Evelyn Reynolds

Some employees who back unionization efforts have been told they must increase their work availability or leave. The company cites scheduling issues.Workers at Starbucks stores in Buffalo are accusing the company of retaliating against union supporters by telling some of them they may have to leave the company if they cannot increase their work availability.At least five of the cases have arisen at a store that unionized in December, though union supporters at other Buffalo-area stores report similar conversations with managers, frequently but not always involving pro-union employees. The company denies any connection between the scheduling issues and union activities and says the matter is strictly logistical.The tensions indicate how labor relations are playing out after initial successes in unionizing company stores. None of Starbucks’s roughly 9,000 corporate-owned stores in the United States were unionized before early December, but three have unionized since then, and workers at more than 100 stores across the country have filed for union elections.One of the Buffalo workers, Cassie Fleischer, said her manager told her on Feb. 20 that she would soon no longer be employed at the store where she had worked since 2020 because she had sought to reduce her hours from around 30 to 15, a change the manager said she could not accommodate. The store was recently unionized, and Ms. Fleischer is a prominent union supporter.Kellen Montanye, who works at the same store, said the manager told him in a meeting Sunday that he would have to decide this week if he could increase his availability to 15 or 20 hours or leave the company. Mr. Montanye was also outspoken in supporting the union.“This new policy is a complete betrayal of the promise made by Starbucks to its partners, to schedule us around our other jobs or our school hours,” Starbucks Workers United, the union representing the workers, said in a statement, using the company’s term for its employees. “This is a part of Starbucks’s broader strategy to bust our union.”News that the company was asking some employees to be available to work more hours or leave was reported earlier by the labor-oriented website More Perfect Union.Reggie Borges, a Starbucks spokesman, said that the company was not firing the workers and that there was no policy requiring minimum availability. The company generally tries to honor employees’ preferences on availability, he said, but it cannot guarantee that it will do so, especially when several employees request more limited availability around the same time.Mr. Borges said that 10 people at Ms. Fleischer’s and Mr. Montanye’s store, on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, had made such requests recently, out of a total of about 27 workers there.Union supporters said they had not previously faced resistance when making such requests. Many union supporters were also skeptical that 10 workers at the Elmwood store had asked to scale back their hours in ways that posed an unusual challenge for management. A recording of a meeting between Ms. Fleischer and her manager, provided to a reporter by the union, seemed to indicate that the number was lower.“There’s your shift and a couple other people that really, with the hours that I — I just, I don’t have the quite the availability,” the manager told Ms. Fleischer. If fewer workers had sought significant reductions in availability, that would presumably be easier to accommodate.The manager appeared to acknowledge in the recording that the refusal to grant the reduction in hours was a break with her previous approach. “There’s certain things that I have to take care of as well, that maybe I didn’t do the right way before, but I have to get on board,” the manager said.Mr. Montanye, a graduate student at the University at Buffalo, said that he had worked at Starbucks since 2018 and at the Elmwood store for roughly one year, and that he had frequently adjusted his hours. He said he typically worked nearly full time during winter and summer breaks and only one or two days a week while school was in session. His managers had never taken issue with these requests, he added.But at an initial meeting on Feb. 13, he said, his manager told him that his current schedule of one day a week no longer met the store’s “needs” and that he would have to provide 15 or 20 hours of weekly availability to stay on the schedule. At a follow-up meeting over the weekend, he said, the manager told him to decide this week whether he could provide the additional availability. He may seek a leave of absence instead.The Starbucks store on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. Union supporters were skeptical that 10 workers at the store had asked to scale back their hours.Mustafa Hussain for The New York TimesMs. Fleischer had worked at Starbucks for over four years, and at the Elmwood store since the summer of 2020. She was typically scheduled for about 33 or 34 hours a week during the second half of last year. But she began looking for additional work elsewhere to cover expenses after her scheduled hours dropped somewhat in January.She asked to scale back to 15 hours a week upon finding a second job, at which point her manager told her in an initial meeting in early February that the more limited availability didn’t meet the “needs of the business,” according to Ms. Fleischer.In her final meeting with her manager, which Ms. Fleischer recorded on Feb. 20, the manager said that she had not put Ms. Fleischer on the schedule for the next two weeks and that, after a certain number of weeks of being unscheduled, Ms. Fleischer would be “termed out” — that is, no longer employed by Starbucks. She is scheduled to meet with her district manager to discuss the issue on Mar. 7.Ms. Fleischer said she would have been unlikely to look for a second job had her hours not dropped in January. Hours at Starbucks tend to fall somewhat during the slow months of January and February, but Ms. Fleischer and Mr. Montanye said they believed the changes were also driven by the addition of several new workers to the store in the fall.The union has said the fall hiring was intended to dilute union support ahead of an election at the store; the company has said the hiring was intended to address understaffing. Mr. Borges said that a similar number of workers had left the store since then and that hours had been fairly consistent.An employee at another Starbucks in Buffalo, Roisin Doherty, said her store also cut back her hours. In late January she too took another job, then informed her manager that she would need to change her availability to weekends only. Screenshots provided by Ms. Doherty show that the manager congratulated her through a messaging app and did not indicate that the new constraints would be a problem. But in early February the manager wrote that she would need “at least four days” of availability. Workers at her store filed for a union election in between the two exchanges, on Jan. 31, and Ms. Doherty has helped lead the union campaign, though she said another worker who is not identified with the union had also been told that his availability was insufficient.Ms. Doherty said that she remained on the schedule and that she had yet to have a second interaction with a manager forcing the issue.Mr. Borges, the Starbucks spokesman, said Ms. Doherty’s hours were reduced after she was given a written warning about tardiness and attendance issues. He said managers would continue contacting employees when necessary to explain that narrow availability could lead them to go unscheduled for a few weeks, which could ultimately cause their separation from the company.“Leaders are trying to make sure partners understand that the lack of availability could lead to that,” Mr. Borges said in an email. More

