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    Covid Stimulus Money Brings Clashes Within Cities and Counties

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    Last June, a meeting of the Dutchess County Legislature in New York’s Hudson Valley quickly turned heated over how to spend some of the county’s $57 million in federal pandemic relief aid.For more than two hours, residents and Democratic lawmakers implored the Republican majority to address longstanding problems that the pandemic had exacerbated. They cited opioid abuse, poverty and food insecurity. Some pointed to decrepit sewer systems and inadequate high-speed internet. Democrats offered up amendments directing funds to addiction recovery and mental health services.In the end, the Legislature rebuffed their appeals. It voted 15 to 10 to devote $12.5 million to renovate a minor-league baseball stadium that’s home to the Hudson Valley Renegades, a Yankees affiliate.“Who created this plan? Some legislators?” asked Carole Pickering, a resident of Hyde Park. “These funds were intended to rescue our citizens to the extent possible, not to upgrade a baseball field.”“I think we should be a little bit ashamed,” Brennan Kearney, a Democrat in the Legislature, told her fellow lawmakers.Cities and counties across the United States have found themselves in the surprisingly uncomfortable position of deciding how best to spend a windfall of federal relief funds intended to help keep them afloat amid deadly waves of Covid-19 infections.The pandemic, which is showing signs of waning as it enters its third year, prompted the largest infusion of federal money into the U.S. economy since the New Deal. President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump got Congress to approve roughly $5 trillion to help support families, shop owners, unemployed workers, schools and businesses.Where $5 Trillion in Pandemic Stimulus Money WentIt is the largest government relief effort in recorded history, and two years after Covid-19 crisis began, money is still flowing to communities. Here’s where it went and how it was spent.A large portion of the aid went to state, local and tribal governments, many of which had projected revenue losses of as much as 20 percent at the pandemic’s onset. The largest chunk came from Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion recovery bill, the American Rescue Plan, which earmarked $350 billion. That money is just beginning to flow to communities, which have until 2026 to spend it.“We’ve sent you a whole hell of a lot of money,” Mr. Biden said during a meeting with the nation’s governors in January.In many cases, the money has become an unusually public and contentious marker of what matters most to a place — and who gets to make those decisions. The debates are sometimes partisan, but not always divided by ideology. They pit colleagues against each other, neighbors against neighbors, people who want infrastructure improvements against those who want to help people experiencing homelessness.“It’s both breathtaking in its magnitude but it still requires some hard and strategic choices,” said Brad Whitehead, who is a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Metro, a metropolitan policy project, and advises cities on how to use their funds. “One of the difficulties for elected leaders is everyone has a claim and a thought for how these dollars should be used.”Poughkeepsie, N.Y., part of Dutchess County. At a meeting last summer, county residents implored leaders to use pandemic aid to address longstanding problems.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesA person who is homeless in Poughkeepsie. Homelessness and poverty were among the issues that residents said deserved funding.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesLocal governments were given broad discretion over how to use the money. In addition to addressing immediate health needs, they were allowed to make up for pandemic-related revenue losses from empty transit systems, tourist attractions and other areas that suffered financially.That money is often equivalent to a third or nearly half of a city’s annual budget. St. Louis, for instance, will receive $498 million, more than 40 percent of its 2021 budget of $1.1 billion. Cleveland, with a city budget of $1.8 billion, will get $511 million.But the relief comes with strings: Governments are prohibited from using the funds to subsidize tax cuts or to make up for pension shortfalls. And because the aid is essentially a one-time installment, it wouldn’t necessarily help cover salaries for new teachers or other recurring costs.Several states have sued the Biden administration over the tax cut restriction, claiming it violates state sovereignty. Some governments have refused to take the money over concerns that it would give the federal government power to control local decision-making.In Saginaw, Mich., the mayor formed a 15-person advisory group to recommend ways to spend the city’s $52 million allotment. Harrisburg, Pa., which received $49 million, has held public events seeking input from residents. Massillon, Ohio, identified the biggest source of public complaints — flooding and sanitation issues — and proposed using its $16 million share to address those areas.