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    Is ‘Greedflation’ Rewriting Economics, or Do Old Rules Still Apply?

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    Economists and politicians are debating whether monopolistic companies are fueling inflation in ways that confound longstanding theory.There are few good things about living through a period with the highest inflation in four decades, but here’s one: It’s a chance to re-examine what happens in an economy that’s gone haywire.Since prices started to escalate a year ago, politicians and economists have seized on inflation to tell their preferred story about what went wrong, and what policies would bring it back into line. Some say it’s very straightforward: Supply and demand, Economics 101.“There’s simply a lot of cash out there,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist for the accounting firm RSM US, referring to the several trillion dollars in pandemic stimulus that’s filtered into the economy since early 2020. “The competition for those goods is up and that’s sending prices up, whether we’re talking about getting a Nissan Sentra or a seat on an American Airlines flight.”The White House and progressive organizations, however, say wait a minute: This time is different. In a time of extraordinary disruption, they contend, increasingly dominant corporations are taking the opportunity to jack up prices more than they otherwise could, which is squeezing consumers and supercharging inflation. Or “greedflation,” as the hypothesis has come to be known.The argument comports with the Biden administration’s focus on the ills of economic concentration. Congressional Democrats have run with the idea, introducing bills that would impose a temporary “excess profits tax” on companies that charge prices they deem unreasonably high, or simply ban those high prices altogether. Critics, including the nation’s largest business lobby, deride these efforts as based on a “conspiracy theory” and a “flimsy argument.”So what’s really going on?It’s hard to tease out. A pandemic, a trade war, a land war, huge government spending, and a global economy that’s become vastly more integrated might be too complex for traditional macroeconomic theory to explain. Josh Bivens, research director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, thinks that’s a good reason to revisit what the discipline thought it had figured out.“When I hear stories about an overheating labor market, I don’t think about falling real wages, and yet we have falling real wages,” Dr. Bivens said. Nor is the rise in profits typical when unemployment is so low. “The idea that ‘there’s nothing to see here’ — there’s everything to see here! It’s totally different.”When thinking about greedflation, it’s helpful to break it down into three questions: Are companies charging more than necessary to cover their rising costs? If so, is that enough to meaningfully accelerate inflation? And is all this happening because large companies have market power they didn’t decades ago?Productive Profits, or Gouging?There is not much disagreement that many companies have marked up goods in excess of their own rising costs. This is especially evident in industries like shipping, which had record profits as soaring demand for goods filled up boats, driving up costs for all traded goods. Across the economy, profit margins surged during the pandemic and remained elevated.When all prices are rising, consumers lose track of how much is reasonable to pay. “In the inflationary environment, everybody knows that prices are increasing,” said Z. John Zhang, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied pricing strategy. “Obviously that’s a great opportunity for every firm to realign their prices as much as they can. You’re not going to have an opportunity again like this for a long time.”Understand Inflation and How It Impacts YouInflation 101: What is inflation, why is it up and whom does it hurt? Our guide explains it all.Measuring Inflation: Over the years economists have tweaked one of the government’s standard measures of inflation, the Consumer Price Index. What is behind the changes?Inflation Calculator: How you experience inflation can vary greatly depending on your spending habits. Answer these seven questions to estimate your personal inflation rate.Interest Rates: As it seeks to curb inflation, the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates for the first time since 2018. Here is what that means for inflation.The real disagreement is over whether higher profits are natural and good.Basic economic theory teaches that charging what the market can bear will prompt companies to produce more, constraining prices and ensuring that more people have access to the good that’s in short supply. Say you make empanadas, and enough people want to buy them that you can charge $5 each even though they cost only $3 to produce. That might allow you to invest in another oven so you can make more empanadas — perhaps so many that you can lower the price to $4 and sell enough that your net income still goes up.Here’s the problem: What if there’s a waiting list for new ovens because of a strike at the oven factory, and you’re already running three shifts? You can’t make more empanadas, but their popularity has risen to the point where you would charge $6. People might buy calzones instead, but eventually the oven shortage makes all kinds of baked goods hard to find. In that situation, you make a tidy margin without doing much work, and your consumers lose out.This has happened in the real world. Consider the supply of fertilizer, which shrank when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted sanctions on the chemicals needed to make it. Fertilizer companies reported their best profits in years, even as they struggle to expand supply. The same is true of oil. Drillers haven’t wanted to expand production because the last time they did so, they wound up in a glut. Ramping up production is expensive, and investors are demanding profitability, so supply has lagged while drivers pay dearly.Even if high prices aren’t able to increase supply and the shortage remains, an Economics 101 class might still teach that price is the best way to allocate scarce resources — or at least, that it’s better than the government price controls or rationing. As a consequence, less wealthy people may simply have no access to empanadas. Michael Faulkender, a finance professor at the University of Maryland, says that’s just how capitalism works.“With a price adjustment, people who have substitutes or maybe can do with less of it will choose to consume less of it, and you have the allocation of goods for which there is a shortage go to the highest-value usage,” Dr. Faulkender said. “Every good in our society is based on pricing. People who make more money are able to consume more.”Sorting Chickens and EggsThe question of whether profit margins are speeding inflation is harder to figure out.Economists have run some numbers on how much other variables might have contributed to inflation. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that fiscal stimulus programs accounted for 3 percentage points, for example, while the St. Louis Fed estimated that manufacturing sector inflation would have been 20 percentage points lower without supply chain bottlenecks. Dr. Bivens, of the Economic Policy Institute, performed a simple calculation of the share of price increases attributable to labor costs, other inputs, and profits over time, and found that profit’s contribution had risen significantly since the beginning of 2020 as compared with the previous four decades.That’s an interesting fact, but it’s not proof that profits are driving inflation. It’s possible that causality runs the other way — inflation drives higher profits, as companies hide price increases amid broader rises in costs. The St. Louis Fed’s Ana Maria Santacreu, who did the manufacturing inflation analysis, said that it would be very hard to pin down.“It would be interesting to get data on profit margins by industry and correlate those with inflation by industry,” she said. “But I still think it is difficult to capture any causal relationship.”Concentration’s Double EdgeIf you think that’s complicated, try establishing whether market power is playing a role in any of this.It is well established that the American economy has grown more concentrated. On a fundamental level, domination by a few companies may have made supply chains more brittle. If there are two empanada factories and one of them has a Covid-19 outbreak, that in itself creates a more serious shortage than it would if there were 10 factories.“Concentration has affected prices during the pandemic, even setting aside any potentially nefarious actions on the part of leaders,” said Heather Boushey, a member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers.But most of the public argument has been about whether companies with more market share have been affecting prices once goods are finished and delivered. And that’s where many economists become skeptical, noting that if these increasingly powerful corporations had so much leverage, they would have used it before the pandemic.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    Fed Minutes Show Officials Expecting to Raise Rates Three Times to Address Inflation

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    Federal Reserve officials agreed at their last meeting that the central bank needed to move “expeditiously” to bring down the most rapid pace of inflation in 40 years, with most participants expecting as many as three half-a-percentage-point interest rate increases in the months ahead, minutes of the Fed’s May meeting showed.They also discussed the prospect of raising interest rates beyond the so-called neutral rate, at which they are neither supporting nor dampening the economy, to further slow economic growth as policymakers try to combat inflation.The officials noted that inflationary pressures were evident in a broad array of goods and services, causing hardship for Americans by eroding their incomes and making it hard for businesses to plan for the future. They said further supply chain disruptions from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and pandemic lockdowns in China were also threatening to push inflation higher.Their discussion highlighted the urgency of the task ahead, with some officials emphasizing “that persistently high inflation heightened the risk that longer-term inflation expectations could become unanchored,” making it more difficult for the central bank to return inflation to the 2 percent annual average that the Fed aims for.Officials also debated whether price pressures might be beginning to abate. Several observed that recent economic data suggested inflation might no longer be worsening, though they said it was too soon to say whether it had peaked. While they said the job market and consumer and business spending remained strong, they also expressed concern about “downside” risks to the economy “and the likelihood of a prolonged rise in energy and commodity prices.”Understand Inflation and How It Impacts YouInflation 101: What is inflation, why is it up and whom does it hurt? Our guide explains it all.Inflation Calculator: How you experience inflation can vary greatly depending on your spending habits. Answer these seven questions to estimate your personal inflation rate.Interest Rates: As it seeks to curb inflation, the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates for the first time since 2018. Here is what that means for inflation.State Intervention: As inflation stays high, lawmakers across the country are turning to tax cuts to ease the pain, but the measures could make things worse. How Americans Feel: We asked 2,200 people where they’ve noticed inflation. Many mentioned basic necessities, like food and gas.The Fed raised rates half a percentage point in May, its biggest rate increase since 2000. Officials also detailed a plan to shrink the central bank’s $9 trillion in bond holdings and signaled that it would continue making money more expensive to borrow and spend until it got inflation under control. In the May meeting, officials reiterated plans to begin winding down on June 1 a stimulus program that has been in place since early in the pandemic.The Fed’s policy rate is now set in a range of 0.75 to 1 percent.Its decision to raise rates by half a percentage point in May initially buoyed Wall Street, which had been worried about a larger increase of 0.75, as some officials had been suggesting. The Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, speaking at a news conference after the May meeting, appeared to rule out such a large move, saying it was “not something the committee is actively considering.” Investors took notice of that comment, and stocks rallied.But in the weeks since, Mr. Powell has made clear that economic conditions remain incredibly uncertain and that the Fed may need to go bigger — or smaller — depending on how things evolve.“If things come in better than we expect, then we’re prepared to do less,” Mr. Powell said during an interview with “Marketplace,” a radio program distributed by American Public Media. “If they come in worse than when we expect, then we’re prepared to do more.”Still, as of the May meeting, “most participants judged that 50-basis-point increases in the target range would likely be appropriate at the next couple of meetings,” according to the minutes, which were released on Wednesday.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    ‘I Had to Go Back’: Over 55, and Not Retired After All

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    After leaving the labor force in unusual numbers early in the pandemic, Americans approaching retirement age are back on the job at previous levels.When Kim Williams and millions of other older Americans lost their jobs early in the coronavirus pandemic, economists wondered how many would ever work again — and how that loss would weigh on the economy for years to come.Ms. Williams, now 62, wondered, too, especially when she struggled for months to find work. But in January, she started a new job at an AAA office near her home in Waterbury, Conn.“I’m too young to retire, so I had to go back,” she said.Whether by choice or financial necessity, millions of older Americans have made the same move in recent months. Nearly 64 percent of adults between the ages of 55 and 64 were working in April, essentially the same rate as in February 2020. That’s a more complete recovery than among most younger age groups.

