Evelyn Reynolds

Economic growth slowed sharply over the summer as supply-chain bottlenecks and the resurgent pandemic restrained activity at stores, factories and restaurants.Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, grew 0.5 percent in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That was down from 1.6 percent in the second quarter, dashing earlier hopes that the recovery would accelerate as the year went on.On an annualized basis, G.D.P. rose 2 percent in the third quarter, down from 6.7 percent in the second quarter.The slowdown was partly a result of the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, which led many Americans to pull back on travel, restaurant meals and other in-person activities. More recent data suggests that people have returned to those activities as virus cases have fallen, and most economists expect significantly faster growth in the final three months of the year.But another major restriction on growth may be slower to recede. The pandemic has snarled supply chains around the world, even as demand for many products has surged. The resulting backups have made it hard for U.S. stores and factories to get the products and parts they need. Economists initially expected the disruptions to be short-lived, but many now expect the issues to linger into next year. More

Start-ups are betting that the pandemic has spawned a new kind of worker who wants an office space closer to home, without the long commute.Paul Doran, a health care salesman, dreads the thought of commuting back to his office in Manhattan after 19 months of working from home in Jersey City, N.J.But Mr. Doran, 33, also wants a break from overhearing his fiancée’s calls and a better place to meet with clients than the local Starbucks. So he signed up for Daybase, a new company that is opening several co-working spaces, including in Hoboken, close to his apartment.“It would take a couple more zeros on the paycheck,” he said, “to get me back to commuting into Manhattan four or five days a week.”More than a year and a half ago, the coronavirus pandemic triggered an unprecedented disruption to the daily routines of office work, keeping millions of employees in their homes.Now, as the pandemic crawls into a second year, the future of work is still up in the air as many companies have embraced a hybrid model, allowing employees to split their workweek between the office and home, with little clarity about the timing of a mandatory return.In this uncertainty, a growing number of start-ups are betting that the pandemic has spawned a new kind of worker — one who will not be commuting into a central business district five days a week, but would still desire occasional office space closer to home for a distraction-free environment.In the New York City metropolitan area, home to the country’s largest office districts, co-working spaces are increasingly targeting the hundreds of thousands of office workers who live in the suburbs.Some developers who own Manhattan office buildings have scoffed at the idea that satellite workplaces will become a permanent alternative to working from home or from traditional offices, believing the hybrid model is a short-term trend.Still, the emergence of co-working spaces in residential neighborhoods underscores the uncertain prospects for New York’s office sector and its role as an economic engine that supports a vast ecosystem of restaurants, coffee shops and other businesses.The owner of Saks Fifth Avenue is partnering with WeWork to turn parts of department stores into co-working spaces. Codi, a start-up founded in Berkeley, Calif., offers private homes as flexible working spaces. Industrious, a co-working company, has an office space inside a mall in Short Hills, N.J.Daybase, created during the pandemic by a group of former WeWork executives, is opening its first co-working locations in the coming months in the New York City area — Hoboken and Westfield, N.J., as well as in Harrison, N.Y.The company is leasing vacant retail spaces, targeting densely populated neighborhoods where local residents had long prepandemic commutes and few other co-working options. Users can pay $50 for a monthly membership for access to lounge areas or, for instance, use a desk for about $10 an hour.At the heart of Daybase’s thesis is the idea that giving employees the flexibility to work from a suburban office space will ultimately attract a wider talent pool and make New York City more competitive with other cities. The ripple effects would boost the region’s economy, Daybase executives believe, part of an ongoing debate about whether New York City can fully recover only if workers return to Manhattan five days a week.