“We listened to the people, and we’re trying to make improvements for them,” said Kathy Catazaro-Perry, Massillon’s mayor. “Our city is old. We have a lot of areas that did not have storm drains, and so for us, this is going to be huge because we’re going to be able to rectify some of those older neighborhoods.”But many have found their communities mired in clashes over who has the power to spend the money.Poughkeepsie residents picked up free meals at the Family Partnership Center in February. The food was distributed through the Lunch Box, a program that provides hot meals in Dutchess County five days a week.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesIn New York’s Onondaga County, which includes Syracuse, legislators from both parties have been trying to claw back spending authority from the county executive, Ryan McMahon, a Republican.When the first half of the county’s $89 million stimulus share arrived last spring, Mr. McMahon placed it into an account that he controlled and began committing funds to projects, including a $1 million restaurant voucher program, $5 million in incentives for filmmakers to produce in the area and $25 million for a multisport complex featuring 10 synthetic turf fields.Lawmakers, who questioned why they were not being asked to vote on the spending, were told by the county attorney’s office that they had ceded that authority in December 2020 when they approved an emergency resolution that gave the county executive authority “to address budget issues specifically related to Covid-19 global pandemic.”Legislators argued that they had never intended for that control to extend beyond the immediate pandemic response.James Rowley, who was elected chair of the Onondaga County Legislature in January, hired a lawyer and spent $11,000 preparing a lawsuit to challenge Mr. McMahon.“We have the power of the purse,” Mr. Rowley, a Republican, said in an interview. “I didn’t want to set a precedent that gave the county executive power to spend county money.”Mr. McMahon did not respond to a request for comment. On Feb. 22, he sent a letter to the Legislature proposing that it regain control of the stimulus funds that had not yet been allocated.“I recognize your concern,” he wrote, noting that “our cooperative actions should comport with county charter principles of separation of powers.” An abandoned property in Poughkeepsie. One county legislator called the investment in the baseball stadium “a betrayal of our community.”Boarded-up buildings in Poughkeepsie. Local governments were given broad discretion in how the pandemic aid could be spent.The rush of money from the federal government is in part an attempt to avoid the mistakes of the last recession, when state and local governments cut spending and fired workers, prolonging America’s economic recovery. But analysts say it will take years to fully assess whether all the spending this time was successful. Critics argue that the overall $5 trillion effort has added to a ballooning federal deficit and helped propel rapid inflation. And many states report increasing revenue, and even surpluses, as the economy strengthens.The money has led to ideological fights over the role of the federal government.In January, dozens of residents crowded into a City Council meeting in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where they demanded that the mayor and other officials turn down the city’s $8.6 million share of stimulus funds, saying it was a ruse by Washington to take control of the town.Residents booed and called the Council members “fascists.” Several referred to the money as a Trojan horse, lamenting that taking it would allow the federal government to impose restrictions on Idaho, including establishing vaccine checkpoints. Amid cries of “Recall!” one woman shouted repeatedly that “you have given up our sovereignty.”“Nobody wants this money,” Mark Salazar, a resident, said to applause. “I don’t want to be under the chains of the federal government. Nobody does.”The council eventually voted 5 to 1 to accept the funds, saying they would go toward expanding a police station and other areas.Dutchess County residents were similarly agitated, if less rowdy, at their June 14 meeting about the stadium. Guidance on using the funds issued by the Treasury Department specifically cited stadiums as “generally not reasonably proportional to addressing the negative economic impacts of the pandemic.”So why, those in attendance asked, was this happening?Marc Molinaro, the county executive, defended the spending, saying Dutchess County had identified $33 million in lost revenue as a result of the pandemic and that, according to the Biden administration’s guidance, stimulus funds could indeed go toward investing in things like the stadium.“It’s basically any structure, facility, thing you own as a government, you can invest these dollars in with broad latitude,” Mr. Molinaro said.In a recent interview, Mr. Molinaro said that because the funds were one-time money, the county needed to be careful not to create expenses that could not be paid for once the federal funds ran out.He added that investing in the stadium would produce an ongoing revenue stream for Dutchess County — money that he said would allow the government to pay for the types of programs that Democrats wanted.The investment, he said, “allows us to create 25 years of revenue that we can invest in the expansion of mental health services, homelessness and substance abuse.”That explanation has not mollified everyone.“I was just devastated that we spent the money that way,” Ms. Kearney, the Democratic legislator, said in an interview. “It was such a betrayal of our community. So grossly inappropriate and grossly tone deaf to the needs of the people in Dutchess who have suffered.” More