    The rapid rebound has surprised many economists, who thought that fear of the virus — which is far deadlier for older people — would contribute to a wave of early retirements, especially because many people’s savings had been fattened by years of market gains. But there is increasing evidence that the early-retirement narrative was overblown.“The bottom line is that older workers have gone back to work,” said Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. For many people, retiring early was never an option. Ms. Williams spent more than 25 years in manufacturing, working for a Hershey’s plant making Almond Joy and Mounds bars. The job paid reasonably well, and offered a retirement plan and other benefits. But in 2007, Hershey’s closed the factory, moving production partly to Mexico.The State of Jobs in the United StatesThe U.S. economy has regained more than 90 percent of the 22 million jobs lost at the height of pandemic in the spring of 2020.April Jobs Report: U.S. employers added 428,000 jobs and the unemployment rate remained steady at 3.6 percent ​​in the fourth month of 2022.Trends: New government data showed record numbers of job openings and “quits” — a measurement of the amount of workers voluntarily leaving jobs — in March.Job Market and Stocks: This year’s decline in stock prices follows a historical pattern: Hot labor markets and stocks often don’t mix well.Unionization Efforts: Since the Great Recession, the college-educated have taken more frontline jobs at companies like Starbucks and Amazon. Now, they’re helping to unionize them.Ms. Williams, then in her 40s, went back to school, earning an associate degree in hospitality and eventually finding a job as a supervisor at a local hotel. But the position paid significantly less than her factory job, and she drew down her retirement savings to cover medical expenses and other bills. When she was laid off again in June 2020, just a few weeks after her 60th birthday, Ms. Williams had little in savings.Ms. Williams tried to change careers again, this time going back to school to train as a medical secretary. But she has been unable to find work in her new field. In January, with her savings gone, she took a job at AAA for $16.50 an hour, $2 an hour less than she earned at the factory in 2007, before accounting for inflation. She says she will have to work at least until she can start drawing her full Social Security benefits at age 67.“If I could’ve left at 62, I would’ve left at 62, but I can’t,” she said. “Not all of us made that money where I could move down to Florida and get a $400,000 house.”The fastest inflation in decades has added to the pressure on people of all ages to return to work. More recently, so has the turmoil in financial markets, which has taken a bite out of retirement savings.But even some people who could retire are choosing to return to work as the pandemic ebbs.When the Long Island fitness studio where she worked as a spinning instructor shut down early in the pandemic, Jackie Anscher lost both a job and a part of her identity. In an interview with The New York Times that summer, she described what seemed at the time like an abrupt end to her career as “a forced retirement.”But after spending the beginning of the pandemic reorganizing her life and re-evaluating her priorities, Ms. Anscher, 60, has begun teaching spin classes again as a substitute instructor at a local gym, and she is looking for a more regular gig. Her husband is already retired — “he’s been waiting for me to go fishing,” she said — and the couple could afford for her to stop working. But she isn’t ready to hang up her cycling shoes.“I liked what I had. I loved who I was in front of the room,” she said. “It’s about my mental health. For me, it’s about preserving me.”Older workers weren’t any more likely than younger workers to leave the labor force early in the pandemic. But economists had reason to think they might be slower to return. Unemployed workers in their 50s and 60s typically have a harder time finding jobs than their younger counterparts, because of ageism and other factors. And unlike after the 2008-9 recession, when depressed housing prices and high debt levels left many people with little choice but to keep working, in this crisis prices of both homes and financial assets kept rising, providing a financial cushion to some people nearing retirement age.The share of Americans reporting that they were retired did rise sharply in the spring of 2020. But retirement is not an irreversible decision. And research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has found that at the pandemic’s onset, there was a steep drop in the number of people leaving retirement to return to work, attributable at least partly to fear of the virus and a lack of job opportunities, swelling the ranks of the retired.As the economy has reopened and the public health situation has improved, these “unretirements” have rebounded and have recently returned roughly to their prepandemic rate, according to an analysis of government data by Nick Bunker of the Indeed Hiring Lab.

