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    I.M.F. Board Backs $650 Billion Aid Plan to Help Poor Countries

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    The expansion of emergency reserves to help fund vaccines and pay down debt is politically contentious in the United States.VENICE — The International Monetary Fund took a step on Friday toward easing widening global inequality and helping poor nations get access to vaccines, saying its executive board approved a plan to issue $650 billion worth of reserve funds that countries can use to buy vaccines, finance health care and pay down debt.The decision comes at a pivotal moment as Covid-19 infections continue to spread among populations that have not been inoculated and as more contagious variants of the coronavirus are posing new health threats. The pandemic has drained the fiscal resources of poor countries over the past year, and the I.M.F. projected this week that faster access to vaccinations for high-risk populations could save 500,000 lives in the next six months.The new allocation of so-called Special Drawing Rights would be the largest such expansion of currency reserves in the I.M.F.’s history. If approved by the group’s board of governors, as is expected, the reserves could become available by the end of next month.“This is a shot in the arm for the world,” Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the I.M.F., said in a statement. “The S.D.R. allocation will help every I.M.F. member country — particularly vulnerable countries — and strengthen their response to the Covid-19 crisis.”Ms. Georgieva made the announcement as finance ministers and central bank governors of the Group of 20 nations were gathering in Venice to discuss international tax policy, climate change and the global economic response to the pandemic. The I.M.F., established in 1944 to try to broker economic cooperation, has warned of a two-track economic recovery, with poor countries being left behind while advanced economies experience rapid expansions.Ahead of the meetings, Treasury Department officials said expanding access to vaccines would be a central topic of discussion. It is also a potentially contentious one, as some developing countries have suggested that advanced economies are not doing enough to ensure fair distribution of vaccines.“The immediate priority for developing countries is widespread access to vaccines that match their deployment programs,” David Malpass, president of the World Bank, said in a speech in Venice on Friday.Mr. Malpass called on G20 countries to share doses and remove all trade barriers to exporting finished vaccines and their components. He noted that the pandemic had aggravated structural weaknesses that had dogged developing countries for years.“Even as that is accomplished,” Mr. Malpass said of expanded vaccine distribution, “development faces years of setback and struggle.”Narrowing the gap between the fortunes of advanced and developing economies was a central topic on the first day of the G20 meetings in Venice. Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, told reporters on Friday that inequality was a risk to the stability and security of Europe that could lead to an influx of refugees. He argued that it must be urgently addressed.It remains to be seen how far the $650 billion will go to help developing countries as they race to vaccinate people before new variants of the virus take hold, including the Delta variant, which has plunged many countries back into a health crisis.The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development called this year for $1 trillion worth of Special Drawing Rights to be made available by the I.M.F. as a “helicopter money drop for those being left behind.”Jubilee USA Network, a nonprofit organization that advocates debt relief for poor countries, praised the move by the I.M.F. and called on wealthy countries to do more to help.