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    Where $5 Trillion in Pandemic Stimulus Money Went

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    At the outset of the pandemic, governments used the funds largely to cover virus-related costs.

    As the months dragged on, they found themselves covering unexpected shortfalls created by the pandemic, including lost revenue from parking garages and museums where attendance dropped off. They also funded longstanding priorities like upgrading sewer systems and other infrastructure projects.

    K-12 schools used early funds to transition to remote learning, and they received $122 billion from the American Rescue Plan that was intended to help them pay salaries, facilitate vaccinations and upgrade buildings and ventilation systems to reduce the virus’s spread. At least 20 percent must be spent on helping students recover academically from the pandemic.

    While not all of the state and local aid has been spent, the scope of the funding has been expansive:

    Utah set aside $100 million for “water conservation” as it faces historic drought conditions.

    Texas has designated $100 million to “maintain” the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.

    The San Antonio Independent School District in Texas plans to spend $9.4 million on increasing staff compensation, giving all permanent full-time employees a 2 percent pay raise and lifting minimum wages to $16 an hour, from $15.

    Alabama approved $400 million to help fund 4,000-bed prisons.

    Summerville, S.C., allocated more than $1.3 million for premium pay for essential workers.

    What was the impact?

    The aim of the money was to prevent the kind of painful budget cuts that state and local governments were forced to make in the wake of the Great Recession, when revenues plunged and costs soared, a recipe that prolonged America’s sluggish recovery and hampered some local economies for years.

    Economists largely agree that the money helped local governments shoulder significant pandemic-related costs, and many governments avoided deep budget cuts. Many states have even reported surpluses.

    But federal rules prevented local governments from using CARES Act funds to fill budget shortfalls, and state and local governments wound up slashing hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs anyway. Several states have sued the Biden administration over restrictions it imposed on the use of funds.

    What hasn’t been spent?

    A significant portion has yet to be spent, in part because more than $100 billion remains to be distributed by the Treasury Department. Only 19 states, plus Washington, D.C., received their entire allotments of American Rescue Plan funds in 2021. A second batch will be distributed this year.

    Governments have until 2026 tospend the funds, and disagreements over where the money should go and who has authority to spend it have slowed planning in some communities.

    School districts have until January 2025 to spend the money allocated to them. But even with several years left, schools have voiced concerns about meeting that deadline as many districts struggle with labor shortages and supply-chain delays. More

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    U.S. Employers Still Scrambling to Fill Vacancies, Report Shows