“Certain real estate owners believe the only path to prosperity is to bring everybody back,” said Joel Steinhaus, a Daybase co-founder. “I don’t follow that approach. If we’re thinking about attracting talent to the region, this is more sustainable long-term.”Joel Steinhaus, co-founder of Daybase, is betting on a future in which suburban residents will spend part of their week working out of a co-working space closer to home.James Estrin/The New York TimesIn New York City, the real estate industry has been eager for workers to return to office towers. But many companies have discovered that they can operate with a smaller footprint as more jobs have become fully remote. Despite a recent uptick in demand for Manhattan office leases, the availability of office space there is still near a record high.A recent analysis by Fitch Ratings concluded that if companies were to adopt just a day and a half of remote work per week, office landlords’ profits would fall by 15 percent. At three days, income would be slashed by 30 percent.Jim Whelan, the president of the Real Estate Board of New York, a lobbying organization that represents major developers, said his staff has been required to work five days a week in the office since the summer. He believes buildings will fill up as cheaper commercial rents entice companies to lease in Manhattan again.He questioned why employees would use a co-working site on their work-from-home days and brushed off the possibility of employees working remotely part of the week after the pandemic, calling it “your alternate universe.”“Over time, we are going to work a five-day-a-week schedule,” Mr. Whelan said. “There are signs that the commercial market is picking up in the pace of leasing and in terms of how many tenants are out there looking for space.”In the New York region, about 32 percent of workers were in the office in mid-October, according to Kastle Systems, a security company that tracks employee card swipes in office buildings. The percentage has climbed steadily since Labor Day, but is still half of what employers had predicted in a June survey by Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy group.A bigger reckoning around office space may unfold in the coming years, as an estimated 30 percent of leases at large Manhattan buildings will expire by 2024, according to the New York State Comptroller’s Office. One major question, economists say, is whether larger companies will hold onto their office space to guarantee seats for all employees, no matter how many days a week they come in.New York City’s office buildings are worth an estimated $172 billion and provide about 20 percent of the city’s property tax revenues. As new leasing plummeted during the pandemic, the value of the buildings dropped by $28.6 billion, the first decline in at least 20 years, according to the New York State Comptroller’s Office, costing the city more than $850 million in property taxes.For many employees, the reluctance to return comes down to the commute.Workers in the New York region had the longest average one-way commute in the country at about 38 minutes, according to 2019 census data. About 23 percent of workers in the region commuted at least an hour each way.In June, Tom Hebner, a vice president at NeuraFlash, a consulting firm, relocated to a co-working space operated by Serendipity Labs in Ridgewood, N.J., where he lives. He said he was reminded of the benefits whenever he visits the company’s New York City office, a round trip that can take up to three hours.“I’m the only guy in the suburbs who can walk to work,” said Mr. Hebner, who works at the Ridgewood location every day with three other NeuraFlash employees.John Arenas, the chief executive of Serendipity Labs, said that when he founded the company a decade ago, his pitch for co-working spaces in the suburbs failed to take off because the corporate world strictly adhered to a five-day workweek in a central office.Since the pandemic hit, Mr. Arenas said, more than half of his revenue now comes from companies that pay for employees to work from a co-working location in the suburbs as a perk.Savills, a real estate firm, has found through surveys of its corporate clients that many employees relocated to the suburbs during the pandemic, prompting companies to seek out Manhattan office spaces near transit hubs, like Pennsylvania Station. But it has also led employees to demand more flexibility to work from home.Offering co-working spaces as a perk could risk creating a fractured work culture where employees feel disconnected from the main office and more willing to switch jobs, said Rebecca Humphrey, an executive vice president at Savills.“If you’re not a company that has a very strong sense of your culture, an approach like this can really fail,” Ms. Humphrey said.Co-working spaces in the suburbs are particularly appealing to parents who want more separation between home and work, Daybase said. In its surveys of prospective customers, the biggest complaints about working from home were the lack of space, unreliable internet and noise (leaf blower day, in particular).Daybase plans to expand nationally through franchising, seeking out spaces that are close to grocery stores, child care options and gyms, with the hopes that workers use the offices as part of a broader daily routine.Mr. Steinhaus, the Daybase co-founder, sees the company as a supplement, not a threat, to the traditional office building. In fact, Daybase itself started leasing office space this summer in a tower near Grand Central Terminal. The company organizes its meetings and happy hours around Wednesdays, the designated day when every employee comes into the office.“The office building is not going anywhere,” Mr. Steinhaus said. “We’re just going to use it differently.” More

The first estimate for third-quarter annualized GDP growth is expected to show an increase of just 2.8%.
That would be the slowest pace since the recovery began in April 2020 off the shortest but steepest recession in U.S. history.
Economists aren’t worried. They largely say the slowdown is the result of factors, principally related to supply chain bottlenecks.