“This is the biggest creation of emergency reserve funds that we’ve ever seen, and developing countries will immediately receive more than $200 billion,” said Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee USA Network. “Wealthy countries who receive emergency reserves they don’t need should transfer those resources to developing countries struggling through the pandemic.”The I.M.F., the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization have created a new vaccine task force and called for an additional $50 billion investment to broaden access to supplies. The groups have also called on G20 countries to set a goal of having 40 percent of their populations vaccinated by the end of this year and 60 percent by the middle of next year.The United States has thrown its support behind the expansion of the I.M.F. reserves, reversing a Trump administration policy and angering Republican lawmakers in the process.The Trump administration balked at the proposal last year and prevented it from moving forward. It argued at the time that boosting the emergency reserves was an inefficient way to provide aid to poor countries and that doing so would provide more resources to advanced economies that did not need the help, like China and Russia.Republican lawmakers have since accused the Biden administration of bolstering the fortunes of adversaries, while doing little to actually help developing nations. Although Republicans have introduced legislation that would put restrictions on how the I.M.F. reserves were used if they were authorized, such proposals are unlikely to pass with Democrats in control of Congress.Under Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, the United States has taken a different view from the Trump administration, and the United States supports the allocation. Ms. Yellen believes that rich countries will have little use for the S.D.R.s but that developing economies will be able to use them to get enough money to vaccinate their people.Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, center, arriving for the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Venice on Friday.Andrea Merola/EPA, via ShutterstockSpecial Drawing Rights work by allowing member countries of the I.M.F. to cash the asset in for hard currency. Their value is based on a basket of international currencies and is reset every five years.Each of the 190 countries that is a member of the I.M.F. gets an allotment of S.D.R.s based on its shares in the fund, which tracks with the size of a country’s economy. The new reserves would also be distributed under this formula, with the largest economic powers like the United States gaining the biggest tranche.The drawing rights cannot be used to buy things on their own, but they can be traded for currencies that can. If two countries agree, they can trade their Special Drawing Rights for cash, with the I.M.F. acting as a middleman to facilitate the trade.That has prompted some criticism that the program will not work unless rich countries voluntarily transfer their holdings to poorer nations.“It is a legitimate concern that new S.D.R.s will end up mostly in the hands of large and rich countries that have little use for them rather than in the hands of the smaller and poorer countries that really need them,” said Eswar Prasad, the International Monetary Fund’s former China chief. “A reallocation of S.D.R.s toward the latter group, in addition to increasing the overall volume of S.D.R.s, would be helpful in dealing with stresses to the global financial system.”To address some of those concerns, the I.M.F. is working to develop a new trust fund where rich countries can channel their excess S.D.R.s. The goal is to create a $100 billion pot of money that poor countries take loans from so they can expand health care systems or address climate change in conjunction with existing I.M.F. programs.The United States has previously indicated it will make available about one-fifth of its allocation, worth about $20 billion. At the urging of the United States, the I.M.F. is also working to create greater transparency around how the assets are being used so that it is clear that American adversaries are not benefiting from the proceeds.The I.M.F.’s board of governors is expected to hold its vote in early August. More

