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    Missing Foreign Workers Add to Hiring Challenges

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    Fewer foreign people have been able to work in the U.S. amid the coronavirus, leaving a hole in the potential labor force.Neha Mahajan was a television journalist in India before her husband’s job moved her family to the United States in 2008. She spent years locked out of the labor market, confined by what she calls the “gilded cage” of her immigration status — one that the pandemic placed her back into.Ms. Mahajan started working after an Obama administration rule change in 2015 allowed people on spousal visas to hold jobs, and she took a new job in business development at an immigration law firm early in 2021. But processing delays tied to the pandemic caused her work authorization to expire in July, forcing her to take leave.“It just gets to you emotionally and drains you out,” said Ms. Mahajan, 39, who lives in Scotch Plains, N.J.Last week brought reprieve, if only temporarily. She received approval documents for her renewed work authorization, enabling her to return to the labor force. But a process that should have taken three months stretched to 10, leaving her sidelined all summer. And because her visa is linked to her husband’s, she will need to reapply for authorization again in December when his visa comes up for renewal.Hundreds of thousands of foreign workers have gone missing from the labor market as the global coronavirus pandemic drags on, leaving holes in white-collar professions like the one Ms. Mahajan works in and in more service-oriented jobs in beach towns and at ski resorts. Newcomers and applicants for temporary visas were initially limited by policy changes under former President Donald J. Trump, who used a series of executive actions to slow many types of legal immigration. Then pandemic-era travel restrictions and bureaucratic backlogs caused immigration to drop precipitously, threatening a long-term loss of talent and economic potential.Some of those missing would-be employees will probably come and work as travel restrictions lift and as visa processing backlogs clear, as Ms. Mahajan’s example suggests. But the recent immigration lost to the pandemic is likely to leave a permanent hole. Goldman Sachs estimated in research this month that the economy was short 700,000 temporary visa holders and permanent immigrant workers, and that perhaps 300,000 of those people would never come to work in the United States.Employers consistently complain that they are struggling to hire, and job openings exceed the number of people actively looking for work, even though millions fewer people are working compared with just before the pandemic. The slump in immigration is one of the many reasons for the disconnect. Companies dependent on foreign workers have found that waves of infections and processing delays at consulates are keeping would-be employees in their home countries, or stuck in America but simply unable to work.“Employers are having to wait a long time to get their petitions approved, and renewals are not being processed in a timely manner,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration lawyer who teaches at Cornell Law School. “It’s going to take a long time for them to work through the backlog.”Worker inflows had already slowed sharply before the pandemic, the result of a crackdown by the Trump administration that made it harder for foreign workers, refugees and migrant family members to enter the United States. But the pandemic took that decline and accelerated it dramatically: Overall visa issuance dropped by 4.7 million last year.Many of those visas would have gone to short-term visitors and tourists — people who likely will come back as travel restrictions lift. But hundreds of thousands of the visas would have gone to workers. Without them, some employers have been left struggling.Guests at Penny Fernald’s inn on Mount Desert Island in Maine had to swing by the front desk to pick up towels this summer. Turndown service was limited, because only one of the four foreign housekeepers Ms. Fernald would employ in a typical summer could make it through a consulate and into the country this year.Vacationers who wanted a reimagined Waldorf salad at Salt & Steel, a nearby restaurant, needed to call ahead for reservations and hope it wasn’t Sunday, when the short-staffed restaurant was closed.“This was the busiest season Bar Harbor has ever seen, and we turned people away nightly,” said Bobby Will, the chef and co-owner of Salt & Steel.He usually hires a few foreign workers who perform day jobs for other local businesses then work for him at night. This year, that was basically impossible. He found himself down six of 18 workers. He modified dishes to make them easier to plate — a lobster risotto with roasted chanterelles and hand-placed garnished became a seafood cassoulet — but labor-saving innovations were not enough of a fix. He ultimately had to close on Mondays, too, and he estimates that he missed out on $6,500 to $8,000 in sales per night.“It’s just been extremely difficult for Bar Harbor,” he said of his town, a summer tourism hot-spot nestled between Frenchman Bay and Acadia National Park.Many immigrants are missing from the labor market, causing staffing shortages both in white-collar professions and in more service-oriented jobs in vacation spots like Old Orchard Beach, Maine.Tristan Spinski for The New York TimesThe Biden administration lifted a Trump-era pandemic ban on legal immigration in February, and the number of foreign nationals coming into the United States on visas has been recovering this year. Monthly data show a nascent but incomplete rebound.But some visa categories that weren’t deemed high priority, including many temporary work authorizations, have been waiting long months for approval. Travel limitations tied to the pandemic have kept other foreign workers at home.The State Department reported that as of September, nearly half a million people remained in its immigrant visa backlog, compared with roughly 61,000 on average in 2019..