Sarah Bloom Raskin, his choice for the Federal Reserve’s head of bank oversight, has faced staunch G.O.P. opposition over her climate views. Yet her private sector work is holding up her nomination.President Biden’s nominee for the top banking cop at the Federal Reserve was expected to face Republican backlash over her views on how finance should guard against climate change and her preference for tough regulation.She has. But it is Sarah Bloom Raskin’s tenure on the board of a financial technology company that has given Republicans a cudgel that they are trying to use to quash her nomination.Senate Republicans are preventing a vote on Ms. Raskin, a former Fed governor and Treasury official during the Obama administration, as they press for answers about whether she used her central bank connections to help the company, Reserve Trust, gain access to a lucrative Fed account in 2018. They have boycotted her nomination, refusing to show up to vote on it until she provides more details.By holding Ms. Raskin’s nomination hostage, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee are also preventing Mr. Biden’s four other Fed nominees from advancing since Democrats have grouped the officials together. That includes the renomination of Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, who testified before lawmakers on Wednesday and was set to return on Thursday.Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio and the head of the committee, plans to try to hold another vote on Ms. Raskin and the other nominees as soon as possible, a spokesperson for the committee said Tuesday.“This is not the moment for political stunts,” Mr. Brown said on the Senate floor this week.Democrats have dismissed the opposition to Ms. Raskin as politically opportunistic and baseless, a crude attempt to tank a candidate whom bank-friendly Republicans dislike for her views on regulation. Senator Patrick J. Toomey, the Pennsylvania Republican who is leading the effort to kill her nomination, opposed Ms. Raskin from the outset because of her climate views.But interviews and nomination filings suggest that Ms. Raskin may not have been entirely forthcoming about what role she played in helping Reserve Trust secure its sought-after Fed account. She may have leveraged her connection to the Fed to try to help the company, whose board she sat on between 2017 and 2019.Ethics experts said that even if she had petitioned on the company’s behalf, that was likely neither illegal nor against ethics rules. But when questioned, Ms. Raskin has repeatedly said she does not remember what happened.Republicans have blasted Ms. Raskin’s lack of responsiveness and highlighted her payout from the firm, suggesting that she may have benefited financially from helping the company, taking part in the revolving door that many Democrats have denounced. She sold her stock for $1.5 million in 2020.The White House continues to support Ms. Raskin. Michael Gwin, an administration spokesman, said she had “earned widespread support in the face of an unprecedented, baseless campaign that seeks to tarnish her distinguished career in public service and her commitment to upholding the highest ethical standards any administration has ever put forward.”But the controversy surrounding her nomination could prove uncomfortable for Democrats, who are trying to prevent regulators from so frequently leaving the government to advise the sort of companies they once policed. “The Republicans do this all the time because they are seen as the party of business,” said Meredith McGehee, a longtime Washington ethics expert. “The vulnerability is that here you have a Democrat who’s in this position that’s in conflict with the rhetoric of the Democratic Party.”The issue centers on a wonky but increasingly important corner of finance.Ms. Raskin started on the board of Reserve Trust, a Colorado-based trust company that now calls itself a financial technology firm, shortly after leaving a top role at the Treasury Department in 2017. From 2010 to 2014, she served as a Fed governor.When she joined the board, the Kansas City Fed had recently rejected the firm’s first application for a so-called master account with the central bank. Such accounts allow firms to tap the Fed’s payment infrastructure, enabling them to carry out services for clients without relying on an external partner. They are hot commodities, and nonbank financial firms often strive but struggle to qualify for them.To qualify for the account, the firm changed its business model and reapplied in 2017.Dennis Gingold, a founder of Reserve Trust who was a longtime acquaintance of Ms. Raskin’s and who has donated to the political campaigns of her husband, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said in an interview that he had helped to bring Ms. Raskin to the company.Mr. Gingold said Ms. Raskin had called the Fed about the master account at his behest, because he was worried that the central bank was not giving the reapplication a fair consideration. From his Washington office, she phoned Esther George, the Kansas City Fed president. The call lasted two minutes and was “insignificant,” Mr. Gingold said, noting that Ms. Raskin simply “asked that the decision be made on the facts.”Mr. Gingold said he could not remember the date of the call. Mr. Toomey has said staff at the Kansas City Fed told his office that a call between Ms. Raskin and Ms. George happened in August 2017.Mr. Gingold does not know what led the Fed to approve the account, which he said it did in mid-2018, noting that it happened months later and after what he described as an opaque process.No evidence has suggested that Ms. Raskin’s intervention was the decisive factor in the approval, and the Kansas City Fed has issued a statement saying it followed its usual practices in approving the account in 2018.The account does appear to have been lucrative: Reserve Trust still prominently advertises its rare access.When another company took over the firm in 2020, it paid $7.50 per share for it — which was how Ms. Raskin made money from the company. Mr. Gingold said that Ms. Raskin had been given shares from his portfolio, and that he believed she acquired them in January 2018, which would have been after the reported call with Ms. George. She did not receive director’s compensation, as other board members did, he said.Nothing that happened obviously conflicted with ethics rules, experts said. The trouble for Democrats is that many of the details that have emerged either conflict with things Ms. Raskin has said or provide answers to questions that she did not respond to in her filings or confirmation hearing.In Ms. Raskin’s written responses to senators’ questions, she said that she could not recall who had recruited her to Reserve Trust’s board and that to the best of her recollection she had “received shares in Reserve Trust upon joining” the board. She did “not recall any communications I made to help Reserve Trust obtain a master account,” she said.“Based on what is in the public now, I think she complied with the relevant rules,” said Kedric Payne, senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center. “The practical point is: Even if there’s no legal violation, the public wants to know if there is full transparency there.”Seats for Republican senators were empty last week on Capitol Hill during a scheduled vote on Ms. Raskin’s nomination.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesRepublicans have pointed out that Ms. Raskin and her husband have also repeatedly failed to disclose her involvement with Reserve Trust on government filings.Ms. Raskin left her Reserve Trust service off her original questionnaire to the Senate Banking Committee, according to a Republican committee aide, though she did note her sale of Reserve Trust shares in her simultaneously filed financial disclosures to the Office of Government Ethics.Mr. Raskin failed to note the Reserve Trust shares on his financial filings in 2018 and 2019, and disclosed the 2020 share sale eight months late. He has attributed the late 2020 filing to a family tragedy — the Raskins’ son died by suicide on Dec. 31, 2020. The lawmaker’s office, when asked by email, did not explain why the shares were left off the earlier disclosures.If Ms. Raskin leveraged Fed connections, that would not have been unusual: People often profit from prior government positions. But the situation could look bad, as both the Biden administration and Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and one of Ms. Raskin’s champions on Capitol Hill, try to put a lock — or at least a temporary stopper — on the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street.Ms. Raskin has signed an ethics pledge that Ms. Warren asked all Fed nominees to sign, which would prevent her from working in financial services for four years after she left the Fed if confirmed to her new post.If Ms. Raskin’s nomination does come up for a vote, it “could be an issue,” said Ian Katz at Capital Alpha, a Washington research firm. “If it’s a close call and there are any questions of propriety, sure, it could sway a senator. We just don’t know that yet.” More