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    European Central Bank Tweaks Strategy to Fight Inflation

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    The European Central Bank said Thursday it would adjust the guideposts it uses to set monetary policy, giving its more room to deploy crisis measures even if inflation rises above its official target. The bank also said it would begin using its clout in bond markets to fight climate change.After concluding an 18-month review of its strategy, the bank’s Governing Council said Thursday that it would no longer aim to keep inflation below, but close to, 2 percent. Rather, it would simply aim for 2 percent and be ready to accept “a transitory period in which inflation is moderately above target.”The seemingly minor change gives the bank space to keep pumping credit into the eurozone economy even if annual inflation rises above 2 percent, as long as policymakers think the jump is temporary.That situation may soon materialize. Inflation in the eurozone has been hovering around 2 percent in recent months, and could rise above the target as economies reopen and shortages of needed products like semiconductors become more acute. According to the previous strategy, the central bank would be obligated to raise interest rates or take other measures to slow the economy, even if the crisis was not over.By law, controlling prices in the 19 countries of the eurozone is the central bank’s main priority, so any adjustment to its approach to inflation has broad implications for the interest rates that businesses and consumers pay on loans, and for employment and economic growth.The bank also said it would take climate change into account when it buys corporate bonds as part of its stimulus measures. The bond purchases, made with newly created money, are a means to stimulate borrowing and economic growth. But in the future, the European Central Bank will favor companies that have made sincere efforts to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide they produce.In practice, the central bank has already provided ample evidence it was willing to bend its own rules to fight the pandemic, or the debt crisis that nearly destroyed the euro a decade ago.“We do not expect the new strategy to shift the outlook for the E.C.B.’s monetary policy stance significantly,” Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, said in a note to clients ahead of the announcement. “Instead, it will formally codify the approach which the E.C.B. has pursued anyway. This will make it easier for the E.C.B. to communicate with markets and the public.”The European Central Bank’s new approach is sure to generate criticism from places like Germany, where fear of inflation runs deep. Jens Weidmann, a member of the Governing Council and president of the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, has called for the European Central Bank to begin dialing back its stimulus to ensure that inflation does not get out of control. He has also said that climate change was not a matter for central banks.But Mr. Weidmann belongs to a minority on the Governing Council. The central bank said in a statement that it believed that climate change was relevant to “inflation, output, employment, interest rates, investment and productivity; financial stability; and the transmission of monetary policy.” More