Containers are stacked on the deck of cargo ship Seamax New Haven as it is under way in New York Harbor in New York City, U.S. October 13, 2021.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

The U.S. economic recovery slowed sharply in the previous three months, as products remained stranded at normally bustling ports, employers struggled to find workers and consumers battled with rising prices.
When the Commerce Department releases Thursday its first estimate for third-quarter annualized gross domestic product growth, it likely will show an increase of just 2.8%, according to Dow Jones estimates.

While that kind of number would have seemed perfectly fine in pre-Covid times, it actually would be the slowest pace since the recovery began in April 2020 off the shortest but steepest recession in U.S. history.
Moreover, there’s a chance the economy didn’t grow at all in the quarter — the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracker lowered its estimate to 0.2%, with the most recent downgrade the result of a lowered outlook for government spending and real net exports.

Economists aren’t worried, however. They largely say the slowdown is the result of factors, principally related to supply chain bottlenecks, that will ease in the months ahead and allow the recovery to continue.
“The weakness is a function of supply distortions more than anything,” Natixis chief economist for the Americas Joseph LaVorgna said. “The economy is still fundamentally strong, and I wouldn’t look at this one quarter of being reflective of where we’re going.”
Natixis, in fact, has a slightly rosier outlook on the number for GDP, which is a sum of the goods and services the economy produces. The firm sees growth coming in at a 3.3% pace. Still, that would be down sharply from the 6.7% increase in the second quarter. It would also be the lowest figure since the staggering 31.2% plunge in the pandemic-scarred second quarter of 2020.

“To the extent that we haven’t fully reopened, at least in terms of travel and leisure activities, things are healthier than what they seem,” LaVorgna said. “I don’t look at this as a sign of things to come.”
CNBC’s Rapid Update survey of forecasters indicates median growth expectations of 2.3% for the third quarter.
Still, the economy faces multiple challenges.
Dozens of ships are stuck at jammed California coast ports, waiting to deliver some $24 billion of goods, according to a recent Goldman Sachs estimate. The bottlenecks are the result of outsized demand for goods over services at a time when companies are having a hard time filling vacant positions. A record 4.3 million workers left their jobs in August, leaving the economy with 10.4 million employment openings, according to the Labor Department.
There’s dim hope that the supply chain issues will work themselves out anytime soon. A recent Dallas Federal Reserve survey showed 41.3% of respondents think it will take at least 10 months for supply chains to return to normal, and 64.5% of Texas firms said they’ve seen disruptions or delays with supplies, up from 35.5% in February.

Other economic issues

Those problems are in turn triggering a run on inflation that is near its highest point in 30 years as goods become more scarce and costs of materials continue to rise.
LaVorgna said he worries about the potential for swelling energy costs to thwart growth in the future.
“Production is still about 15 to 20% below where it was pre-pandemic,” he said. “The recipe for higher energy costs is very present. That’s what will hurt the economy even more than the supply chain issues will.”
In the meantime, expectations for growth have been recalibrated.
Goldman Sachs has lowered its GDP outlook several times, and took it down further Wednesday for the third quarter to 2.75%. The firm has ratcheted down its 2021 and 2022 full-year outlooks to 5.6% and 4%, respectively, from already-lowered estimates of 5.7% and 4.4%.
Federal Reserve policymakers are contending with the concurrent forces of slowing growth and rising inflation, raising comparisons to the stagflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Traders have upped their bets to when the Fed will start raising interest rates again, with the fed funds futures market now anticipating the initial hike in June 2022 and at least one more before the end of the year.
However, most economists dismiss the likelihood of stagflation, instead expecting a more normal set of circumstances to prevail.
That would mean a considerable acceleration of GDP in the fourth quarter followed by a 2022 that would start to resemble the pre-pandemic U.S. economy. Jefferies economists, for instance, see the third quarter coming in at a 3.8% growth rate before giving way to an 8% burst to end 2021.
Citigroup is looking for just 2.4% in third-quarter growth, but economist Veronica Clark noted that “the slower pace can broadly be summarized as a result of supply-side constraints as opposed to a reflection of softer demand.”