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}It is not clear what the 2020 drop in immigration and the slow crawl back to normalcy will mean for the country’s labor pool going forward. The Goldman Sachs estimate that the U.S. is short 700,000 foreign workers was based on a rough methodology. The Congressional Budget Office estimated late last year that 2.5 million fewer people would immigrate in the 2020s than it had estimated before the pandemic. Immigration tends to build on itself as legal permanent residents bring in family members, so this decade’s decline is expected to lead to another 840,000 fewer immigrants between 2031 and 2040.The “reduction occurs in part because of travel restrictions and reduced visa-processing capabilities related to the pandemic,” the office wrote in its September 2020 long-term budget outlook.Either number amounts to a relatively small sliver of the American work force, which is today 161 million people strong. But from an economic perspective — and from the viewpoint of many American businesses — the timing could hardly be worse. America’s population is aging, and fertility rates have been declining. Work force growth in recent years has been heavily driven by immigrants and their children. Fewer immigrants means fewer future workers.Unless businesses can figure out how to produce more with fewer people, a future in which the nation’s working-age population grows more slowly means that the economy is likely to have less room for expansion.The pandemic immigration slump isn’t the cause of that economic sclerosis, but it could cause the condition to progress faster.While millions of Americans remain out of work and potentially available for jobs, employers say hiring has been complicated by pandemic aftershocks. Some households lack child care or are afraid of virus resurgence. Others are rethinking careers in backbreaking industries after a perspective-shifting collective public health trauma. Often immigrants work jobs that struggle to attract native workers.Some companies are reluctant to pay enough to attract locals. Ms. Fernald did receive some applications for housekeeping positions, but she pays $16.50 per hour and the applicants had hoped for $20 to $23.Even for those who were willing to pay what would-be laborers demand — Mr. Will paid cooks $22 per hour and guaranteed 10 hours a week in overtime — it was difficult to make up for missing local exchange student workers and temporary seasonal employees from abroad. He’s hoping hiring will be easier in 2022.“Honestly, I don’t know what to expect,” he said.Ms. Mahajan in New Jersey offered a glint of hope that some sort of normalcy could return, but also apprehension that it will not.“I couldn’t believe it — I was like, ‘Wow,’” she said of the moment she received her approval. But the relief may be short-lived since her visa is inextricably linked to her husband’s lapsing one.“Even before summer, I could be back in the same situation,” she said. “This is like an infinite rut.” More

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    U.S. Deficit Expected to Hit $3 Trillion in 2021, Budget Office Says

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    WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy is rebounding from the pandemic downturn faster than expected and is on track to regain all the jobs lost during the coronavirus by the middle of next year, partly as a result of enormous amounts of federal spending that will push the budget deficit to $3 trillion for the 2021 fiscal year, the Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday.New forecasts that incorporate the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that President Biden signed into law in March give little credence to warnings by Republican lawmakers and some economists that runaway inflation from all that spending could cripple the economy. Instead, the budget office predicted that a recent spike in prices for cars, airline tickets and other products would be temporary and begin to recede this year.Administration officials downplayed the deficit projections and focused instead on the predictions for economic growth, saying the strong numbers validate Mr. Biden’s push to douse the economy in stimulus and reinforce their view that inflation poses little threat to the recovery.The budget office, which is nonpartisan, predicted the economy would grow 6.7 percent for the year, after adjusting for inflation. That would be the fastest annual growth in the United States since 1984. It is significantly faster than the budget office and the Biden administration had each projected this year.The unemployment rate is also estimated to fall below 4 percent next year and remain historically low for years to come, signaling a significant acceleration in job gains from what the office predicted in February. The C.B.O. said then that unemployment would not fall below 4 percent until 2026.Budget office officials said the uptick in growth and employment forecasts stemmed in large part from aggressive government stimulus. But the economy is also benefiting from consumers, who are rapidly spending savings they built up during the pandemic. Households were buttressed by multiple rounds of stimulus, including direct checks, passed under President Donald J. Trump, and by a faster-than-anticipated return to normalcy in the economy as vaccinations have spread.Mr. Biden’s aides claimed credit for many of those developments. They said the president’s push to accelerate vaccine production and distribution had fueled the reopening of the economy. David Kamin, a deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, said in an interview that Mr. Biden’s stimulus package, the American Rescue Plan, was intended to drive a more rapid return to low unemployment, and that the budget office’s projections were evidence it was succeeding.