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    How NYC Faces a Lasting Economic Toll Even as the Coronavirus Pandemic Passes

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    Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesNew York City is beginning to rebound from the economic devastation of the pandemic.But it won’t be easy. Neighborhoods remain pockmarked by vacant commercial real estate, and the city’s unemployment rate remains almost twice the national average.While there are signs that the city is coming back to life, the path forward is anything but clear.New York Faces Lasting Economic Toll Even as Pandemic PassesThe city’s prosperity is heavily dependent on patterns of work and travel that may be irreversibly altered.Nelson D. Schwartz, Patrick McGeehan and As the national economy recovers from the pandemic and begins to take off, New York City is lagging, with changing patterns of work and travel threatening the engines that have long powered its jobs and prosperity.New York has suffered deeper job losses as a share of its work force than any other big American city. And while the country has regained two-thirds of the positions it lost after the coronavirus arrived, New York has recouped fewer than half, leaving a deficit of more than 500,000 jobs.New York City lost greatest share of jobs among 20 largest U.S. citiesThe city had an 11.8 percent decline in jobs from February 2020 to April 2021, almost three times the loss on the national level.

    Source: Center for New York City Affairs at the New SchoolTaylor JohnstonRestaurants and bars are filling up again with New Yorkers eager for a return to normal, but scars are everywhere. Boarded-up storefronts and for-lease signs dot many neighborhoods. Empty sidewalks in Midtown Manhattan make it feel like a weekend in midweek. Subway ridership on weekdays is less than half the level of two years ago.The city’s economic plight stems largely from its heavy reliance on office workers, business travelers, tourists and the service businesses catering to all of them. All eyes are on September, when many companies aim to bring their workers back to the office and Broadway fully reopens, attracting more visitors and their dollars. But even then, the rebound will be only partial.The shift toward remote work endangers thousands of businesses that serve commuters who are likely to come into the office less frequently than before the pandemic, if at all. By the end of September, the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy group, predicts that only 62 percent of office workers will return, mostly three days a week.Restoring the city to economic health will be an imposing challenge for its next mayor, who is likely to emerge from the Democratic primary on Tuesday. The candidates have offered differing visions of how to help struggling small businesses and create jobs.“We are bouncing back, but we are nowhere near where we were in 2019,” said Barbara Byrne Denham, senior economist at Oxford Economics. “We suffered more than everyone else, so it will take a little longer to recover.”At 10.9 percent in May, the city’s unemployment rate was nearly twice the national average of 5.8 percent. In the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough, the rate is 15 percent. Workers in face-to-face sectors like restaurants and hospitality, many of whom are people of color, are still struggling.“While the recovery has probably exceeded expectations, unemployment remains staggeringly high for Black and brown individuals and historically marginalized communities,” said Jose Ortiz Jr., chief executive of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition, a work force development group.At the same time, hundreds of small businesses, which before the pandemic employed about half of the city’s work force, didn’t survive. And many that did are saddled with debt they took on to survive the downturn and owe tens of thousands of dollars in back rent.“I have a huge amount of debt to pay back because I had to borrow all over the place to stay alive,” said Robert Schwartz, the third-generation owner of Eneslow Shoes & Orthotics. He closed two of his four stores, but kept open branches on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and in Little Neck, Queens. “We’ll survive, but it’s going to be a long, slow recovery.”Office buildings in Lower Manhattan. The city depends more heavily than other places on office workers, business travelers, and the service businesses catering to all of them.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesEven if just 10 percent of Manhattan office workers begin working remotely most of the time, that translates into more than 100,000 people a day not picking up a coffee and bagel on their way to work or a drink afterward.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesEmpty sidewalks in parts of the city once filled with office workers make it feel like a weekend in midweek.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesOne crucial factor in the city’s economic trajectory, civic and business leaders say, is addressing safety concerns. Violent crime has risen since the pandemic hit — including a high-profile Times Square shooting in May that wounded two women and a 4-year-old girl — and the police have recently increased Midtown foot patrols.“The negatives of New York life are worse,” said Seth Pinsky, chief executive of the 92nd Street Y, a longtime cultural destination on the Upper East Side.“Crime is going up and the city is dirtier,” added Mr. Pinsky, who served as president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation under former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “It’s critical that we get the virtuous cycle going again.”On Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on a radio show on WNYC that the city had more police officers in the subway than at any time in the last 25 years. “We want to really encourage people back, to protect everyone,” he said.Nonetheless, worries about crime are frequently cited by workers who have returned. “There are questions from employees about safety in the city and increased concern,” said Jonathan Gray, president of the financial behemoth Blackstone. “My hope is that as the city fills up there will be less of that.”New York is certainly feeling less deserted than it did a few months ago. Nearly 195,000 pedestrians strolled through Times Square on June 13, more than twice the typical number in the bleak winter days when the coronavirus was raging. That’s a long way from the 365,000 who passed through daily before the pandemic, but the totals are edging higher, according to Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, a nonprofit group that promotes local businesses and the neighborhood.Change in foot traffic in New York City, by type of location