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    Job openings in the United States and the number of workers quitting their jobs remained near record highs in January, an indicator of demand for labor and of worker leverage.The data, released by the Labor Department on Wednesday as part of its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, was another sign of an economy that wobbled slightly yet remained sturdy when faced with the Omicron wave of the coronavirus this winter.Job openings dipped to 11.3 million, down slightly from a record in December, but were still up about 61 percent from February 2020.In a potential sign of the impact wrought by the variant’s spread, several industries that had been rebounding from the pandemic, and had been most hungry for workers, reported fewer job openings. Accommodation and food services experienced a drop of 288,000. Transportation, warehousing and utilities reported 132,000 fewer openings. But openings continued to increase in both manufacturing and the service sector at large.Some 4.3 million people left their jobs voluntarily in January, edging down somewhat from the record 4.5 million who quit in November. While layoffs picked up slightly in January, they were still hovering above historical lows.For Jeffrey Roach, the chief economist at LPL Financial, the most fascinating current in the labor market is the increased share of workers who are quitting jobs not to make a career change but simply to achieve higher pay.“You can see people are actually staying within their industry — and it really helps the ‘lower-skilled’ worker,” he said. “I think we’ll continue to see really high churn rates.”The share of Americans in their prime working years — ages 25 to 54 — who were either working or looking for work plummeted in 2020, yet it has recovered to a rate of 79.5 percent, within 1 percentage point of prepandemic levels, a much faster rebound than occurred after the last downturn.The prevailing environment is likely to increase the price of labor — a welcome development for workers who have dealt with stagnant wages and a lack of power for decades, and an unsettling one for employers as high inflation increases the cost of doing business.Some business executives and managers have expressed concern — in corporate earnings and in private calls — that “wage inflation” could set in and cut into profits if the rapid wage gains that workers achieved last year don’t taper off.“When it comes to their business, they’re very concerned about it: What does that mean to their margins going forward? What kind of pricing power do they have?” said Steve Wyett, chief investment strategist at BOK Financial, a regional bank based in Oklahoma, where unemployment is notably low at 2.8 percent. “How do we protect ourselves against this?”Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta shows that workers who quit to take other jobs are receiving larger pay increases than those who are staying put, though much of this movement is in lower-wage sectors.After the Labor Department’s employment survey showed strong wage gains in January, hourly earnings were nearly flat in February. And even if wage gains stay strong, they remain far from runaway levels.Fed data shows that median annual pay increases in the American labor market have been well within the range — 3 to 7 percent — that prevailed from the 1980s until the 2007-9 recession. More

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    China Outlines Plan to Stabilize Economy in Crucial Year for Xi

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    China calls for heavy government spending and lending, as its leaders seek to project confidence in the face of global uncertainty over the pandemic and war in Ukraine.BEIJING — Plowing past global anxieties over the war engulfing Ukraine, China set its economy on a course of steady expansion for 2022, prioritizing growth, job creation and increased social welfare in a year when the national leader, Xi Jinping, is poised to claim a new term in power.The annual government work report delivered to China’s National People’s Congress by Premier Li Keqiang on Saturday did not even mention Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it took an implacably steady-as-it-goes tone on China’s economic outlook.The implicit message appeared to be that China could weather the turbulence in Europe, and would focus on trying to keep the Chinese population at home contented and employed before an all-important Communist Party meeting in the fall, when Mr. Xi is increasingly certain to extend his time in power.