“This report really goes to the very theory of the case as to why we pursued a rescue plan,” he said.Administration officials also heralded updated projections from the International Monetary Fund, released Thursday afternoon, which predicted the U.S. economy would grow 7 percent in 2021 after adjusting for inflation. In April, the I.M.F. forecast 4.6 percent growth for the year in the United States.Mr. Biden’s stimulus plan will push the federal budget deficit near record highs for the fiscal year, the budget office projected, but it will eventually leave the country in slightly better fiscal shape.The spending approved by Mr. Biden is projected to increase the deficit by $1.1 trillion for the fiscal year, which ends in September. The total deficit of $3 trillion would be the second-largest since 1945, in nominal terms and as a share of the economy, behind the 2020 fiscal year.But the increased growth that is accompanying the larger deficit this year will slightly improve the country’s fiscal outlook over the next decade, with the total deficit falling by about 1 percent, the budget office said.“Projected revenues over the next decade are now higher because of the stronger economy and consequent higher taxable incomes,” it wrote in its report.Mr. Biden’s rescue plan included direct payments of $1,400 each to low- and middle-income Americans, $350 billion to help states and municipalities patch what were expected to be budget shortfalls and hundreds of billions of dollars to accelerate vaccines and more widespread coronavirus testing. It also extended supplemental federal payments of $300 a week to unemployed workers through September, a benefit that Republican governors across the country have ended early as business owners complain of difficulties finding workers.The budget office cited those benefits as “dampening the supply of labor,” along with workers’ health concerns. It said the expiration of the benefits, along with less worry about contracting the virus, would help bolster employment growth in the second half of this year.Inflation, which has been a big topic in Washington, is projected to moderate in the months to come. The office forecast inflation rising above recent trends to hit 2.6 percent for the year, which is stronger growth than the February projection, yet officials see those price pressures subsiding in the second half of the year, as a variety of supply constraints ease in areas like lumber and automobiles.The forecasters expect economic growth to continue at a strong pace in 2022, hitting 5 percent in real terms. But they see it declining quickly in the years to follow, as the labor force grows more slowly than is typical. Budget office officials said that reflected, in part, the effects of more restrictive immigration policies adopted under Mr. Trump. By 2023, the office predicts, growth will slow to 1.1 percent.That forecast does not account for any additional economic policies Mr. Biden might enact in the intervening time. He is currently pushing Congress to approve as much as $4 trillion in spending and tax cuts meant to create jobs and aid growth by improving the productivity of workers and the broader economy, like repairing bridges and subsidizing child care costs to help more parents, particularly women, work additional hours.Fiscal hawks said the report’s long-term deficit projections underscored the need for any additional economic investments to be fully paid for, and not financed with federal borrowing. Debt held by the public rises to nearly $36 trillion by 2031, the budget office now predicts. That would be slightly larger — by just over 6 percent — than the size of the total American economy that year.“While it made sense to borrow to weather the pandemic and jumpstart the recovery,” said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in Washington, “the strong economic growth projections from C.B.O. show that it is time to pivot away from further deficit-financing and towards paying for things and, ultimately, decreasing the national debt from its current path.” More

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    Minimum Wage Hike Would Help Poverty but Cost Jobs, Budget Office Says

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMinimum Wage Hike Would Help Poverty but Cost Jobs, Budget Office SaysThe Congressional Budget Office said raising the federal minimum wage to $15 would also increase the deficit, potentially helping the proposal’s prospects of being included in relief legislation.Protesters in Chicago last month called for the minimum wage to be increased to $15 an hour. Congress last passed an increase in 2007. Credit…Scott Olson/Getty ImagesFeb. 8, 2021, 7:43 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour — a proposal included in the package of relief measures being pushed by President Biden — would add $54 billion to the budget deficit over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office concluded on Monday.Normally, a prediction of increased debt might harm the plan’s political chances. But proponents of the wage hike seized on the forecast as evidence that the hotly contested proposal could survive a procedural challenge under the Senate’s arcane rules.Democrats are trying to add the measure to a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package that is advancing through a process called budget reconciliation, which requires a simple majority rather than the 60-vote margin to overcome a filibuster. But reconciliation is reserved for matters with a significant budgetary effect.Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, said the forecast of an increased deficit showed that the measure passed the test. Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 “would have a direct and substantial impact on the federal budget,” he said in a statement. “What that means is we can clearly raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour under the rules.”Critics of the plan noted a different element of the report: its forecast that raising the minimum wage to $15 would eliminate 1.4 million jobs by the time the increase takes full effect.“Conservatives have been saying for a while that a recession is absolutely the wrong time to increase the minimum wage, even if it’s slowly phased in,” said Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “The economy’s just too fragile.”He also contested Mr. Sanders’s argument that the study raised the odds that a wage increase could survive Senate rules. The study found the measure would affect private-sector wages much more than it would raise the deficit — $333 billion versus $54 billion — showing its effect on the deficit was incidental, Mr. Riedl said.“I doubt the parliamentarian will determine that this is primarily a budgetary reform rather than an economic reform with a secondary budget effect,” he said.The rules say the budgetary effects cannot be “merely incidental” but do not define the phrase. While Mr. Sanders called $54 billion substantial, Mr. Riedl said it was about half of 1 percent of the projected 10-year deficit.Congress last passed a minimum-wage increase in 2007. The current federal minimum, $7.25 an hour, is about 29 percent below its 1968 peak when adjusted for inflation, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. David Cooper, an economic analyst at the institute, said 29 states and the District of Columbia have higher minimums, and seven states plus the District of Columbia were phasing in the $15-an-hour threshold.Progressives see the wage increase as a central weapon for fighting poverty and inequality, while conservatives often warn it will reduce jobs.The report in essence said both sides were right. It found a $15 minimum wage would offer raises to 27 million people and lift 900,000 people above the poverty line, but it would also cost 1.4 million jobs.Mr. Cooper disputed the jobs forecast, arguing that it was out of line with recent studies that showed increases in the minimum wage had produced little or no effect on employment. “C.B.O. seems to be going in the opposite direction,” he said.Progressives like Mr. Sanders have been arguing that an increased minimum wage would reduce federal spending because fewer people would need safety-net programs like food stamps or Medicaid. But the budget office warned that those savings would be more than offset by the higher costs of delivering services like medical care, as employers raised their workers’ pay — a finding Mr. Sanders continued to reject, citing other studies.On balance, the report said the changes would benefit labor over capital.“They assume that there is income transferred from workers at the top of the income distribution to workers at the bottom,” Mr. Cooper said. “Therefore, they implicitly say that the minimum wage is a tool for fighting inequality. That’s probably the most explicit they’ve ever been on that point.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    C.B.O. Report Says U.S. Economy Is Healing But Workers Have A Ways to Go

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyU.S. Economy Is Healing, but Budget Office Says Workers Have a Long Way to GoNew projections from the independent Congressional Budget Office fuel Republicans’ calls for “targeted” economic aid — and Democrats’ push to go big.Workers constructed an outdoor seating area for a restaurant in San Diego last week. While the new budget office report shows that the economy is recovering at a faster pace than expected, officials do not see unemployment falling to its pre-pandemic level by the end of the decade.Credit…Ariana Drehsler for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2021Updated 6:33 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The United States economy will return to its pre-pandemic size by the middle of this year, even if Congress does not approve any more federal money to aid the recovery, the Congressional Budget Office said on Monday. But it will be years before everyone thrown off the job by the coronavirus is able to return to work.Those projections could further complicate President Biden’s ability to quickly pass a $1.9 trillion stimulus package, as moderate Republicans and even some left-leaning economists express concerns that too much new federal borrowing could overheat the economy.Still, Democrats worried about families putting food on the table and avoiding eviction or foreclosure as the pandemic continues to suppress economic activity are forging ahead with Mr. Biden’s more aggressive plans, introducing budget resolutions in the House and Senate on Monday that would allow legislation based on the president’s proposals to pass without Republican votes.Mr. Biden met late Monday with a group of 10 Republican senators who have drafted a $600 billion economic aid proposal of their own. It would scale back many of the president’s spending ambitions, like additional unemployment benefits and $1,400 direct payments to individuals, while scrapping other elements entirely, like his proposed aid to state and local governments to patch budget shortfalls.Mr. Biden, who spent three decades in the Senate, has welcomed discussions with Republicans but shown little willingness to significantly cut the cost of his plan. The budget office report on Monday offered some evidence to support his position, with figures suggesting that the economy could absorb substantial new federal assistance without stoking higher inflation or forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.Congressional Democrats and many liberal economists on Monday repeated their calls for lawmakers to act swiftly and aggressively to help the large swaths of Americans still struggling to recover, a message echoed by Mr. Biden’s aides.Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the budget office report was “not a measure of how each American family is doing and whether the American people are getting the assistance they need.” Mr. Biden, she said, “believes that the risk is not going too small, but not big enough.”The new projections from the office, which is nonpartisan and issues regular budgetary and economic forecasts, show the economy healing faster than the office’s forecasts over the summer suggested it would.Officials told reporters on Monday that the brightening outlook stemmed from large sectors of the economy adapting better and more rapidly to the pandemic than originally expected. It also reflected increased growth driven by a $900 billion economic aid package that Congress passed in December, which included $600 direct checks to individuals and more generous and longer-lasting benefits for the millions of people who are still unemployed.The budget office now expects the unemployment rate to fall to 5.3 percent at the end of the year, down from an 8.4 percent projection in July. The unemployment rate stood at 6.7 percent in December. The economy is expected to grow 3.7 percent for the year, after recording a much smaller contraction in 2020 than the budget office had expected.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    The Economy Is Improving Faster Than Expected, the U.S. Budget Office Says

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Economy Is Improving Faster Than Expected, the U.S. Budget Office SaysLarge sectors of the economy are adapting to the pandemic better than originally expected, and December’s economic aid package helped to increase growth, adding another twist to stimulus talks.A shuttered business in Los Angeles. It may take years to return to the pre-pandemic levels of employment.Credit…Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2021Updated 3:14 p.m. ETThe American economy will return to its pre-pandemic size by the middle of this year, even if Congress does not approve any more federal aid for the recovery, but it will be years before everyone thrown off the job by the pandemic is able to return to work, the Congressional Budget Office projected on Monday.The new projections from the office, which is nonpartisan and issues regular budgetary and economic forecasts, are an improvement from the office’s forecasts last summer. Officials told reporters on Monday that the brightening outlook was a result of large sectors of the economy adapting better and more rapidly to the pandemic than originally expected.They also reflect increased growth from a $900 billion economic aid package that Congress passed in December, which included $600 direct checks to individuals and more generous unemployment benefits.The budget office now expects the unemployment rate to fall to 5.3 percent at the end of the year, down from an 8.4 percent projection last July. The economy is expected to grow 3.7 percent for the year, after recording a much smaller contraction in 2020 than the budget office initially expected.The rosier projections are likely to inject even more debate into the discussions over whether to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic rescue package. It could embolden Republicans who have pushed Mr. Biden to scale back the plan significantly, saying the economy does not need so much additional federal support and that another big package could “overheat” the economy.But the report shows little risk of that happening. The economy is projected to remain below potential levels until 2025 on its current path. And big economic risks remain. The number of employed Americans will not return to its pre-pandemic levels until 2024, officials predicted, reflecting the prolonged difficulties of shaking off the virus and returning to full levels of economic activity.The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, warned last week that the economy was “a long way from a full recovery” with millions still out of work and many small businesses facing pressure.Budget officials said the rebound in growth and employment could be significantly accelerated if public health authorities were able to more rapidly deploy coronavirus vaccines across the population.As it stands, the budget office sees little evidence of growth running hot enough in the years to come to spur a rapid increase in inflation. It forecast inflation levels below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent for years to come, even with the Fed holding interest rates near zero.Other independent forecasts, including one from the Brookings Institution last week, have projected that another dose of economic aid — like the $1.9 trillion package Mr. Biden has proposed — would help the economy grow more rapidly, topping its pre-pandemic path by year’s end.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More