    Foot traffic data was aggregated and anonymized by Foursquare from smartphone apps that shared location data. Data as of June 18, 2021.Source: FoursquareTaylor JohnstonWhen Mr. Gray returned to Blackstone’s Midtown headquarters last summer, there were just 16 other people spread over 19 floors. Today, there are more than 1,600, and Blackstone is asking all employees who have been vaccinated to return.“It’s gone from feeling super lonely and now it’s feeling pretty normal,” Mr. Gray added.Wall Street and the banking sector are pillars of the city’s economy, and they have been among the most aggressive industries in prodding employees to go back to the office. James Gorman, the chief executive of Morgan Stanley, told investors and analysts this month that “if you want to get paid in New York, you need to be in New York.”Many firms, including Blackstone and Morgan Stanley, have huge real estate holdings or loans to the industry, so there is more than civic pride in their push to get workers to return. Technology companies like Facebook and Google are increasingly important employers as well as major commercial tenants, and they have been increasing their office space. But they have been more flexible about letting employees continue to work remotely.Google, which has 11,000 employees in New York and plans to add 3,000 in the next few years, intends to return to its offices in West Chelsea in September, but workers will only be required to come in three days a week. The company has also said up to 20 percent of its staff can apply to work remotely full time.The decision by even a small slice of employees at Google and other companies to stay home part or all of the week could have a significant economic impact.Even if just 10 percent of Manhattan office workers begin working remotely most of the time, that translates into more than 100,000 people a day not picking up a coffee and bagel on their way to work or a drink afterward, said James Parrott, an economist with the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School.“I expect a lot of people will return, but not all of them,” he said. “We might lose some neighborhood businesses as a result.”The absence of white-collar workers hurts people like Danuta Klosinski, 60, who had been cleaning office buildings in Manhattan for 20 years. She is one of more than about 3,000 office cleaners who remain out of work, according to Denis Johnston, a vice president of their union, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union.Ms. Klosinski, who lives in Brooklyn, said that she had been furloughed twice since last spring and that she had been idle since November. She said she feared that if she were not recalled by September, she would lose the health insurance that covers her husband, who suffered a stroke and a heart attack.“I’m worried about losing everything,” she said.Also weighing on the city’s outlook is the decline in visits by tourists, who are venturing back in dribbles, not in droves.Performers in Times Square, which saw nearly 195,000 pedestrians pass through on a recent day. That’s a long way from the 365,000 who passed through daily before the pandemic.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesAn ice cream vendor waited for customers at Bryant Park in Midtown.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesPassengers aboard a cruise to the Statue of Liberty. City officials expect that it will take at least a few years to draw as many visitors as in 2019.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesIn 2019, New York welcomed over 66 million out-of-towners, and they spent more than $45 billion in hotels, restaurants, shops and theaters. City officials expect that it will take years to draw so many visitors again, especially the bigger-spending foreign tourists and business travelers on expense accounts.Ellen V. Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History, said domestic tourism was rebounding faster than she had expected. “The local population is out and about and happy to be so,” Ms. Futter said. But the scarcity of international visitors “is going to tamp down the pace of recovery,” she said.That lag will spell prolonged pain for many businesses. Employment in hotels and restaurants is about 150,000 lower than it was before the pandemic, while the number of jobs in the performing arts is down about 40,000.To be sure, there are signs of a strengthening economy. After many residents fled the city last year, high-priced condos are again being snapped up, and the rental market is showing signs of firming after price drops.Rudin Management, the real estate giant, is trimming back the concessions it offered to attract tenants at the height of the pandemic. “I’m getting calls from people saying their son or daughter or grandson or granddaughter is graduating and asking for an apartment,” said William C. Rudin, the firm’s chief executive. “We didn’t get those calls for a year.”New Yorkers are also getting out more. When the Rockaway Hotel in Queens opened in September after years of planning, a hip destination in a historically working-class beach neighborhood, “people who lived four blocks away would take hotel rooms for the night because they wanted a staycation,” said Terence Tubridy, a managing partner.Since indoor dining resumed in February, the 53-room hotel’s weekend occupancy rate has been 80 percent, Mr. Tubridy said. Along with more visitors recently from California and the Midwest, he reports a flood of inquiries about weddings and birthday parties.As the hotel prepares for its first opportunity to serve the bustling summer crowds at Rockaway Beach, Mr. Tubridy is looking to add 100 employees to his current staff of 180.Amy Scherber is also seeing signs of better days. When the pandemic struck, she was forced to close all but two of her Amy’s Bread shops in New York City and lay off more than 100 employees. She wound up making cakes and pastries herself in a kitchen in Long Island City, Queens.But now, Ms. Scherber has rehired some of her employees, and a crew of four bakers is handling the pastries while she oversees the steadily increasing production of baguettes and other loaves. She has reopened her store in Chelsea Market, a Manhattan tourist destination, and is preparing to reopen other retail locations. Her wholesale business is also rebounding as restaurants that were closed for months are again ordering dinner rolls.“In the last couple of weeks, we finally have seen the business starting to pick up a bit,” said Ms. Scherber, who started her operation 29 years ago. She is hopeful about a strong recovery, she said. But she added, “I see the city taking several years to be the economy it was.”The Empire State Building and One World Trade Center.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times More

