highest level in more than 40 years in mid-2022, other factors continue to keep it well above the Fed’s targeted rate of 2%.
    The New York Fed data is consistent with an Atlanta Fed tracker, which shows wages overall rising at a 6% annual rate but job switchers seeing 7% gains.
    Employers have been trying to keep pace with the wage demands, pushing the average full-time offer up to $69,475, a 14% surge in the past year. The actual expected annual salary rose to $67,416, a gain of more than $7,000 from a year ago and also a new high.
    Though there was a gap between the wage workers wanted and what was offered, satisfaction with compensation and upward mobility increased across the board.

    With markets on edge over what the Fed’s next policy step will be, more signs of a tight labor market raise the likelihood that policymakers will keep interest rates higher for longer. At their July meeting, officials noted that wages “were still rising at rates above levels assessed to be consistent with the sustained achievement” of the 2% inflation goal, according to minutes from the meeting.
    Monday’s survey results also showed some other mixed patterns in the labor market.
    Job seekers, or those who have looked for work in the previous four weeks, declined to 19.4% from 24.7% a year ago. That came as job openings fell 738,000 to 9.58 million, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
    The likelihood of switching jobs fell, dropping to 10.6% from 11% a year ago, while expectations of being offered a new job also declined, falling to 18.7% from 21.1%. More