Raphael Stevens

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy has not seen inflation come back to the central bank’s goal, pointing to the further unlikelihood that interest rate cuts are in the offing anytime soon.
“The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence, and instead indicate that it’s likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence,” he said during a central banking forum.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a press conference following a closed two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on interest rate policy at the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 13, 2023.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that the U.S. economy, while otherwise strong, has not seen inflation come back to the central bank’s goal, pointing to the further unlikelihood that interest rate cuts are in the offing anytime soon.
Speaking to a policy forum focused on U.S.-Canada economic relations, Powell said that while inflation continues to make its way lower, it hasn’t moved quickly enough, and the current state of policy should remain intact.

“More recent data shows solid growth and continued strength in the labor market, but also a lack of further progress so far this year on returning to our 2% inflation goal,” the Fed chief said during a panel talk.
Echoing recent statements by central bank officials, Powell indicated the current level of policy likely will stay in place until inflation gets closer to target.
Since July 2023, the Fed has kept its benchmark interest rate in a target range between 5.25%-5.5%, the highest in 23 years. That was the result of 11 consecutive rate hikes that began in March 2022.
“The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence, and instead indicate that it’s likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence,” he said. “That said, we think policy is well positioned to handle the risks that we face.”
Powell added that until inflation shows more progress, “We can maintain the current level of restriction for as long as needed.”

The comments follow inflation data through the first three months of 2024 that has been higher than expected. A consumer price index reading for March, released last week, showed inflation running at a 3.5% annual rate — well off the peak around 9% in mid-2022 but drifting higher since October 2023.
Treasury yields rose as Powell spoke. The benchmark 2-year note, which is especially sensitive to Fed rate moves, briefly topped 5%, while the benchmark 10-year yield rose 3 basis points. The S&P 500 wavered after Powell’s remarks, briefly turning negative on the day before recovering.

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10-year and 2-year yields

Powell noted the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the personal consumption expenditures price index, showed core inflation at 2.8% in February and has been little changed over the past few months.
“We’ve said at the [Federal Open Market Committee] that we’ll need greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably towards 2% before [it will be] appropriate to ease policy,” he said. “The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence and instead indicate that it’s likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence.”
Financial markets have had to reset their expectations for rate cuts this year. At the start of 2024, traders in the fed funds futures market were pricing in six or seven cuts this year, starting in March. As the data has progressed, the expectations have shifted to one or two reductions, assuming quarter percentage point moves, and not starting until September.
In their most recent update, FOMC officials in March indicated they see three cuts this year. However, several policymakers in recent days have stressed the data-dependent nature of policy and have not committed to set level of reductions.
Correction: Powell’s comments follow inflation data through the first three months of 2024 that has been higher than expected. An earlier version misstated the year.

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The question of who should pay for a first date can be stressful.
The man should generally pay when it comes heterosexual couples, according to dating experts.
That is largely because men are often the ones asking to go on the date.

Janina Steinmetz | Digitalvision | Getty Images

When it comes to dating etiquette, one question seems to inspire more anxiety than most: Who pays for the first date?
Dating experts think there is a clear answer for heterosexual couples.

“The man should pay for the first date,” said Blaine Anderson, a dating coach for men. Erika Ettin, an online dating coach, agrees.
“I recommend my male clients pay and my female clients offer,” said Ettin, the founder of A Little Nudge. Men should politely decline that offer, unless the woman insists, in which case the man should accept it, Ettin added.
The etiquette “shouldn’t be that complicated,” she said.

Public opinion is more or less in line with what dating experts say. Most Americans, 72%, say a man should pay for the first date, according to a recent NerdWallet survey. About 68% of adults stress about their finances when organizing a date, and 69% said they have felt uncomfortable on dates because of how much it will cost, according to a recent Self Financial poll.
Whoever pays, the average person pays $77 for a first date, according to a LendingTree survey. That adds up. The average man paid $861 on dates in 2019 while the average woman spent $500, LendingTree found.

“Plan something that’s within your budget,” said Anderson, founder of Dating By Blaine.
“If you’re concerned about cost, you have planned a date that is too expensive,” Anderson added. Feeling the need to go to a fancy dinner to impress your date means “you’re approaching the date wrong,” she said.

Why dating experts think men should pay

Damircudic | E+ | Getty Images

Historically, men were expected to cover the bill due to traditional roles of men as household breadwinners and women as caregivers for children, said Carli Blau, a couples and dating therapist.
While society has changed tremendously, men likely still feel a subconscious need to pay as a gesture of financial security, said Blau, founder of Boutique Psychotherapy.
Indeed, men are more likely to think they should pay for a first date than women, at 78% versus 68%, according to the NerdWallet poll.
Proponents of men picking up the tab sometimes point to ongoing financial factors such as a persistent gender wage gap as a key rationale.
More from Personal Finance:People are spending hundreds a month on dating appsThis matchmaker’s fee can top $500,000He asked for his money back after a first date
But dating experts often use a different logic: The person who asks for the date should generally treat — and that is typically the man in American society, Ettin said.
The same calculus holds for same-sex couples: Whoever asks should break out their wallet, she said.
“I think it’s not a matter of ‘the guy should pay for it,’ but rather who’s courting who?” Blau said.
In heterosexual couples, 53% of men say they asked for the first date versus 15% of women, according to a poll by the Institute for Family Studies.