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    A Fading Coal County Bets on Schools, but There’s One Big Hitch

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    WELCH, W.Va. — Lillian Keys came back.After receiving her bachelor’s degree from Concord University in Athens, W.Va., the 24-year-old English teacher did something rare among her peers: She returned home to Welch to teach at Mount View High School, from which she graduated in 2014. “People my age and older usually don’t come back to the county,” Ms. Keys told me. “A lot of our kids want to go away.” More

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    America Is Driving the Global Economy. When Does That Become a Problem?

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    New trade data suggests the outlook for the U.S. economy will depend in part on the rate of recovery of other nations.Containers stacked at the Port of New York and New Jersey in Elizabeth, N.J., last month. The U.S. trade deficit was $68.9 billion in April, far above levels immediately before the pandemic.Seth Wenig/Associated PressThe United States, with its aggressive pandemic aid measures and rapid vaccine rollout, is propelling the world economy, acting as a source of demand in all corners of the globe.The American government has been spending billions, creating booming demand in the United States. As new trade data shows, though, a meaningful share of this money is leaking overseas and going toward imported goods, in what economists call “fiscal leakage.” Ultimately, the outlook for the American economy will depend on the ability of other countries to take over as drivers of global demand in the months ahead — a prospect that remains uncertain.America is buying much more stuff from overseas, as its stimulus-fueled economy revs forward, while the rest of the world has not yet caught up and started buying more American exports. That is why the trade deficit was $68.9 billion in April, which was down from $75 billion in March, but far above levels of around $45 billion per month immediately before the pandemic. People are spending their stimulus money on imported furniture, appliances and other goods.One effect is that the rest of the world is acting as a pressure valve for inflationary forces that are building within American borders. If you think gasoline and lumber prices are high now, imagine if the slow-growing economies of Europe and Japan were recovering at the same breakneck pace as in the United States.“Fiscal leakage is inevitable,” said Maurice Obstfeld, a University of California, Berkeley, professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. “It’s desirable to the extent it will somewhat moderate inflationary pressures. And it’s desirable to the extent that to some degree it helps spur growth in the rest of the world, some of which comes back to help us.”It reflects a difficult geoeconomic needle the United States is trying to thread. It’s best for everybody if the rest of the world joins the party and is able to power global demand, especially once the American stimulus dollars are largely played out. But if that resurgence is too fast and too strong, it will just make the inflation problems already evident in many markets worse.Moreover, some of the most effective tools involve global vaccine distribution, not economic policy. Successful vaccination would help get supply and demand, both for physical goods and for tourism and other services, back on track.The United States typically runs a large trade surplus in services, including software, Hollywood films and banking. But the biggest single area of services exports before the pandemic was international travel.In the math of global economics, a foreign tourist staying in the United States is essentially purchasing an American services export. Travel exports were only $18 billion in the first four months of 2021, down from $67 billion in the same period of 2019.Meanwhile, flush American consumers have shifted their spending away from services and toward goods. In the first four months of the year, imports of consumer goods were 29 percent higher than in 2020, a $57 billion jump.“The only thing people could consume was goods,” said Constance Hunter, chief economist at KPMG. “You couldn’t have a wedding, you couldn’t go to a baseball game. So what did people buy? They bought goods, and that’s much more of a global market than services.”In effect, the United States and China are acting as the drivers of the global economy, while most of the rest of the world is further behind in recovery from the pandemic.In the I.M.F.’s World Economic Outlook published in April, the United States’ 2021 G.D.P. was forecast to be 3 percent above its 2019 level, while China was forecast to be 11 percent above its 2019 level. But the euro area and Japan were each on track to have economies 2 percent smaller than in 2019, with Britain, Canada, Brazil and Mexico also forecast to be in negative territory.That is unfortunate for the people in those places experiencing sluggish recoveries, but is probably helping to keep supply shortages in many sectors from being even worse. Already, a shortage of semiconductors has held back production of automobiles; shortages of building materials have suppressed housing construction; and a shortage of shipping containers has sent prices skyrocketing for moving goods across oceans.“If everybody was stimulating simultaneously, and everybody was enjoying peak growth simultaneously, you could see more congestion,” said Nathan Sheets, chief economist at PGIM Fixed Income and a former top international economist at the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.A promising possibility would be if the baton of economic growth could gradually be passed around the world — having started in 2020 in China, continuing through the first part of 2021 in the United States, then to other parts of the world as the American stimulus dollars fade. That could help the United States avoid a post-stimulus economic hangover.“If Europe is lagging us by a quarter or two, and emerging markets are lagging Europe, maybe we could get a phased global recovery where the growth that we get is a good thing, without putting too much pressure on supply at once,” Mr. Sheets said.The sluggish pace of vaccination in many parts of the world is a risk on all sides. It appears to be holding back output in important ways, contributing to America’s inflation problem — witness, for example, a recent Covid outbreak at a Taiwanese chip factory that stopped production of a product already in short supply.The I.M.F. recently published research showing that an ambitious vaccination plan could bring robust rewards. Achieving worldwide vaccination rates of 40 percent would inject the equivalent of $9 trillion into the global economy by allowing a faster return of normal commerce. Forty percent of the gains would go to advanced economies like those in the United States and Europe.That means the enormous trade deficits of the last couple of months could well fade in the months ahead — but only if the entire world is able to stay healthy, with growth revving, as well. More

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    Living on the Margins, ‘Surfing’ on the Buses