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The Latest on Food PricesNelson D. SchwartzReporting on economicsPrices of meat, poultry, fish and eggs in U.S. cities are up 15 percent since the start of 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Steak, ground beef for hamburger, and turkey are especially costly. The increases are due to supply chain shortages and higher labor costs and there is little relief in sight. In fact, some economists think prices could rise even more, given the increase in energy prices. More

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances increased to 3.30% from 3.23%.
Refinance demand fell 2% week to week, seasonally adjusted. Volume was 26% lower than the same week one year ago.
Mortgage applications to purchase a home increased 4% for the week but were 9% lower than the same week one year ago

Real estate agents arrive at a brokers tour showing a house for sale in San Rafael, California.
Getty Images

Mortgage rates have been on a tear this month, rising yet again last week to the highest level in eight months, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. That caused mixed demand for mortgages last week, resulting in no change from the week before.
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($548,250 or less) increased to 3.30% from 3.23%, with points decreasing to 0.34 from 0.35 (including the origination fee) for loans with a 20% down payment. That rate was 30 basis points lower one year ago.

As a result, refinance demand fell 2% week to week, seasonally adjusted. Volume was 26% lower than the same week one year ago. The refinance share of mortgage activity decreased to 62.2% of total applications from 63.3% the previous week.
“The increase in rates triggered the fifth straight decrease in refinance activity to the slowest weekly pace since January 2020. Higher rates continue to reduce borrowers’ incentive to refinance,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting, in a release.
Mortgage applications to purchase a home increased 4% for the week but were 9% lower than the same week one year ago. As home prices continue to rise, and most of the sales are in higher price tiers, the average loan size rose to its highest level in three weeks.
“Both new and existing-home sales last month were at their strongest sales pace since early 2021, but first-time home buyers are accounting for a declining share of activity,” added Kan.
The latest read on home prices from S&P Case-Shiller showed prices up nearly 20% nationally, but the annual gain, which has been rising steadily for the past year, did not change from the previous month. That could be a sign that higher mortgage rates are taking at least a little bit of the heat out of prices.
Mortgage rates edged down slightly to start this week, but that could just be a brief reprieve before next week. The Federal Reserve is widely expected to announce next Wednesday that it will taper its purchases of mortgage-backed bonds. That should send rates even higher.