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday he still sees interest rate hikes ahead though he noted the “implications for the U.S. economy are highly uncertain” from the Ukraine war.
Powell called the labor market “extremely tight” and said inflation has risen well above the Fed’s 2% target.
His remarks are part of mandatory appearances this week before House and Senate committees in Congress.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell still sees interest rate hikes coming, but noted Wednesday that the Russia-Ukraine war has injected uncertainty into the outlook.
Powell said he sees a series of quarter-percentage-point increases coming, though he left open the possibility of moving more aggressively should inflation persist.

In remarks prepared for dual appearances this week before House and Senate committees in Congress, the central bank chief acknowledged the “tremendous hardship” the Russian invasion of Ukraine is causing.
“The implications for the U.S. economy are highly uncertain, and we will be monitoring the situation closely,” Powell said.
“The near-term effects on the U.S. economy of the invasion of Ukraine, the ongoing war, the sanctions, and of events to come, remain highly uncertain,” he added. “Making appropriate monetary policy in this environment requires a recognition that the economy evolves in unexpected ways. We will need to be nimble in responding to incoming data and the evolving outlook.”
Later, he said the Fed wants to get inflation under control, but “the bottom line is that we will proceed but we will proceed carefully as we learn more about the implications of the Ukraine war on the economy.”
The observations come amid 40-year highs for inflation in the U.S., complicated by a Ukraine war that has driven oil prices to around their highest levels in a decade. Consumer prices increased 7.5% from a year ago in January, and the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge showed its strongest 12-month gain since 1983.

Powell and his fellow policymakers have been indicating for weeks that they plan to start raising benchmark interest rates to tackle inflation. He reiterated the stance Wednesday that the process will involve “interest rate increases,” along with indications that the Fed eventually will start reducing its bond holdings.
“We will use our policy tools as appropriate to prevent higher inflation from becoming entrenched while promoting a sustainable expansion and a strong labor market,” he said. “We have phased out our net asset purchases. With inflation well above 2 percent and a strong labor market, we expect it will be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate at our meeting later this month.”
Powell said the likely path for rate hikes will be increments of a quarter percentage point, though he said he would be open to more aggressive moves if inflation gets worse.
“We’re going to avoid adding uncertainty to what is already an extraordinarily challenging and uncertain moment,” he said under questioning from House Financial Services Committee members. “To the extent that inflation comes in higher or is more persistently high than that, we would be prepared to move more aggressively by raising the federal funds rate by more than 25 basis points at a meeting or meetings.”

Inflation still expected to fall

The Fed will start cutting the size of its asset holdings after rate hikes have begun, he added.
Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, the Fed has been buying Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities at the fastest pace ever, driving the total holdings on the central bank balance sheet to nearly $9 trillion.
Powell said the reduction will be conducted “in a predictable manner,” largely through allowing some proceeds from the bonds to roll off each month rather than reinvesting them.
On the economy, the chairman said he still expects inflation to decelerate through the year as supply chain issues are resolved. He called the labor market “extremely tight” and noted strong wage gains, particularly for lower earners and minorities.
“We understand that high inflation imposes significant hardship, especially on those least able to meet the higher costs of essentials like food, housing, and transportation,” he said. “We know that the best thing we can do to support a strong labor market is to promote a long expansion, and that is only possible in an environment of price stability.”
Markets have fully priced in a rate increase at the March 15-16 meeting but have decreased expectations for the rest of the year since the Ukraine war began, according to CME group data. Traders are now pricing in five quarter-percentage-point increases that would take the benchmark federal funds rate from its current range of 0%-0.25% to 1.25%-1.5%.

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Companies added 475,000 positions in February, better than the Dow Jones estimate for 400,000, ADP reported Wednesday.
The payrolls processing firm dramatically revised its January count, from a loss of 301,000 to a gain of 509,000.
Large companies and leisure and hospitality businesses contributed the biggest gains.

A Help Wanted sign for a mechanic and technician is posted in front of a gas station offering auto care services in Montebello, California on February 3, 2022.
Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images

Private job creation rose at a faster-than-expected clip in February, according to a count released Wednesday from payrolls processing firm ADP.
Companies added 475,000 positions for the month, better than the Dow Jones estimate for 400,000.

ADP also dramatically revised its January count, from an initially reported loss of 301,000 to a gain of 509,000. That brought the tally more closely in line with the Labor Department count for the month of a 467,000 gain.
The report Wednesday noted that ADP conducted annual revisions of its count in February to put it in line with Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Other months over the past year saw adjustments, but none as massive as January 2022.
“Hiring remains robust but capped by reduced labor supply post-pandemic,” said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson. “Last month large companies showed they are well-poised to compete with higher wages and benefit offerings, and posted the strongest reading since the early days of the pandemic recovery.”
Companies with 500 or more workers were responsible for almost all the hiring in the month, adding 552,000 positions. Firms with fewer than 50 employees recorded a loss of 96,000, while mid-sized businesses added just 18,000.
By sector, leisure and hospitality posted the biggest gains, with an increase of 170,000. Trade, transportation and utilities contributed 98,000, while professional and business services increased by 72,000.