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    “Hold on! Hold on tight!”It was a hot afternoon in Olinda, a coastal city in northeast Brazil, and Marlon da Silva Santos, the leader of a group called Loucos do Surf, or the Crazy Surfers, was shouting from the rooftop of a speeding bus.I grasped at an edge of the roof with one hand, for balance, and tried to shoot with the other — but the bus passed over a bump in the road, jerking abruptly, and I momentarily lost my balance. I managed to stay on, though my camera nearly flew off from my neck.Marlon dos Santos, at right, spreads his arms as he surfs atop a bus in Olinda.I felt a rush of adrenaline. Traveling at 30 miles per hour along President Kennedy Avenue, I was trying my best to document a group of young Brazilians who were illegally “surfing” on moving city buses.Among the group, maneuvers are classified by their degree of difficulty.We saw flashing police lights ahead and retreated into the bus. It was tense inside; the hot sea air swirled around our bodies. Once we passed the sirens, a cheerful celebration erupted as we winded our way to the beach.Émerson plays in the sea with a group of fellow surfers. Olinda is a popular tourist destination in northeastern Brazil.The surfers were young, mostly between the ages of 12 to 16, and a majority of them were Black. They wore Cyclone shorts, flip-flops, caps and golden chains — a style that’s common among many young people from the peripheries of large Brazilian cities.Their presence on the buses made many passengers uncomfortable.A bus driver threatens Loucos do Surf members after they surfed on the roof. Few drivers interrupt their trips for fear of the group’s response.“Some drivers stop the bus, tell us to get off, pick a fight,” Marlon said. “But most follow their normal route while we’re up there.”“We just want to have fun,” he added as we exited the bus.A bus surfer hangs onto a rear window frame.I first learned of the Loucos do Surf via a video posted to Facebook. In it, Marlon, then 16, was surfing on a high-speed bus, oozing confidence and taking selfies. Within an hour, I was exchanging messages with the surfers and planning my trip to Olinda.A week later, I met them at the Xambá bus terminal. They were skeptical at first: “You aren’t a policeman?” they asked.I showed them my website and my Instagram account and, in just a few hours, joined them on a bus ride.During my weeklong visit with the bus surfers in 2017, I felt happy and free. In a way, they allowed me to revisit my own roots: During my teenage years, growing up in São Paulo, I, too, engaged in certain risky and transgressive behavior — including pixação, a derivation of graffiti popular in parts of BrazilPassersby were often amazed to see the surfers on top of the moving buses.When I met the group, they were skeptical of my motives. “You aren’t a policeman?” they asked.But they soon welcomed my presence.The Loucos do Surf are part of a long tradition of performing death-defying stunts involving public transportation in Brazil.In the 1980s and ’90s, thrill-seeking young Brazilians risked their lives by traveling from downtown Rio de Janeiro to the suburbs on the rooftops of crowded trains. The train surfers, hundreds of whom were seriously injured or killed, became popular in the Brazilian press.After an intense crackdown, the practice’s popularity waned.Some surfers said they were simply chasing thrills. Others said it was a form of protest.A young surfer named Luciano Schmitt told me that the art of bus surfing was partly a response to a lack of cultural and leisure outlets. “The only soccer field we had was demolished.” Instead, he said, he and his friends prefer “bigu” — the local term for bus surfing — and the beach.Some bus surfers said the activity was also a form of protest against the price of public transportation — and, more broadly, against the hardships and financial restrictions imposed on millions of young people struggling on the peripheries of society.At the time, in 2017, Brazil was still recovering from the worst recession ever to hit the country. Youth unemployment rates spiked to nearly 29 percent in 2017, up from around 16 percent in 2014, according to data from the World Bank.In addition to accessing the roof via windows, surfers also use roof hatches.A dominant element of that hardship is the violence that permeates daily life in Black communities on the outskirts of large Brazilian cities — including the neighborhoods of Sol Nascente, part of the city of Recipe, and Alto da Bondade, in Olinda, where the Loucos do Surf group was established.According to Brazil’s Atlas of Violence, a study released in 2020 by the country’s Institute for Applied Economic Research and the Forum of Public Safety, homicides among Black residents increased by 11.5 percent between 2008 and 2018, whereas homicides among non-Black residents fell by 12.9 percent over the same period. Such data points help expose the racial inequalities that have dominated Brazilian society for centuries — and underscore how desensitized many in the country have become to violence within marginalized Black communities.Electrical wires pose serious dangers.Loucos do Surf hasn’t been spared. Marlon — who was known by his fellow surfers as Black Diamond, and who had earned the status of King of Surf for being the group’s most skilled and courageous surfer — was shot at point-blank range and killed near his home in 2018, a year after my visit.After his funeral, members of the group held a memorial. More than 20 young people balanced atop a bus, singing in his honor.Gabriela Batista, a bus surfer and a close friend of Marlon’s, told me via text that the group was once like a family. But their enthusiasm for the pastime, she said, largely ended with his death.Members of the group lie flat to hide from police officers.When I remember Marlon, my thoughts swirl with the circumstances of his life: the violence he endured, the choices he made, the economic disadvantages he faced, the precariousness of his support networks — including Brazil’s underfunded public education system.“School doesn’t attract me,” he once told me. “What the teachers say doesn’t stay with me.” Instead, he said, whenever he was sitting with a book, he felt like he was wasting time that could be spent surfing.And that’s mostly how I remember him now: poised — proudly, deftly, defiantly — atop a hurtling bus.“Is anything better than this?” he once shouted at me while surfing, the salty air slapping against his face, his eyes bright and alive, his voice carried aloft by the wind.Victor Moriyama, a regular contributor to The Times, is a Brazilian photographer based in São Paulo. 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    in Economy