    The return of older workers has been concentrated among those in their late 50s and early 60s, people who were still several years or more away from retirement when the pandemic began. The employment rate among those 65 and older fell more sharply and has been much slower to recover. That suggests that the pandemic might have led some people who were already closer to retirement to accelerate those plans, and that the greater health risks they faced may have made them less likely to return to work while the virus continues to circulate. Still, the return of early retirees to the labor force is a reminder that rising wages and abundant job opportunities can draw in workers who might otherwise remain on the sidelines, Mr. Bunker said. The labor force shrank during the last recession, too, and some economists were quick to declare that workers were gone for good. But many people eventually came back during the strong job market that preceded the pandemic: It provided opportunities to people with disabilities and criminal records, to people with little formal education and to people who had taken time away from work to raise children or to care for ailing parents.That pattern may be repeating itself, but on a much more compressed timeline.“Don’t underestimate labor supply,” Mr. Bunker said. “Don’t count out the possibility that people want and need work. It has happened much more quickly than what we saw after the global financial crisis, but the broad principle is the same.”When Tad Greener lost his job managing utilities for a Utah university in late 2019, he wasn’t worried at first about finding a new one — the unemployment rate, after all, was near a 50-year low. But Mr. Greener had hardly begun his search when the pandemic hit and the bottom fell out of the economy. Suddenly, he was 60 years old, unemployed and facing the worst labor market in nearly a century.Mr. Greener eased up on his job search during the first phase of the pandemic, in part because of some health issues unrelated to the coronavirus. By spring of 2021, he was ready to work again, but he had little luck applying for jobs. He thinks many prospective employers were turned off by the combination of his age and his time out of the work force.“It’s a daunting task to be 62 years old, to be unemployed for over a year and to try and find work,” Mr. Greener said. “There were times where I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to go back to work.”As the economy reopened, however, many businesses struggled to hire enough workers to meet the surge in demand. That prompted employers to consider candidates they might otherwise have dismissed, or to look for ways to attract people who could work but weren’t looking.In Mr. Greener’s case, he learned about a new “returnship” program from the State of Utah that was meant to help people who had been out of the labor force get back to work. Last fall, he was accepted into the program, landing a part-time job in the state Office of Energy Development, which quickly turned into a permanent, full-time job. Now that he is back at work, Mr. Greener says he plans to stay until he is 67, or perhaps longer if he stays healthy.“Every day I hear about how there aren’t enough workers available,” Mr. Greener said. “There are a lot of older workers that are being written off, or at least finding it much more difficult to get back into the workplace, who have a lot of years and things to offer.” More

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    Economic Headwinds Mount as Leaders Weigh Costs of Confronting Russia

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    BRUSSELS — The world economy is heading into a potentially grim period as rising costs, shortages of food and other commodities and Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine threaten to slow economic growth and bring about a painful global slump.Two years after the coronavirus pandemic emerged and left much of the globe in a state of paralysis, policymakers are grappling with ongoing challenges, including clogged supply chains, lockdowns in China and the prospect of an energy crisis as nations wean themselves off Russian oil and gas. Those colliding forces have some economists starting to worry about a global recession as different corners of the world find their economies battered by events.Finding ways to avoid a global slowdown while continuing to exert pressure on Russia for its war in Ukraine will be the primary focus of finance ministers from the Group of 7 nations who are convening in Bonn, Germany, this week.The economic challenges that governments around the globe are facing could begin to chip away at the united front that Western nations have maintained in confronting Russia’s aggression, including sweeping sanctions aimed at crippling its economy and efforts to reduce reliance on Russian energy.Policymakers are balancing delicate trade-offs as they consider how to isolate Russia, support Ukraine and keep their own economies afloat at a moment when prices are rising rapidly and growth is slowing.Central banks around the world are beginning to raise interest rates to help tame rapid inflation, moves that will temper economic growth by raising borrowing costs and could lead to higher unemployment.Global growth is expected to slow to 3.6 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund projected in April, down from the 4.4 percent it forecast before both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s zero-Covid lockdowns.On Monday, the European Commission released its own revised economic forecast, showing a slowdown in growth to 2.7 percent this year from the 4 percent estimated in its winter report. At the same time, inflation is hitting record levels and is expected to average 6.8 percent for the year. Some Eastern European countries are in for much steeper increases, with Poland, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Lithuania all facing inflation rates in excess of 11 percent.Last week, Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, signaled a possible increase in interest rates in July, the first such move in more than a decade. In a speech in Slovenia, Ms. Lagarde compared Europe to a man “who from fate receives blow on blow.”Eswar Prasad, the former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division, summed up the challenges facing the G7 nations, saying that its “policymakers are caught in the bind that any tightening of screws on Russia by limiting energy purchases worsens inflation and hurts growth in their economies.”