The one who pursues a romantic interest and chooses where to take their date is expected to pay, Blau added.
That means a woman should be prepared to pay if she asks a guy out, Ettin said. However, she advises men to still be prepared to cover the tab.
There is also some romantic strategy here. Covering the bill gives the man “the best possible shot at the second date, if he likes her,” Anderson said.
Yes, it is the traditional expectation, but it is also a nice gesture, she added. The advice is not contrary to the notion of equality and feminism, Ettin said. “We still want that,” she said. “But it feels nice to be treated sometimes.”
“I do believe that equality and feminism and chivalry can all exist at the same time,” Ettin said.

When to split the bill

Additionally, splitting the bill feels “extremely tacky and friend zone-ish,” Ettin said.
Women interested in a second date can instead suggest they treat next time, she said.
Women who do offer to pay should not be mad if men accept, experts said.
“Don’t go call a friend or me as a therapist and complain afterwards they took you up on it,” Blau said.
“In this place of equality and women wanting to be treated equally — as we should be — if we go to pay, it also could be considered disrespectful if the man says, ‘No, I’ll take care of it.’ Then it becomes a power dynamic,” she added.

If you’re concerned about cost, you have planned a date that is too expensive.

Blaine Anderson
Dating coach

Some women may feel the need to split the check if they know they do not want a second date. However, experts somewhat diverged on this etiquette.
“I don’t think it’s a requirement,” but it is polite to offer to pay in such cases, Anderson said.
Ettin does not think payment should be tied to how well a date went, though.
“All you owe them is a thank you,” she said. “That’s it — a genuine thank you.”