On the goods-producing side, manufacturing was up 30,000 and construction added 26,000.
Though the two can differ widely, the ADP count serves as a precursor to the more widely watched BLS nonfarm payrolls report, which comes out Friday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expect the economy added 440,000 jobs for the month.

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E.V. operations will focus on technology and growth while the traditional business continues to chase profits. “You can’t have people work on both at the same time,” the chief executive said.Ford Motor has decided the best way to make the transition to electric vehicles is to transform itself first.On Wednesday, the automaker said it had reorganized its auto operations into two distinct businesses — one that makes its gasoline-powered vehicles and focuses on maximizing profits and another that develops and ramps up production of electric models and aims for rapid growth.Ford’s chief executive, Jim Farley, said in an interview that the two businesses required different skills and mind-sets that would clash and hinder each area if they remained parts of one organization. “You can’t be successful and beat Tesla that way,” he said.Sales of battery-powered cars are rising rapidly, a trend that Mr. Farley and other auto executives see as the industry’s biggest disruption since Henry Ford introduced mass production and the Model T in 1908. Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen and other traditional manufacturers are spending tens of billions of dollars to field new models, build battery plants and develop new technologies that Tesla has pioneered, such as advanced driver-assist systems and over-the-air software updates.Mr. Farley said Ford would spend $50 billion on electric vehicles between 2022 and 2026. It previously planned to spend $30 billion in the five years ending in 2025. It plans to spend $5 billion on E.V.s this year, double the 2021 total.A Critical Year for Electric VehiclesThe popularity of battery-powered cars is soaring worldwide, even as the overall auto market stagnates. Going Mainstream: In December, Europeans for the first time bought more electric cars than diesels, once the most popular option. Turning Point: Electric vehicles account for a small slice of the market, but in 2022, their march could become unstoppable. Here is why. Tesla’s Success: A superior command of technology and its own supply chain allowed the company to bypass an industrywide crisis. Rivian’s Troubles: Investors first embraced this electric vehicle maker. Now they worry it may not live up to its promise. Green Fleet: Amazon wants electric vans to make its deliveries. The problem? The auto industry barely produces any of the vehicles yet.This spring, Ford is supposed to start full production of an electric version of its F-150 pickup truck and has taken reservations for more than 150,000 of them. It is also building two battery plants in Kentucky, and a third battery plant and an electric truck factory in Tennessee.Separately on Wednesday, Stellantis outlined a long-term strategic plan that calls for rapid introductions of new electric vehicles. The company, which was formed a year ago from the merger of Fiat Chrysler and the French automaker Peugeot, said that it would introduce 25 E.V.s in the United States by 2030, and that all new models in Europe would be electric by that time. It plans to build two battery plants in the United States.G.M. has similar plans. It is building two battery plants, and aims to phase out internal-combustion models by 2035.Ford’s reorganization is one of the most sweeping taken by a traditional automaker in preparation for the transition to electric vehicles. Mr. Farley said the plan had come together after he and other top Ford executives noticed stark differences in the two business areas.In making gas-powered vehicles, Ford must focus on reducing costs and generating the profits it needs to fund its E.V. plans. Over the next four years, Ford aims to trim costs for its internal-combustion models by $3 billion, with some cuts coming through job reductions, Mr. Farley said.The electric business, in contrast, will have to spend heavily to develop software and technologies and to ramp up production quickly to achieve economies of scale. Ford aims to produce two million electric vehicles a year by 2026.“For Ford to win against the new players and the other manufacturers, we have to focus more than we do today,” Mr. Farley said. “You can’t have people work on both at the same time.”The E.V. group will be known as Ford Model e. Mr. Farley will serve as its president. Doug Field, a former Apple and Tesla executive hired by Ford in September, will lead its vehicle, software and digital systems development.The internal-combustion business, known as Ford Blue, will be led by Kumar Galhotra, who was president of Ford’s North American operations.Ford plans to begin breaking out the profits and losses of the two groups in 2023, and expects the electric business to become profitable within four years. Mr. Farley said the group would most likely have 2,000 to 5,000 employees. In addition to developing electric models, it will engineer new types of assembly lines to build them and manage Ford’s sourcing of key components like motors and inverters and raw materials such as lithium and rare earth metals.Mr. Farley said he envisioned the two groups working closely together. Ford Model e will use body engineering, stamping, and components like seats and steering systems that the internal-combustion group develops. The E.V. unit will produce software and digital components that will be incorporated into traditional gasoline vehicles made by Ford Blue.Mr. Farley said Ford had decided against spinning off the E.V. business because it would hinder the ability of the two groups to cooperate. “They would come to see each other as competitors, and the cooperation would stop,” he said. More