“Such sanctions, for all the moral justification underpinning them, are exacting an increasingly heavy economic toll that in turn could have domestic political consequences for G7 leaders,” he added.Still, the United States is expected to press its allies to continue isolating Russia and to deliver more economic aid to Ukraine despite their own economic troubles. Officials are also expected to discuss the merits of imposing tariffs on Russian energy exports ahead of a proposed European oil embargo that the United States fears could send prices skyrocketing by limiting supplies. Policymakers will also discuss whether to press countries such as India to roll back export restrictions on crucial food products that are worsening already high prices.Against this backdrop is the growing urgency to help sustain Ukraine’s economy, which the International Monetary Fund has said needs an estimated $5 billion a month in aid to keep government operations running. The U.S. Congress is close to passing a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine that will cover some of these costs, but Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen has called on her European counterparts to provide more financial help.Finance ministers are expected to consider other measures for providing Ukraine with relief. There is increasing interest in the idea of seizing some of the approximately $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves that the United States and its allies have immobilized and using that money to help fund Ukraine’s reconstruction. Treasury Department officials are considering the idea, but they have trepidations about the legality of such a move and the possibility that it would raise doubts about the United States as a safe place to store assets.Ahead of the G7 meeting this week, American officials saw the economic challenges facing Europe firsthand. During a stop to meet with top officials in Warsaw on Monday, Ms. Yellen acknowledged the toll that the conflict in Ukraine is having on the economy of Poland, where officials have raised interest rates sharply to combat inflation. Poland has absorbed more than three million Ukrainian refugees and has faced a cutoff in gas exports from Russia.“They have to deal with a tighter monetary policy just as countries around the world and the United States are,” Ms. Yellen told reporters. “At a time when Poland is committed to large expenditures to shore up its security, it is a difficult balancing act.”A downturn may be unavoidable in some countries, and economists are weighing multiple factors as they gauge the likelihood of a recession, including a severe slowdown in China related to continuing Covid lockdowns.The European Commission, in its economic report, said the E.U. “is first in line among advanced economies to take a hit,” because of its proximity to Ukraine and its dependence on Russian energy. At the same time, it has absorbed more than five million refugees in less than three months.Deutsche Bank analysts said this week that they thought a recession in Europe was unlikely. By contrast, Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, warned in a note on Monday that with consumer demand and output falling, “Germany’s economy is headed for recession.” Analysts at Capital Economics predicted that Germany, Italy and Britain are likely to face recessions, meaning there is a “reasonable chance” that the broader eurozone will also face one, defined as two consecutive quarters of falling output.Vicky Redwood, senior economic adviser at Capital Economics, warned that more aggressive interest rate increases by central banks could lead to a global contraction.“If inflation expectations and inflation prove more stubborn than we expect, and interest rates need to rise further as a result, then a recession most probably will be on the cards,” Ms. Redwood wrote in a note to clients this week.A bakery in Al Hasakah, Syria. The interruption of wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia is causing food prices to spiral and increasing global hunger, particularly in Africa and the Middle East.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesThe major culprit is energy prices. In Germany, which has been most dependent on Russian fuel among the major economies in Europe, the squeeze is being acutely felt by its industrial-heavy business sector as well as consumers.Russian gas shipments “underpin the competitiveness of our industry,” Martin Brudermüller, the chief executive of the chemical giant BASF, said at the company’s annual general meeting last month.While calling to decrease its dependence, Mr. Brudermüller nevertheless warned that “if the natural gas supply from Russia were to suddenly stop, it would cause irreversible economic damage” and possibly force a stop in production.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4In Mariupol. More

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    Amazon Fires Senior Managers Tied to Unionized Staten Island Warehouse

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    Company officials said the terminations were the result of an internal review, while the fired managers saw it as a response to the recent union victory.After Amazon employees at a massive warehouse on Staten Island scored an upset union victory last month, it turned the union’s leaders into celebrities, sent shock waves through the broader labor movement and prompted politicians around the country to rally behind Amazon workers. Now it also appears to have created fallout within Amazon’s management ranks.On Thursday, Amazon informed more than half a dozen senior managers involved with the Staten Island warehouse that they were being fired, said four current and former employees with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.The firings, which occurred outside the company’s typical employee review cycle, were seen by the managers and other people who work at the facility as a response to the victory by the Amazon Labor Union, three of the people said. Workers at the warehouse voted by a wide margin to form the first union at the company in the United States, in one of the biggest victories for organized labor in at least a generation.Word of the shake-up spread through the warehouse on Thursday. Many of the managers had been responsible for carrying out the company’s response to the unionization effort. Several were veterans of the company, with more than six years of experience, according to their LinkedIn profiles.Workers who supported the union complained that the company’s health and safety protocols were too lax, particularly as they related to Covid-19 and repetitive strain injuries, and that the company pushed them too hard to meet performance targets, often at the expense of sufficient breaks. Many also said pay at the warehouse, which starts at over $18 per hour for full-time workers, was too low to live on in New York City.Understand the Unionization Efforts at AmazonBeating Amazon: A homegrown, low-budget push to unionize at a Staten Island warehouse led to a historic labor victory. (Workers at another nearby Amazon facility rejected