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Generation Z is taking over. In the rich world there are at least 250m people born between 1997 and 2012. About half are now in a job. In the average American workplace, the number of Gen Zers (sometimes also known as “Zoomers”) working full-time is about to surpass the number of full-time baby-boomers, those born from 1945 to 1964, whose careers are winding down (see chart 1). Gen Z is also grabbing power: America now has more than 6,000 Zoomer chief executives and 1,000 Zoomer politicians. As the generation becomes more influential, companies, governments and investors need to understand it.Pundits produce a lot of fluff about the cohort. Recent “research” from Frito-Lay, a crisp-maker, finds that Gen Zers have a strong preference for “snacks that leave remnants on their fingers”, such as cheese dust. Yet different generations also display deeper differences in their personalities, in part due to the economic context in which they grow up. Germans who reached adulthood during the high-inflation 1920s came to detest rising prices. Americans who lived through the Depression tended to avoid investing in the stockmarket.Chart: The EconomistMany argue that Gen Z is defined by its anxiety. Such worriers include Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, whose new book, “The Anxious Generation”, is making waves. In some ways, Gen Zers are unusual. Young people today are less likely to form relationships than those of yesteryear. They are more likely to be depressed or say they were assigned the wrong sex at birth. They are less likely to drink, have sex, be in a relationship—indeed to do anything exciting. Americans aged between 15 and 24 spend just 38 minutes a day socialising in person on average, down from almost an hour in the 2000s, according to official data. Mr Haidt lays the blame on smartphones, and the social media they enable.His book has provoked an enormous reaction. On April 10th Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas, echoed Mr Haidt’s arguments as she outlined plans to regulate children’s use of smartphones and social media. Britain’s government is considering similar measures. But not everyone agrees with Mr Haidt’s thesis. And the pushing and shoving over Gen Z’s anxiety has obscured another way in which the cohort is distinct. In financial terms, Gen Z is doing extraordinarily well. This, in turn, is changing the generation’s relationship with work.Consider the group that preceded Gen Z: millennials, who were born between 1981 and 1996. Many entered the workforce at a time when the world was reeling from the global financial crisis of 2007-09, during which young people suffered disproportionately. In 2012-14 more than half of Spanish youngsters who wanted a job could not find one. Greece’s youth-unemployment rate was even higher. Britney Spears’s “Work Bitch”, a popular song released in 2013, had an uncompromising message for young millennials: if you want good things, you have to slog.Gen Zers who have left education face very different circumstances. Youth unemployment across the rich world—at about 13%—has not been this low since 1991 (see chart 2). Greece’s youth-unemployment rate has fallen by half from its peak. Hoteliers in Kalamata, a tourist destination, complain about a labour shortage, something unthinkable just a few years ago. Popular songs reflect the zeitgeist. In 2022 the protagonist in a Beyoncé song boasted, “I just quit my job”. Olivia Rodrigo, a 21-year-old singer popular with American Gen Zers, complains that a former love interest’s “career is really taking off”.Chart: The EconomistMany have chosen to study subjects that help them find work. In Britain and America Gen Zers are avoiding the humanities, and are going instead for more obviously useful things like economics and engineering. Among those who do not attend university, vocational qualifications are increasingly popular. Then they go on to benefit from tight labour markets. Young people, following Beyoncé’s protagonist, can quit their job and find another one if they want more money.In America hourly pay growth among 16- to 24-year-olds recently hit 13% year on year, compared with 6% for workers aged 25 to 54. This was the highest “young person premium” since reliable data began (see chart 3). In Britain, where youth pay is measured differently, last year people aged 18 to 21 saw average hourly pay rise by an astonishing 15%, outstripping pay rises among other ages by an unusually wide margin. In New Zealand the average hourly pay of people aged 20 to 24 increased by 10%, compared with an average of 6%.Chart: The EconomistStrong wage growth boosts family incomes. A new paper by Kevin Corinth of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, and Jeff Larrimore of the Federal Reserve assesses Americans’ household income by generation, after accounting for taxes, government transfers and inflation (see chart 4). Millennials were somewhat better off than Gen X—those born between 1965 and 1980—when they were the same age. Zoomers, however, are much better off than millennials were at the same age. The average 25-year-old Gen Zer has an annual household income of over $40,000, more than 50% above the average baby-boomer at the same age.Gen Z’s economic power was on display at a recent concert by Ms Rodrigo in New York. The mostly female teenagers and 20-somethings in attendance had paid hundreds of dollars for a ticket. Queues for merchandise stalls, selling $50 t-shirts, stretched around the arena. Ms Rodrigo will have no trouble shifting merchandise in other parts of the world, as her tour moves across the Atlantic. That is in part because Gen Zers who have entered the workplace are earning good money throughout the rich world. In 2007 the average net income of French people aged 16 to 24 was 87% of the overall average. Now it is equal to 92%. In a few places, including Croatia and Slovenia, Gen Zers are now bringing in as much as the average.Some Gen Zers protest, claiming that higher incomes are a mirage since they do not account for the exploding cost of college and housing. After all, global house prices are close to all-time highs, and graduates have more debt than before. In reality, though, Gen Zers are coping because they earn so much. In 2022 Americans under 25 spent 43% of their post-tax income on housing and education, including interest on debt from college—slightly below the average for under-25s from 1989 to 2019. Their home-ownership rates are higher than millennials at the same age. They also save more post-tax income than youngsters did in the 1980s and 1990s. They are, in other words, better off.Chart: The EconomistWhat does this wealth mean? It can seem as if millennials grew up thinking a job was a privilege, and acted accordingly. They are deferential to bosses and eager to please. Zoomers, by contrast, have grown up believing that a job is basically a right, meaning they have a different attitude to work. Last year Gen Zers boasted about “quiet quitting”, where they put in just enough effort not to be fired. Others talk of “bare minimum Monday”. The “girlboss” archetype, who seeks to wrestle corporate control away from domineering men, appeals to millennial women. Gen Z ones are more likely to discuss the idea of being “snail girls”, who take things slowly and prioritise self-care.The data support the memes. In 2022 Americans aged between 15 and 24 spent 25% less time on “working and work-related activities” than in 2007. A new paper published by the IMF analyses the number of hours that people say they would like to work. Not long ago young people wanted to work a lot more than older people. Now they want to work less. According to analysis by Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, the share of American 12th-graders (aged 17 or 18) who see work as a “central part of life” has dropped sharply.Another consequence is that Gen Zers are less likely to be entrepreneurs. We estimate that just 1.1% of 20-somethings in the EU run a business that employs someone else—and in recent years the share has drifted down. In the late 2000s more than 1% of the world’s billionaires, as measured by Forbes, a magazine, were millennials. Back then pundits obsessed over ultra-young tech founders, such as Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Patrick Collison (Stripe) and Evan Spiegel (Snapchat). Today, by contrast, less than 0.5% on the Forbes list are Zoomers. Who can name a famous Gen Z startup founder?Gen Zers are also producing fewer innovations. According to Russell Funk of the University of Minnesota, young people are less likely to file patents than they were in the recent past. Or consider the Billboard Hot 100, measuring America’s most popular songs. In 2008 42% of hits were sung by millennials; 15 years later only 29% were sung by Gen Zers. Taylor Swift, the world’s most popular singer-songwriter, titled her most famous album “1989”, after the year of her birth. The world is still waiting for someone to produce “2004”.How long will Generation Z’s economic advantage last? A recession would hit young people harder than others, as recessions always do. Artificial intelligence could destabilise the global economy, even if youngsters may in time be better placed to benefit from the disruption. For now, though, Generation Z has a lot to be happy about. Between numbers at Madison Square Garden, Olivia Rodrigo sits at the piano and counsels her fans to be thankful for all that they have. “Growing up is fucking awesome,” she says. “You have all the time to do all the things you want to do.” The time and the money. ■ More