“In our work this year, we must make economic stability our top priority and pursue progress while ensuring stability,” Mr. Li said.By announcing a target for China’s economy to expand “around 5.5 percent” this year, Mr. Li reinforced the government’s emphasis on shoring up growth in the face of global uncertainty from the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine. That goal is slower than the 8.1 percent rebound in the economy that China reported last year, but higher than many economists believe the country can achieve without big government spending programs.Mr. Li disappointed anyone who might have thought he would have anything to say about Ukraine. The Chinese government’s annual work reports generally avoid new announcements on foreign policy, and this year’s was no exception. Beijing has sought to maintain its partnership with Russia while trying to distance China from President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to go to war.“China will continue to pursue an independent foreign policy of peace, stay on the path of peaceful development, work for a new type of international relations,” Mr. Li said in his report — the closest he came to a comment on international developments.Still, leaders in Beijing also signaled — in numbers, rather than words — that they were preparing for an increasingly dangerous world. China’s military budget will grow by 7.1 percent this year to about $229 billion, according to the government’s budget report, also released Saturday. Mr. Li indicated that there would be no slowing in China’s efforts to modernize and overhaul its military, which includes expanding the navy and developing an array of advanced missiles.Chinese military planes at an aviation expo in Zhuhai, China, last year.Ng Han Guan/Associated Press“While economic development provides a foundation for a possible defense budget increase, the security threats China is facing and the demands for national defense capability enhancement caused by those threats are the driving factors,” Global Times, a Communist Party-run newspaper, wrote in a report this week that predicted China’s rise in military spending. “Over the past year, the U.S. also rallied its allies and partners around the world to provoke and confront China militarily.”In December, the United States Congress approved a budget of $768 billion for the American military. But salaries and equipment manufacturing costs are far higher in the United States, which has prompted some analysts to suggest that China’s military budget is rapidly catching up in actual purchasing power.The plan Mr. Li outlined suggests that China values economic growth more than trying to make potentially painful adjustments to shift the economy toward greater reliance on domestic consumer spending. Beijing has been trying, with limited success, to move the economy away from dependence on debt-fueled infrastructure and housing construction.China had managed to reduce slightly last year its debt relative to economic output. It needed to do so because this ratio had climbed, during the first year of the pandemic, to a level that economists regarded as unsustainable.But meeting this year’s growth target would require more borrowing, undoing most or all of the progress made last year in reducing the debt burden, said Michael Pettis, an economist with Peking University. He said that it was hard to see how China could break its dependence on achieving high growth targets at least partly through heavy borrowing.Mr. Li acknowledged that the Chinese economy would face challenges this year, pointing to the sluggish recovery of consumption and investment, flagging growth in exports and a shortage of resources and raw materials. By the last three months of last year, the economy was growing only 4 percent.Part of that economic slowdown reflected a series of government policy shifts aimed at reining in unsustainable expansion in some sectors. Housing speculation was discouraged. Stringent limits were imposed on the after-school tutoring industry. And national security agencies imposed tighter scrutiny on the tech sector.China’s huge construction industry is stalling as home buyers turn wary, with developers beginning to default on debts. Dwindling revenues from land sales have made some local governments more cautious about building additional roads and bridges. Continued lockdowns and travel restrictions to prevent the coronavirus from spreading have caused a downturn in spending at hotels and restaurants.A shopping district in Shanghai in January.Aly Song/ReutersMr. Li gave few clues to whether China might shift away from its stringent “zero Covid” pandemic strategy, which has relied on mass testing and occasional lockdowns. He urged officials to handle local outbreaks in a “scientific and targeted manner.”The Latest on China: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 3National People’s Congress. More