joining a similar effort shortly after.)Retaliation: Weeks after the landmark win, Amazon fired several managers in Staten Island. Some see it as retaliation for their involvement in the unionization efforts.A New Playbook: The success of the Amazon union’s independent drive has organized labor asking whether it should take more of a back seat.Amazon’s Approach: The company has countered unionization efforts with mandatory “training” sessions that carry clear anti-union messages.An Amazon spokeswoman said the company had made the management changes after spending several weeks evaluating aspects of the “operations and leadership” at JFK8, which is the company’s name for the warehouse. “Part of our culture at Amazon is to continually improve, and we believe it’s important to take time to review whether or not we’re doing the best we could be for our team,” said Kelly Nantel, the spokeswoman.The managers were told they were being fired as part of an “organizational change,” two people said. One of the people said some of the managers were strong performers who recently received positive reviews.The Staten Island facility is Amazon’s only fulfillment center in New York City, and for a year current and former workers at the facility organized to form an upstart, independent union. The company is challenging the election, saying that the union’s unconventional tactics were coercive and that the National Labor Relations Board was biased in the union’s favor. And the union is working to maintain the pressure on Amazon so it will negotiate a contract.Christian Smalls, the president of the Amazon Labor Union, testified on Thursday before a Senate committee that was exploring whether companies that violate labor laws should be denied federal contracts. Mr. Smalls later attended a White House meeting with other labor organizers in which he directly asked President Biden to press Amazon to recognize his union.A White House spokeswoman said it was up to the National Labor Relations Board to certify the results of the recent election but affirmed that Mr. Biden had long supported collective bargaining and workers’ rights to unionize.Amazon has said that it invested $300 million on safety projects in 2021 alone and that it provides pay above the minimum wage with solid benefits like health care to full-time workers as soon as they join the company.More than 8,000 workers at the warehouse were eligible to vote, and the union made a point of reaching out to employees from different ethnic groups, including African Americans, Latinos and immigrants from Africa and Asia, as well as those of different political persuasions, from conservatives to progressives.Company officials and consultants held more than 20 mandatory meetings per day with employees in the run-up to the election, in which they sought to persuade workers not to support the union. The officials highlighted the amount of money that the union would collect from them and emphasized the uncertainty of collective bargaining, which they said could leave workers worse off.Labor experts say such claims can be misleading because it is highly unusual for workers to see their compensation fall as a result of the bargaining process.Roughly one month after the union victory at JFK8, Amazon workers at a smaller facility nearby voted against unionizing by a decisive margin.The votes came during what could be an inflection point for organized labor. While the rate of union membership reached its lowest point in decades last year (about 10 percent of U.S. workers) petitions to hold union elections were up more than 50 percent over the previous year during the six months ending in March, according to the National Labor Relations Board. The number of petitions is on pace to reach its highest point in at least a decade.Since December, workers at Starbucks have won initial union votes at more than 50 stores nationwide, while workers have organized or sought to organize at other companies that did not previously have unions, such as Apple and the outdoor apparel retailer REI.Grace Ashford More

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    Job Openings in U.S. Rose to Record in March

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    A government survey released Tuesday showed a record number of job openings, with 11.5 million positions listed as available in March, underscoring the continuing strength of the labor market.The number of “quits” — a measurement of the amount of workers voluntarily leaving jobs — also reached a high, an indicator that many workers are confident they can leave their jobs and find employment that better suits their desires or needs.The data released by the Labor Department as part of its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, is a fresh indicator of the anomalous nature of the economy as it recovers from the pandemic recession. A resurgence of household spending and business investment is colliding with a messy reordering of the supply of goods and labor.Labor force participation has quickly recovered, nearing prepandemic rates, but has failed to keep up with the surge in job opportunities over the past year as business owners expand to meet the demand for a variety of goods and services.After a sharp climb last year, job openings plateaued somewhat. The March reading suggests that the decline in acute coronavirus concerns among experts and the average consumer — paired with the rolling back of public health restrictions and the start of the summer hiring season — is increasing businesses’ appetites for more workers. Layoffs and discharges remained uncommon, and relatively flat compared to the previous month, at 1.4 million.The Federal Reserve is raising the cost of borrowing as part of an effort to cool consumer spending, business lending and demand for workers. Markets expect the Fed to announce a half-percentage point increase in its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday.The State of Jobs in the United StatesJob openings and the number of workers voluntarily leaving their positions in the United States remained near record levels in March.March Jobs Report: U.S. employers added 431,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent ​​in the third month of 2022.Job Market and Stocks: This year’s decline in stock prices follows a historical pattern: Hot labor markets and stocks often don’t mix well.New Career Paths: For some, the Covid-19 crisis presented an opportunity to change course. Here is how these six people pivoted professionally.Return to the Office: Many companies are loosening Covid safety rules, leaving people to navigate social distancing on their own. Some workers are concerned.Andrew Patterson, a senior international economist in Vanguard’s Investment Strategy Group, argued this strong report from the Labor Department on the eve of the central bank’s rate decision gives officials “more cover to continue to raise rates” and remove its longstanding financial support of the economy “expeditiously,” as the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, has said in recent weeks.Overall, even in an environment of higher borrowing costs, the remarkably robust desire among businesses to expand their work forces could help economic activity plow through the twin challenges presented by inflation, which is at a 40-year high, and the discombobulation of global supply chains compounded by coronavirus outbreaks in Asia and war in Eastern Europe.