Some European buyers, shippers, banks and insurers have grown leery of doing business with the country in recent days.HOUSTON — The United States and the European Union have been unwilling to put sanctions on Russian energy exports in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine. But some oil traders appear to have concluded that buying oil from Russia is just not worth the trouble.One of the three top oil producers in the world, after the United States and Saudi Arabia, Russia provides roughly 10 percent of the global supply. But in recent days traders and European refineries have greatly reduced their purchases of Russian oil. Some have stopped altogether.Buyers are pulling back because they or the shipping companies, banks and insurance companies they use are worried about running afoul of Western sanctions in place now or those that might come later, energy experts said. Others are worried that shipments could be hit by missiles, and some just don’t want to risk being seen as bankrolling the government of President Vladimir V. Putin.Russian exporters have been offering the country’s highest-quality oil at a discount of up to $20 a barrel in recent days but have found few buyers, analysts said. Buyers, in Europe in particular, have been switching to Middle Eastern oil, a decision that has helped drive the global oil price above $100 a barrel for the first time since 2014.“The enablers of oil exports — the banks, insurance companies, tanker companies and even multinational oil companies — have enacted what amounts to a de facto ban,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service. Mr. Kloza said it could take weeks before it was clear how significantly Russia’s oil exports had fallen and whether the drop would be sustained, but “clearly the Russian contribution to world oil supply has been constricted.”On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency said its members, which include the United States and more than a dozen European nations, had agreed to release 60 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves. The announcement had little impact on global oil prices, probably because the amount was modest, amounting to roughly three days of consumption by the United States. The White House and Energy Department signaled that more oil could be released later by describing the I.E.A. agreement as an “initial release.”Much of Russia’s oil is shipped out of Black Sea ports for use in Europe. Some shipping companies carrying oil and commercial goods are afraid that their vessels will be fired on. Congestion in sea lanes is interrupting the shipping of not only oil but also food. On Friday, an unidentified missile hit a Moldovan-flagged tanker carrying oil and diesel.“Russia’s flagship Urals blend was one of the first to break through the $100-per-barrel mark this year,” said Louise Dickson, senior oil market analyst at Rystad Energy, a research and consulting firm. “But the country’s incursion into Ukraine has now made it one of the most toxic barrels on the market.”As European refiners buy more oil from places like Saudi Arabia, Russian companies are increasingly trying to sell their crude to refineries in China and other Asian countries by offering them discounts.Most of Russia’s roughly five million barrels of daily oil exports go to Europe. About 700,000 barrels a day are consumed in the United States, roughly 4 percent of the U.S. market.Several Scandinavian refiners, including Neste Oyj of Finland and Preem of Sweden, have said they halted purchases of Russian oil.“Due to the current situation and uncertainty in the market, Neste has mostly replaced Russian crude oil with other crudes, such as North Sea oil,” said Theodore Rolfvondenbaumen, a Neste spokesman. As the company watches future sanctions and “potential countersanctions,” he said, it is preparing “for various options in procurement, production and logistics.”Energy experts say the international oil trade could be rejiggered in ways that are similar to what happened in 1956 when Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt and closed the Suez Canal. For a time, oil tankers were rerouted around Africa. Similarly, over the next few months Russian oil once shipped to Europe could go to China.Russia’s Attack on Ukraine and the Global EconomyCard 1 of 6A rising concern. More

President Biden is poised to talk up the striking progress the labor market has made during the first year of his presidency — and it is true that the snapback has been rapid, exceeding most economists expectations.But the breakneck pace of hiring needs to be understood in context, because it happened as the labor market was clambering back from pandemic lockdowns that caused millions of jobs to disappear practically overnight.Overall employment might be the easiest way to understand what has gone on in the labor market since the pandemic began to bite in March 2020. About 152.5 million people had jobs in February 2020; by May 2020, that had dropped to 133 million. Between then and mid-January 2021, the final months of Donald J. Trump’s administration, the job market added back about half of the jobs it lost and employment rose to 143 million.Since Mr. Biden took office on Jan. 20, 2021, the economy has added back about 6.6 million jobs — a number Mr. Biden will emphasize, his administration said ahead of the Tuesday night speech, noting that the progress made for “one of the strongest labor market recoveries in American history.”Employment ReboundJob gains bounced back rapidly following abrupt layoffs at the start of the pandemic.