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    Ukraine War Strains North Africa Economies

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    Egypt imports most of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, and is looking for alternative suppliers. And Tunisia was struggling to pay for grain imports even before the conflict.CAIRO — On the way to the bakery, Mona Mohammed realized Russia’s war on Ukraine might have something to do with her.Ms. Mohammed, 43, said she rarely pays attention to the news, but as she walked through her working-class Cairo neighborhood of Sayyida Zeinab on Friday morning, she overheard a few people fretting about the fact that Egypt imports most of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine.War meant less wheat; war meant more expensive wheat. War meant that Egyptians whose budgets were already crimped from months of rising prices might soon have to pay more for the round loaves of aish baladi, or country bread, that contribute more calories and protein to the Egyptian diet than anything else.“How much more expensive can things get?” Ms. Mohammed said as she waited to collect her government-subsidized loaves from the bakeryRussia’s invasion of Ukraine this week threatens to further strain economies across the Middle East already burdened by the pandemic, drought and conflict. As usual, the poorest have had it the worst, reckoning with inflated food costs and scarcer jobs — a state of affairs that recalled the lead-up to 2011, when soaring bread prices helped propel anti-government protesters into the streets in what came to be known as the Arab Spring.In a region where bread keeps hundreds of millions of people from hunger, anxiety at the bakeries spells trouble.In Egypt, the world’s top importer of wheat, the government was moving in the wake of the Russian invasion to find alternative grain suppliers. In Morocco, where the worst drought in three decades was pushing up food prices, the Ukraine crisis was set to exacerbate the inflation that has caused protests to break out. Tunisia was already struggling to pay for grain shipments before the conflict broke out; the war seemed likely to complicate the cash-strapped government’s efforts to avert a looming economic collapse.Harvesting wheat in Luxor, Egypt.Khaled Elfiqi/EPA, via ShutterstockBetween April 2020 and December 2021, the price of wheat increased 80 percent, according to data from the International Monetary Fund. North Africa and the Middle East, the largest buyers of Russian and Ukrainian wheat, were experiencing their worst droughts in over 20 years, said Sara Menker, the chief executive of Gro Intelligence, an artificial intelligence platform that analyzes global climate and crops.“This has the potential to upend global trade flows, further fuel inflation, and create even more geopolitical tensions around the world,” she said.After years of mismanaging their water supplies and agricultural industries, countries like Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco cannot afford to feed their own populations without importing food — and heavily subsidizing it. In recent years, the number of undernourished people in the Arab world has increased because of the overreliance on food imports, as well as a scarcity of arable land and rapid population growth.Beyond its effect on the price of bread, the uncertainty and turmoil brought on by the war will push up interest rates and lower access to credit, which, in turn, would quickly force governments to spend more to service their high debts and squeeze essential spending on health care, education, wages and public investments, said Ishac Diwan, an economist specializing in the Arab world at Paris Sciences et Lettres university.He predicted a rise in economic pressure on Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Morocco, warning that Egypt and Tunisia in particular could see peril to their banking sectors, which hold a large share of the public debt.Egypt is also heavily dependent on tourism from Russia, which has helped its tourism industry recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, giving the country extra cause for alarm.Global inflation and supply chain issues stemming from the pandemic have also raised the price of pasta in Egypt by a third over the last month. Cooking oil was up. Meat was up. Nearly everything was up.But most important, bread, the cost of which had already risen by about 50 percent at non-subsidized bakeries over the last four months; a five-pound note (about 30 cents) now buys only about seven loaves of bread, down from 10, bakery employees said.Egyptians, about a third of whom live on less than $1.50 a day, rely on bread for a third of their calories and 45 percent of their protein, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, a United Nations agency.Mona Fathy, 36, serving food to her children in her home, in the impoverished neighborhood of El-Ayyat in Giza, Egypt.Mohamed Abd El Ghany/ReutersGovernment officials said on Thursday that Egypt had enough grain reserves and domestically produced wheat to last the country until November. But because of rising import prices President Abdel Fatteh el-Sisi last year announced that Egypt would raise subsidized bread prices this year, risking public fury.“Of course I’m worried,” said Karim Khalaf, 23, who was collecting and stacking baladi loaves as they slipped out of the oven, steaming slightly, in a bakery in Sayyida Zeinab on Friday morning. “My salary hasn’t changed, but now I’m spending more than I’m making.”Morocco, where the all-important agriculture sector employs about 45 percent of the work force, is facing an economic crisis precipitated by global inflation, a surge of food and oil prices, and the worst drought in three decades.Anti-government protests that erupted on Sunday suggested that many Moroccans have lost patience with their six-month-old government as they struggle to make ends meet two years into a pandemic that annihilated the once-lucrative tourism industry.Understand Russia’s Attack on UkraineCard 1 of 7What is at the root of this invasion? More

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    Pandemic savings boom may be ending, and many feel short of cash.