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Over Zoom calls from basements and a breakfast in Brussels, faltering negotiations to remake the world’s tax architecture were revived.WASHINGTON — Over a two-hour breakfast of tea and pastries at the Hotel Amigo in Brussels in July, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen tried to persuade Paschal Donohoe, the Irish finance minister, to abandon Ireland’s rock bottom corporate tax rate and join the global deal the Biden administration was racing to clinch.The closing pitch was simple: Ireland cannot go back in time. The days of American companies moving their headquarters to Ireland for tax purposes were largely over, and more than 100 countries had already agreed in principle to join the agreement.That meeting kicked off a three-month push to hash out the most sweeping changes to the international tax system in a century, which culminated in an agreement that President Biden and other leaders of the Group of 20 nations are expected to complete this week in Rome. The deal has become crucial to Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda, with the White House and Democrats in Congress now relying on revenue from a new 15 percent global minimum tax and other changes to help pay for the expansive spending package still being negotiated.Getting to yes was not easy. In the end, the United States had to convince Ireland that its economy would be better off raising its cherished 12.5 percent corporate tax rate and joining rather than remaining a tax haven and leaving the global tax system under a cloud of uncertainty. With the European Union needing all 27 nations to be on board, the pressure was on to get Ireland to come around.Officials from countries involved in the negotiations said the outcome was not clear until hours before the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development announced on Oct. 8 that Ireland and two other holdouts — Estonia and Hungary — had joined the pact.Nearly 140 countries agreed to adopt a global minimum tax of 15 percent and settled on terms to tax large, profitable multinational corporations based on where their goods and services are sold, rather than where they operate. The agreement aims to end corporate tax havens that have for decades siphoned tax revenue away from governments, leaving infrastructure and public health needs languishing.“I think the world had come to understand that at the end of the day, all the countries trying to raise tax revenue are the losers, the companies are the winners, and the workers are the losers,” Ms. Yellen said in an interview on Tuesday. “No country really feels it can act independently to raise taxes because its firms will be uncompetitive, so the only way to do this is to hold hands and say enough is enough.”The deal is a signature achievement for Ms. Yellen, who has spent the past eight months trying to persuade nations to agree on a global tax pact that sputtered during the Trump administration.The push to reach a deal stemmed from the administration’s concerns about a global race to the bottom on corporate taxation, a phenomenon that was viewed as a big obstacle to Mr. Biden’s plan to increase corporate taxes domestically.The administration viewed persuading the rest of the world to set a global minimum tax as crucial to its own plans to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, since that would minimize any competitive disadvantage. The Treasury Department estimated that its international tax plans could raise $700 billion in tax revenue over a decade.To show that the new administration was taking the negotiations seriously, Ms. Yellen told her counterparts in February that she was abandoning a Trump administration stance that would have effectively blocked other countries from imposing new taxes on American companies. She offered a plan that would allow the world’s richest companies, regardless of where they are based, to face new taxes in exchange for the removal of digital services taxes.“It had been a show stopper in these negotiations that had been going on for many years,” Ms. Yellen said.The next big obstacle was settling on a rate. The United States wanted a minimum tax of 21 percent, very likely a nonstarter for a country such as Ireland, which has relied on its 12.5 percent tax rate to attract international investment. In May, the United States agreed to continue negotiations on the basis that the rate would be “at least” 15 percent — while hoping to nudge it higher.“The turning point has been the support of the American administration,” Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, told The New York Times this month.Mr. Grinberg, a tax law professor at Georgetown University, worked in the Treasury Department during the Bush and Obama administrations.Lexey Swall for The New York TimesTo get the deal over the finish line, Ms. Yellen relied on two tax experts, Itai Grinberg and Rebecca Kysar, whom she tapped in early February and describes as “invaluable” partners in navigating international negotiations.Mr. Grinberg, a tax law professor at Georgetown University who worked in the Treasury Department during the Bush and Obama administrations, was initially viewed with skepticism by some progressives, who noted that in 2016 and 2017, he lamented America’s “singularly high corporate tax rate” during congressional hearings and called for the rate to be slashed in favor of a consumption tax.But in early 2020, Mr. Grinberg wrote in a Foreign Affairs essay that European digital services taxes could open a dangerous front in the Trump administration’s tariff wars and warned that the “decay of the century-long international tax order is likely to accelerate” without a deal. Later that year, Mr. Grinberg alerted Mr. Biden’s campaign advisers on how their international tax proposals meshed with the stalled discussions of a global minimum tax. After the election, he joined Mr. Biden’s transition team.Ms. Kysar, a professor at the Fordham School of Law and a tax treaty expert, has been a vocal critic of the 2017 Republican tax overhaul. In 2018, she told the Senate Finance Committee that the law’s international tax provisions “fundamentally botched general business taxation.” Ms. Kysar had collaborated on research with David Kamin, deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council, who helped recruit her to join the transition team and administration.With the Treasury Department working remotely, Mr. Grinberg and Ms. Kysar spent months juggling Zoom meetings with officials from finance ministries around the world and fielding calls with tax directors from America’s largest companies, which have been anxious about what the agreement will mean for their tax bills.Working from their basements in Washington and Connecticut, they regularly exchanged emails in real time during negotiations, but they had never met until they traveled to a gathering of finance ministers in Venice in July. At such summits, they would often employ a divide and conquer approach, with Ms. Kysar joining Ms. Yellen in meetings with her counterparts and Mr. Grinberg negotiating separately with Irish tax officials.The final months of negotiations centered on the United States and Ireland, but with moving parts falling in and out of place from Peru to India, which threatened to back out of the deal shortly ahead the announcement.Ms. Yellen’s approach with Ireland was to cajole more than to pressure.“Where once upon a time this tax advantage may have been important to Ireland, Ireland has built a really strong economy with a very well educated labor force,” Ms. Yellen said. “It is an extremely attractive base for American multinationals to choose as their E.U. headquarters.”In a call with Ms. Yellen in early September, Mr. Donohoe said that the deal hinged on the United States agreeing to drop language suggesting the rate could be higher than 15 percent.Ms. Yellen signed off on removing the “at least” 15 percent language, yet what Mr. Donohoe would do was still not clear. That was, until Oct. 7, when he called Ms. Yellen and Ms. Kysar to say that Ireland was in.Ms. Kysar, a professor at the Fordham School of Law , is an expert in international tax treaties.Lexey Swall for The New York Times“Ireland is a country that believes that smaller economies like our own do need to be competitive,” Mr. Donohoe said in an interview. “But we also know that for economies like our own, for societies like our own, we deeply value cooperation, we deeply value compromise.”To demonstrate American solidarity, Ms. Yellen will visit Dublin next month.The next steps could be even more challenging. A deal among countries does not mean there is agreement within those nations, including the United States, which will need to change America’s tax code and potentially rewrite tax treaties to comply with the agreement. That could require Republican support, which is not guaranteed. Top House and Senate Republicans have assailed the pact, calling the deal a “surrender.” More