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Total nonfarm employment, seasonally adjusted
Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesThe unemployment rate has fallen swiftly and now stands at 4 percent — down from a 14.7 percent peak in May 2020. Economists in a Bloomberg survey expect the February rate, which will be released on Friday, to be down to 3.9 percent. That progress has come much more quickly than many economists, including officials at the Federal Reserve, had anticipated. Meanwhile, job openings have surged and companies are paying up to attract workers.The question is how much of the progress owes to the administration’s policies. Some of it probably can be attributed to them: By pumping money into the economy and stoking consumer demand, the $1.9 trillion aid package Democrats passed last year has created more need for employees and has probably goosed hiring.But strong demand has been a double-edged sword: It has also collided with constrained supply chains to push prices higher, and inflation is eroding wage gains, even as average hourly earnings pick up at the fastest pace in decades across a range of measures, especially for rank-and-file workers and those with less education.In fact, price gains have been so quick that pay has often failed to keep up with them in recent months, on average.Still, the reality that jobs are plentiful and that employers continue to hire voraciously is a positive talking point for the Biden administration as it approaches midterm elections.The president will emphasize the role his policies “played in positioning employers to hire and workers to rejoin the labor force and find higher quality jobs,” according to a White House fact sheet released ahead of Mr. Biden’s remarks. More