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    Americans have collectively saved trillions of dollars since the pandemic began. But they aren’t exactly feeling flush with cash — and now there are signs that the pandemic-era savings boom may be coming to an end.Savings soared during the first year of the pandemic as the federal government handed out hundreds of billions of dollars in unemployment benefits, economic impact payments and other forms of aid, and as households spent less on vacations, concerts and other in-person activities. The saving rate — the share of after-tax income that is invested or saved, rather than spent — topped 33 percent in April 2020 and remained elevated through late last year.But the saving rate fell in the second half of 2021, returning roughly to its prepandemic level of about 7 percent last fall. In January, Americans saved just 6.4 percent of their after-tax income, the lowest monthly saving rate since 2013, as millions of employees lost hours because of the latest coronavirus wave, and this time the government did not step in to provide aid.Still, Americans in the aggregate have roughly $2.7 trillion in “excess savings” accumulated since the pandemic began, by some estimates.In a survey conducted this month for The New York Times by the online research firm Momentive, however, only 16 percent of respondents said they had more in savings than before the pandemic, and 50 percent said they had less. Among lower-income households, just 9 percent said they had more in savings, and 64 percent said they had less.The government measures the total savings of all households, which can be skewed by a relative handful of rich people. And it uses a broader definition of “saving” than most laypeople probably do — paying down debt, for example, is considered “saving” in official government statistics.But those factors can’t fully explain the disconnect. According to anonymous banking records reviewed by researchers at the JPMorgan Chase Institute, for example, median checking account balances remained significantly above their prepandemic level at the end of December, though they have fallen since their peak last spring. And while high-income households had far more money in their accounts on average, low-income households had experienced a bigger jump in savings on a percentage basis.“We’re still seeing this picture that cash balances are still elevated in general, and they’re elevated more so for low-income families,” said Fiona Greig, co-president of the institute.Dr. Greig said it was possible that balances had shrunk further since December, when monthly child tax credit payments ended. Brianna Richardson, a research scientist at Momentive, said it was also possible that survey respondents were misremembering how much money they had before the pandemic, perhaps because their savings grew so much earlier in the crisis. Inflation could also be affecting people’s assessments, because the same dollar amount in savings won’t go as far as prices rise. More

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    Could Wages and Prices Spiral Upward in America?