Many households are being forced to adjust their shopping lists or seek assistance. But food banks, too, are feeling the pinch.With food prices surging, many Americans have found their household budgets upended, forcing difficult choices at the supermarket and putting new demands on programs intended to help.Food banks and pantries, too, are struggling with the increase in costs, substituting or pulling the most expensive products, like beef, from offerings. What’s more, donations of food are down, even as the number of people seeking help remains elevated.Even well-off Americans have noticed that many items are commanding higher prices, but they can still manage. It’s different for people with limited means.“Any time someone is low income, that means they’re spending a higher percentage on needs like food and housing,” said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. “When prices go up, they have less slack in their budgets to offset and they are quick to fall into hardship.”Before the run-up in prices — driven by supply-chain knots and rising labor costs — Robin Mueller would buy ground beef for meatloaf or hamburgers to serve once or twice a week for her family in Indianapolis. Now she can afford to cook it only once or twice a month.“You have to pick and choose,” said Ms. Mueller, who is 52 and disabled and lives with her daughter and her husband. “Before, you didn’t have to do that. You could just go in and buy a week or two’s worth of food. Now I can barely buy a week’s worth.”She has turned to food banks in Indianapolis for help, but they, too, are feeling the pinch.A case of peanut butter that was $13 to $14 before the pandemic now costs $16 to $19, according to Alexandra McMahon, director of food strategy for the Gleaners Food Bank of Indianapolis. Green beans that used to retail for $9 a case now sell for $14.“It has a big impact,” said Joseph Slater, chief operating officer of Gleaners. “It’s on our minds and it’s on the minds of our hungry neighbors as well.”In New York, Tynicole Lewis and her daughter, Lanese, depend on food stamps, but Ms. Lewis said that the aid runs out well before the end of the month now. Lanese is diabetic and Ms. Lewis serves as much protein and vegetables as possible — foodstuffs that have become especially pricey.“Food is expensive, and when the food stamps are gone, they’re gone,” said Ms. Lewis, who lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and earns $12,000 a year as a grocery store worker. “I have to wait.”She, too, depends on food pantries and has given up buying meat for the most part. “I eat a lot from the pantry, whatever they get,” Ms. Lewis said. “I like fish and I’ll treat myself when I get the food stamps.”While overall consumer prices in September were up 5.4 percent from a year ago, the cost of meat is up slightly more than that. Prices of staples like dairy products, fruits, grains and oils are also rising.Prices of meat, poultry, fish and eggs in U.S. cities are up 15 percent since the start of 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.The run-up in costs at the supermarket comes even as gasoline prices have risen and natural gas and heating oil prices are predicted to be higher this winter, putting further pressure on those with low incomes.In addition, the mammoth assistance programs rolled out by the federal government in response to the pandemic in 2020 have largely lapsed. While some households built up savings from government payments, others have little room for extra expenses.The forces behind higher food prices have been building for some time and aren’t going away anytime soon, said Michael Swanson, chief agricultural economist at Wells Fargo.“People are shocked, but this is a slow-motion train wreck,” he said. “The scary thing is that food companies haven’t passed along all of their costs yet.”The warehouse at the Gleaners Food Bank.Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesHigher transportation and warehousing expenses lead the list of causes, along with rising labor costs at meat processing centers and other nodes in the food supply chain.To be sure, there are some winners as a result of the cost squeeze. While meat prices are up sharply for consumers, prices for cattle and other livestock haven’t moved as much. The result is buoyant profits for beef processors, Mr. Swanson said.“This is not going to go backwards anytime soon,” he added. “As soon as producers and retailers get these price increases, they are very sticky.”Behind the scenes, logistics expenses have jumped even more sharply than prices for foodstuffs, along with the costs of unglamorous items that few gave much thought to a few years ago.Understand the Supply Chain CrisisCard 1 of 5Covid’s impact on the supply chain continues. More