Timing is not in the president’s favor as elections that could cost his party control of Congress approach, and inflation has yet to fade.[Follow for live updates on Biden’s 2022 State of the Union address.]President Biden is expected to devote much of his State of the Union address to emphasizing how far the economy has come since the pandemic recession, with plentiful jobs and rising wages. But he will also focus on his plans to help slow rapid inflation, underscoring the challenge Democrats face ahead of the midterm elections: Inflation is painfully high, voters are angry, and the tried and true way to bring prices down is by slowing growth and hurting the labor market.Mr. Biden will outline a four-part plan for beating back rapid price increases, including encouraging corporate competition and strengthening a supply chain that has struggled to keep up with consumer demand. Specifically, he will detail an effort to drive down ocean shipping costs, which have soared during the pandemic.But White House policies have historically served as a backup line of defense when it comes to containing inflation, which is primarily the Federal Reserve’s job. The central bank is prepared to move swiftly in the coming months to raise interest rates, making money more expensive to borrow and spend. Higher rates are meant to slow hiring, wage growth and demand enough to tamp down price increases.It is possible that inflation could cool so much on its own this year that the Fed will be able to gently slow the economy toward a sustainable path. But if price gains remain rapid, the Fed’s playbook for combating overheating is by inflicting economic pain.That is why inflation — which is running at the fastest pace in 40 years — is a major liability for the Biden administration. It is undermining consumer confidence by chipping away at paychecks and causing sticker shock for consumers trying to buy groceries, couches or used cars. And the cure could slow a solid economic rebound just as Democrats are trying to make their pitch for re-election to voters.“The biggest problem for President Biden is that there’s no good way to message inflation,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and former White House economic official during the Obama administration. “There’s not a lot that he can do about it, but he can’t get up there and say: The only solution here is patience and the Federal Reserve.”Instead, Mr. Biden plans to argue that his administration’s policies can help to cool down inflation at less of a cost to the economy, by expanding its capacity to produce goods and services, according to White House excerpts from his prepared remarks.“One way to fight inflation is to drive down wages and make Americans poorer,” he will say, referencing the way that central bank policy works. “I have a better plan to fight inflation.”Mr. Furman said that while the solutions the president was expected to lay out — ideas to improve supply chains, produce goods more efficiently, and expand work force opportunities — were “the right things” for the administration to do, the nation should not be “under any illusion that it is going to add up to a lot” in terms of cooling rapid price gains.The president is also expected to use his remarks on Tuesday to try to refocus voters on the economic wins of his presidency.The economy has added 6.6 million jobs back since Mr. Biden took office, unemployment is poised to fall below 4 percent and growth has been more rapid than in many other advanced economies. The strength and scope of the rebound has surprised economists and policymakers, who often credit relief packages rolled out under the Trump and Biden administrations for fomenting such a quick recovery.But some economists warned that the $1.9 trillion legislation the administration ushered through Congress in March 2021 was too big and too poorly targeted, and that it would stoke demand and help to fuel rapid price gains. While fiscal policy was not the only reason inflation popped last year, it does seem to have contributed to high prices by encouraging more consumption.As flush consumers spent strongly in 2020 and last year, and as homebound shoppers bought more goods like easy chairs and computers rather than services like manicures and meals out, supply chains struggled to keep up.The Port of Los Angeles is America’s busiest port. Supply chains have been disrupted as ports became clogged and there were not enough ships to go around.