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    A labor shortage that began as businesses reopened from pandemic lockdowns is helping to push up pay. The Fed is watching carefully.Amazon, Bank of America and Chipotle are among a spate of companies raising wages this year as they compete for workers in a labor market with more open positions than unemployed job seekers.But that positive development for workers could morph into a challenge for the Federal Reserve if climbing wages help to keep inflation high, prompting employees to ask for even more money and generating an upward spiral.So far, many economists think such a situation can be kept at bay. But the Fed is closely monitoring inflation and pay data to assess the risk, because the consequences if wages and prices begin to drive each other steadily higher could be serious, requiring a response from the central bank that could be economically painful.The Fed is already poised to raise interest rates in March in an attempt to begin cooling off the economy as inflation runs at its fastest pace in 40 years. But if it needed to restrain a self-perpetuating burst in wages and prices, officials might decide to adjust policy more drastically. Higher interest rates could abruptly hit the brakes on lending and spending, potentially sending the United States into recession and foiling central bankers’ hopes of guiding growth gently toward a more sustainable path.“I think we’re much more likely to have something messier than a magical soft landing,” said Olivier Blanchard, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “The wage evolutions are going to be the thing to look at.”Wages are already rising sharply. Pay for restaurant servers and hotel workers began to increase notably in 2021 as companies, reopening after lockdown, struggled to rehire people quickly. Now a wide array of industries are giving raises: The government’s latest employment report showed pay accelerating sharply for education and health workers, manufacturers, and professional and business services.Average hourly earnings jumped 5.7 percent in the year through January, a full percentage point more than economists had forecast.Earnings calls are replete with chief executives explaining that they are increasing pay to attract and retain talent. Unions have won pay bargaining fights. And the White House regularly celebrates signs that power in the work force seems to have shifted toward employees and away from employers.For the most part, that’s good news for labor. But economists have increasingly warned that the confluence of economic trends shaping up now — high inflation, a sense among consumers that prices might stay high for a while and a strong labor market that has handed workers bargaining power — could set the stage for a situation in which wage growth and prices feed off each other.“The combination of very high inflation, hot wage growth and high short-term inflation expectations means that concerns about falling into a wage-price spiral deserve to be taken seriously,” Goldman Sachs economists wrote in a note last week.That would be a big shift. America has not experienced a wage-price spiral since the 1970s and early 1980s, when rapid inflation and skyrocketing wages seemed to perpetuate each other. The Fed lifted interest rates to double digits and caused a painful recession to bring prices under control. Both wage growth and inflation have been slow in the decades since — until now.But even if wages and prices are both rising now, it is not clear that they are egging each other on yet, which is a crucial distinction. In fact, labor market experts point out three big reasons to doubt that a wage-price spiral will happen today.Chief among them: Productivity growth looks strong. If each individual worker can churn out more goods and services, companies should be able to pay more without hurting their profit margins and leading them to pass along the higher costs. Nick Bunker, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said recent productivity data was an encouraging sign but not a definitive one.“It’s really hard to observe in real time,” he said of the data, noting that the numbers jump around a lot. “I think it’s something to keep an eye on.”It is also unclear just how much wage bargaining power employees have, even with employers eager to hire. Wage growth appears to have been falling behind price increases for many income groups in recent months, suggesting that workers aren’t managing to persuade their companies to compensate them fully for rising costs. Unionization is much lower than in the 1970s, which could leave workers with fewer tools to bargain up pay.If that begins to crimp consumers’ ability to buy new couches and cars, it could cause demand to moderate, naturally restraining inflation.And the tie between wages and prices has been tenuous in recent decades. While research has found a link between the two in the 1960s and 1970s, the relationship collapsed after the early 1980s and has remained tame since.“The relationship between wage growth and services inflation just isn’t that tight,” said Laura Rosner-Warburton, an economist at MacroPolicy Perspectives. “Yes, you will see more inflation from wages in 2022. The question is how much?”A coffee shop in New York advertised open positions this month.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesWhile a wage-price spiral is on a “large list of risk factors” that the administration is closely watching, the “dominant forecast” is that the labor market will stay strong and price gains will moderate this year, said Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.Wall Street economists generally think inflation will fade toward 3 percent this year, based on recent analyst notes and interviews. A recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed that consumers, who had been penciling in higher inflation in the years ahead, have begun to lower their expectations for price increases.But several forecasters said there was room for humility and wariness, because the pandemic economy has repeatedly confounded expectations. It has also drastically changed America’s economic backdrop.“The last 20 years have been years of very low inflation, very stable inflation,” Mr. Blanchard said. Before the coronavirus, inflation had hovered around — and then below — 2.5 percent for decades. Today, it has jumped to 7.5 percent.As prices for products including gas, steaks, bacon and camping equipment climb rapidly, eating into paychecks and dominating headlines, consumers are more likely to take note and ask for better pay.“Things change completely when inflation is a big number,” Mr. Blanchard said. “Salience changes.”There are signs that wages are feeding into price increases, at the margin. Prices have recently begun to rise sharply for core services, a set of purchases outside of health care, rent and transportation for which wages tend to make up a major cost of production.“That was concerning,” said Alan Detmeister, an economist at UBS who formerly led the Fed’s wage and price section. But, he added, it is hardly conclusive.More anecdotally, stories of workers winning big wage increases in a tight labor market abound.While wages in lower-qualification fields like leisure and hospitality have been rising rapidly for months, professional pay may also be on the cusp of picking up: Banks have been making big base salary increases, and Amazon will raise its maximum base salary for corporate and technology workers to $350,000 from $160,000 as it competes for a limited pool of highly trained employees.Amazon, which has also increased wages for warehouse employees, has raised prices partly in response.“With the continued expansion of Prime member benefits and the increased member usage that we’ve seen, as well as the rise in wages and transportation costs, Amazon will increase the price of our Prime membership in the United States,” Brian T. Olsavsky, the company’s chief financial officer, said on a Feb. 3 earnings call. The monthly price is rising to $14.99 from $12.99, and the annual membership is jumping to $139 from $119.“This is our first price increase since 2018,” Mr. Olsavsky noted.Other companies are raising pay but have said they are covering the climbing costs by improving efficiency. That’s the sort of sweet spot the White House and the Fed are hoping for, because it could leave workers earning more without pressuring prices relentlessly up.“We do anticipate when we do our annual review process that we will have a nominally higher wage rate increase provided to our associates,” Kevin Hourican, president and chief executive at the food distributor Sysco, said on a Feb. 8 earnings call. “And we have productivity improvement efforts that can help offset those types of increases.” More