“If there’s something that’s going to cause a recession, it will be from some outside, exogenous shock,” said Nick Bunker, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, a group that analyzes world labor markets. “It won’t be household spending.”Anonymized credit card data collected by Bank of America shows that even households with an annual income below $50,000 have about twice the savings they did before the pandemic. Still, a Gallup survey released last week found 46 percent of Americans rated their personal finances positively, down from 57 percent last year, when families were freshly benefiting from rounds of federal aid and inflation remained tame.Employers have been rankled, too, complaining of labor shortages as millions of workers — energized by the discussion about “essential work” during the pandemic and buoyed by savings — experience a degree of bargaining power they haven’t had in decades.That has led to a tense, politically charged dynamic in which wage pressures are a broadening complaint among large and small businesses trying to maintain their profit margins, even though jumps in pay haven’t generally kept up with price increases.“We’re learning a lot about how structurally fragile our economy is,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist. She cited a dependence on “endless low-wage workers and just-in-time supplies of goods” for keeping consumer prices depressed for many years.The employment cost index, which tracks wages and benefits, jumped by the most on record in the first quarter of this year, according to Labor Department figures released last week. Still, a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, concluded that roughly 54 percent of the overall increase in prices in the nonfinancial corporate sector since the second quarter of 2020 could be attributed to an expansion of profit margins, while labor costs were responsible for less than 8 percent of price increases. The analysis indicates that 38 percent of the uptick stems from nonlabor input costs, such as overhead, fuel or raw materials.That data complicates the increasingly popular narrative that the spikes in worker pay are mostly to blame for the severity of price increases, rather than a wider mix of reasons.“Normally, you’d expect profits to decrease during a period of high inflation,” said Tony Roth, the chief investment officer of Wilmington Trust Investment Advisors, an arm of M&T Bank. The reason the opposite has happened for many companies over the last couple of years is, he said, straightforward: “Businesses are doing it because they can get away with it.”The economy, while strong, may be locked in a vexing, self-reinforcing cycle for a while: The continued wave of household spending has often signaled to businesses that they had room to raise prices without consequence — allowing executives to hire more workers while maintaining profitability.Until more consumers balk at heightened price levels, it’s unclear where prices and demand will find an equilibrium.Mr. Roth said his financial firm, like most others, was advising clients to invest in companies that still had a large amount of “pricing power” — meaning that they can raise prices without dampening demand for what they sell, either because the good or service is particularly desirable or because it is essential to the buyers’ life routines or business needs. More

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    Trump Officials Gave Pandemic Loan to Trucking Company Despite Objections

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    WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday released a report alleging that top Trump administration officials had awarded a $700 million pandemic relief loan to a struggling trucking company in 2020 over the objections of career officials at the Defense Department.The report, released by the Democratic staff of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, describes the role of corporate lobbyists during the early months of the pandemic in helping to secure government funds as trillions of dollars of relief money were being pumped into the economy. It also suggests that senior officials such as Steven Mnuchin, the former Treasury secretary, and Mark T. Esper, the former defense secretary, intervened to ensure that the trucking company, Yellow Corporation, received special treatment despite concerns about its eligibility to receive relief funds.“Today’s select subcommittee staff report reveals yet another example of the Trump administration disregarding their obligation to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the Democratic chairman of the subcommittee, said in a statement. “Political appointees risked hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds against the recommendations of career D.O.D. officials and in clear disregard of provisions of the CARES Act intended to protect national security and American taxpayers.”The $2.2 trillion pandemic relief package that Congress passed in 2020 included a $17 billion pot of money set up by Congress and controlled by the Treasury Department to assist companies that were considered critical to national security. In July 2020, the Treasury Department announced it was giving a $700 million loan to the trucking company YRC Worldwide, which has since changed its name to Yellow.Lobbyists for Yellow had been in close touch with White House officials throughout the loan process and had discussed how the company employs Teamsters as its drivers, according to the report.Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, was a “key actor” coordinating with Yellow’s lobbyists, according to correspondences that the committee obtained. The report also noted that the White House’s political operation was “almost giddy” in its effort to assist with the application.The loan raised immediate questions from watchdog groups because of the company’s close ties to the Trump administration and because it had faced years of financial and legal turmoil. The firm had lost more than $100 million in 2019 and was being sued by the Justice Department over claims that it had defrauded the federal government for a seven-year period. It recently agreed to pay $6.85 million to resolve allegations “that they knowingly presented false claims to the U.S. Department of Defense by systematically overcharging for freight carrier services and making false statements to hide their misconduct.”To qualify for a national security loan, a company needed certification by the Defense Department.According to the report, defense officials had recommended against certification because of the accusations that the company had overcharged the government. They also noted that the work that the company had been doing for the federal government — which included shipping meal kits, protective equipment and other supplies to military bases — could be replaced by other trucking firms.But the day after a defense official notified a Treasury official that the company would not be certified, one of Mr. Mnuchin’s aides set up a telephone call between him and Mr. Esper.The report indicated that Mr. Esper was not initially familiar with the status of Yellow’s certification. Before the call, aides prepared a summary of the analysis and recommendations of the department’s career officials that concluded that the certification should be rejected. Before those reached Mr. Esper, Ellen M. Lord, the department’s under secretary for acquisition and sustainment who was appointed by Mr. Trump, intervened and requested a new set of talking points that argued that the company should receive the financial support “to both support force readiness and national economic security.” Ms. Lord could not immediately be reached for comment.After the call with Mr. Mnuchin, Mr. Esper certified that the company was critical to national security, and a week later the approval of the loan was announced.Mr. Mnuchin then sent an email to Mr. Meadows that included news reports praising the loan. He highlighted positive comments from James P. Hoffa, the longtime president of the Teamsters union, who according to documents in the report made a direct plea to President Donald J. Trump about the loan.Mr. Esper and Mr. Mnuchin declined to comment. A former Treasury official familiar with the process said the loan saved 25,000 union jobs during an economic crisis and prevented disruption to the national supply chain that the Defense Department, businesses and consumers had depended on. The former official said that because of the terms of the loan, taxpayers were profiting from the agreement.A spokesman for Mr. Esper said that the company met the criteria to be eligible for the loan and emphasized that the report made clear that senior staff at the Defense Department recommended that he certify it. The Treasury Department made the final decision to issue the loan, the spokesman added.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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    The prospect of lockdowns in Beijing fuels more concerns about supply chain disruptions.

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    The prospect of further lockdowns in China prompted a fresh wave of economic anxiety on Monday as investors and companies whose supply chains run through China contemplated the impact of 70 new virus cases that the Beijing government said it had detected over the weekend.The city government ordered one of its districts to test all 3.5 million of its residents for coronavirus in the coming days, a move that may be a prelude to a larger lockdown in China’s capital city. Shanghai, a major port and business center, has been locked down for roughly a month, part of China’s “zero Covid” strategy. Other Chinese cities both large and small have announced their own restrictions on the movement of residents in a bid to keep the virus from spreading.The lockdowns present yet another challenge for global supply chains that have been stressed by pandemic shutdowns and the war in Ukraine, leading to greater competition for goods and higher prices that are fueling inflation worldwide.While the Chinese authorities have sought to keep factories and especially ports operating by keeping workers on the premises in so-called closed-loop systems, the lockdowns have interrupted shipments and lengthened delivery times for many of the global companies that depend on Chinese factories.Phil Levy, the chief economist at Flexport, a freight forwarder, said in an email that while Beijing is an important city, “it is not at the heart of factory production or supply chain operations.” He said lockdowns there would have a more limited impact than previous restrictions in Shanghai and Guangdong, where ports continued to mostly operate.But the effects would depend on where outbreaks occurred — for example whether they shut down a port — and how long lockdowns persisted, Mr. Levy added. “This is a relatively slow part of the year, but there is plenty of catch-up to be done, and things will soon be due to build. The costs will mount the longer this lasts.”The disruptions that are still unfolding in Shanghai and other Chinese cities are likely to reverberate along global supply chains in the coming months. Andrea Huang, a senior director at Overhaul, which monitors company supply chains, said with lockdowns not expected to ease until early or mid-May, the ripple effects for industries like auto and consumer electronics would extend into June or July.In Shanghai, the local authorities on Friday selected some companies in the automotive, semiconductor and other key industries to restart production, but the vast majority of enterprises remain shuttered.Activity at the port has also slowed. According to data from Project44, a logistics platform, the number of vessels that were berthing at the Shanghai port last week had dropped by about half since the lockdown began, while the number of vessels seeking to call at the nearby port of Ningbo jumped as shipping companies tried to get around restrictions. The time that imported containers were spending in the port had also risen sharply, from 4.6 days on March 28 to 14 days on April 23, the company said, as coronavirus testing requirements for truck drivers limited the ability to get containers in and out of the port.Fears of broader lockdowns weighed on global stocks on Monday, while oil and other commodities also fell in anticipation of lower demand.Elisabeth Waelbroeck-Rocha, chief international economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said that, in addition to disrupting global supply chains and fueling inflation, coronavirus outbreaks and accompanying lockdowns had undermined Chinese economic growth in March and April, making China unlikely to reach its target of 5.5 percent growth in gross domestic product in 2022.The epicenter of the outbreak shifted from Jilin Province in the northeast to Shanghai, a manufacturing base for high-end auto components, but smaller-scale outbreaks in other regions have largely been brought under control, she wrote in a note. More