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesVirus outbreaks continued to shut down factories, ports became clogged, and there were not enough ships to go around. The perfect storm of strong buying and limited supply pushed car prices in particular sharply higher, left consumers waiting months on end for new dining room sets, and meant that fancy bicycles were harder to find and afford.And now, inflation has moved past just those goods affected by the pandemic.The cost of food, fuel, housing, vacations, and furniture are all rising rapidly — and as conflict in Russia threatens to further push up gas prices in the coming months, the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.While the White House spent last year downplaying popping prices, arguing that they would fade with the pandemic as roiled global supply chains righted themselves, nearly a full year of high inflation readings have proved too much to ignore. Climbing costs are eating away at paychecks and helping to drive Mr. Biden’s poll numbers to the lowest point so far in his presidency.“I don’t think that it is going to go away in a way that is going to save the incumbent party by November,” said Neil Dutta, an economist at Renaissance Macro Research. “Even though the labor market is quite strong, it’s not enough to keep pace with the shock people are feeling with respect to inflation.”The Fed is expected to raise interest rates from near-zero at its meeting this month and officials have signaled that they will then make a series of increases throughout the year as they try to put a lid on inflation.The central bank sets policy independently of the White House, and the Biden administration avoids talking about monetary policy out of respect for that tradition. But the timing could be politically tricky. The Fed could prompt an economic pullback that coincides with this autumn’s election season, creating a double whammy for the Democrats in which central bank policy is slowing down job market progress even as inflation has yet to fully fade.That might be especially true if conflict in Ukraine sends fuel prices higher, further stoking inflation and making consumers expect rapid price increases to continue, some economists said.“The Fed has to be more aggressive on inflation,” said Diane Swonk, the chief economist at Grant Thornton. “It could bleed into the unemployment rate by the end of the year.”Mr. Furman said that he thought it was more likely that the Fed’s actions would not inflict too much pain this year, though they might begin to squeeze the job market in 2023. And Mr. Dutta speculated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine could slow the central bank down somewhat, at least in the near-term.“The Fed basically has a choice — they can sink the economy into a recession, or they can let inflation run a little bit,” Mr. Dutta said. “They’re not going to risk a recession with the geopolitical situation we’re in.”The conflict overseas may also give Mr. Biden and Democrats a moment of patriotism to capitalize on. So far, Mr. Biden’s sanctions have been well-received by voters, based on the results of an ABC/Washington Post poll.A diner in New York last month. Inflation is having an impact beyond just the costs of goods. Rent prices are rising, as are the costs of travel and eating out.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesAt the same time, higher gas pump prices resulting from the conflict could further dent consumer confidence. Sentiment has swooned as price increases have climbed, and tends to be very responsive to fuel costs. The price of a barrel of gas climbed above $100 on Tuesday, the highest since 2014, based on a popular benchmark. The question is whether, in the face of rising costs, the administration will be able to turn bright spots — international cooperation and the pace of recent job gains — into something salient for consumers and voters.The answer may hinge on what happens next.Annual price gains are expected to slow down in the coming months as they are measured against relatively high readings from last year, and as supply chain delays ease somewhat. They could moderate even more later this year if the current elevated goods prices come back down, in the most hopeful scenario.If inflation moderates on its own and a relatively small response from the Fed is enough to nudge it down further, the economy could be left with strong growth, a booming labor market and a positive outlook headed into 2023.But increasingly, inflation is expected to fade more slowly.Economists at Goldman Sachs think consumer price inflation could end 2022 at 4.6 percent, more than twice the level it hovered around before the pandemic. That would mark a slowdown — the measure now stands at 7.5 percent — but it would be much higher than what the Fed normally aims for.That would allow the administration to talk about a moderation in price gains, but it might not feel like a significant improvement to consumers as they head to the polls.“Inflation is always political, because it burns, even in a good economy,” Ms. Swonk said. “It creates a sensation of chasing a moving target, which no one likes.” More