    Hot Vax Summer Is Looking Lukewarm

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    The latest jobs report suggests that getting the economy back up to speed is not going to be effortless.Scene from a diner in New York City last fall. Finding people to fill jobs, particularly those like restaurant work, is proving hard for employers.Laylah Amatullah Barrayn for The New York TimesNow that’s more like it.Employers added 559,000 jobs in May, and created more jobs in March and April than earlier estimates suggested. The shockingly weak April number that confounded economists four weeks ago (originally reported as a gain of 266,000 jobs, now revised up to 278,000) looks like an aberration, not a major downshift in the pace of recovery.But that doesn’t mean all is well. Just a few weeks ago, it seemed more likely than not that the United States was on the verge of a boom summer, a time of explosive growth that would bring the economy back to full health faster than in any recovery in memory.It has become increasingly clear, however — both from anecdotal reports and in data — that a reopening spurred on by vaccination is harder than it once seemed. The possibility of adding a million jobs a month seemed within grasp not long ago, but now looks more like wishful thinking.It’s not so much a hot vax summer as a warm vax summer.If you average the last three months of job creation, employers are adding 541,000 positions a month. In a normal expansion, that would be great; it’s a higher number than was attained for even a single month in the recovery that began in 2009. But it does not imply a return to full health in the immediate future.At the job creation rate of the last three months, it would take 14 months to return to February 2020 employment levels — longer if the goal is to return to the prepandemic employment trend.Unlike in a typical recovery, the problem appears to be the supply of labor, not the demand for it. Job openings are at record highs and employers are eager to hire, but they can’t find workers, at least not at the wages they are used to paying.The details of the May numbers support this idea. Wages are soaring — average hourly earning were up 0.5 percent, yet the share of adults in the labor force actually ticked down. The number of people not in the labor force rose by 160,000, implying more people just said, “Forget it, I’m not even looking for a job.”There have been heated debates over whether this is a result of expanded unemployment insurance benefits, which may give people less incentive to work; concerns related to child care and Covid-related health risks; or perhaps a broader psychological reset for many would-be workers.These are not mutually exclusive; all are likely to be contributors to this unusual moment in which demand for goods and services is soaring and supply of them is constrained.An open question is how much labor supply might increase in some states that end expanded jobless benefits earlier than the September expiration date contained in federal law.The details of the industries that are adding jobs similarly point to reopening struggles. The leisure and hospitality sector, which suffered the worst damage from the pandemic, added 292,000 jobs in May. That sounds great, but is actually slower than the 328,000 jobs it added in April.In other words, even as the nation was four weeks further along in achieving widespread vaccination, and seemingly every restaurant in the country was complaining it couldn’t hire enough waiters, cooks and dishwashers, the pace of recovery in that sector slowed rather than accelerated.To the degree that the labor supply shortage is about people re-evaluating their priorities, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It could lead to a more lasting reset of compensation and work standards across the economy.But it does have implications for politics and the economy as a whole. For instance, Democrats want to run on a boom-time economy in the 2022 midterms. That will be hard to do if the supply of labor turns out to have shifted lower in the long term.In this strange reopening summer, there have been supply constraints on many things, including lumber, computer chips and used cars. But there is a big difference between those supply problems and the labor supply problem: Humans, unlike lumber and semiconductors, can make choices.To the degree that the labor shortage is caused by expanded jobless benefits or schools that are closed, it should go away in time. To the degree there is a broader rethinking of the role of work in people’s lives, this phenomenon will outlast this post-pandemic summer, whatever its temperature ultimately turns out to be. More