There are signs that price growth could be cooling off in the otherwise red-hot housing market.
Prices rose 19.8% year over year in August, which was the same as the previous month, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices.
“August data also suggest that the growth in housing prices, while still very strong, may be beginning to decelerate,” said Craig Lazzara of S&P DJI.

A sign is posted in front of new homes for sale at Hamilton Cottages on September 24, 2020 in Novato, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

There are signs that price growth could be cooling off in the otherwise red-hot housing market.
Prices rose 19.8% year over year in August, which was the same as the previous month, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices. That is the first time the annual gain hasn’t increased since early 2020.

The 10-city composite annual increase was 18.6%, down from 19.2% in July. The 20-city composite rose 19.7% year-over-year, down from 20% in the previous month. Prices in all cities covered are at an all-time high.
“We have previously suggested that the strength in the U.S. housing market is being driven in part by a reaction to the Covid pandemic, as potential buyers move from urban apartments to suburban homes,” said Craig Lazzara, managing director and global head of index investment strategy at S&P DJI. “August data also suggest that the growth in housing prices, while still very strong, may be beginning to decelerate.”
Phoenix, San Diego, and Tampa saw the highest year-over-year gains among the 20 cities in August. Phoenix led the way with a 33.3% year-over-year price increase, followed by San Diego with a 26.2% increase and Tampa with a 25.9% increase.
Eight of the 20 cities reported higher price increases in the year ending August 2021 versus the year ending July 2021.
Price gains were partly fueled by a drop in mortgage rates in July and August. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed loan fell below 3% in July and stayed there until mid-September. It then began to rise sharply and is now around 3.25%, according to Mortgage News Daily. Higher interest rates could take some of the heat out of home prices in the coming months.

Home prices, however, are unlikely to cool significantly, as both homebuyer demand and investor demand are still high. The supply of homes for sale, especially at the lower end of the market, remains extremely lean. Some new supply did come on over the summer, but it is falling yet again.
“Persistently strong demand among traditional homebuyers has been amplified by an increase in demand among investors this summer,” said Selma Hepp, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic. “While strong home price appreciation rates are narrowing the pool of buyers, particularly first-time buyers, the depth of the supply and demand imbalance and robust demand among higher-income earners will continue to push prices higher.”

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