Labor and Jobs

More stories

  • 113 Shares199 Views

    in Economy

    The Fed’s favorite inflation index remains high in September.

    by

    Annual inflation is climbing at the fastest pace in three decades in the United States, according to data released Friday, keeping pressure on the Federal Reserve and White House as they try to calibrate policy during a tumultuous period marked by strong consumer demand and quickly rising prices for couches, cars and housing.Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, has increasingly acknowledged that inflation is lasting longer than central bankers had expected. While Fed officials believe inflation will fade as supply chain snarls unravel and consumer demand for goods cools, it remains unclear when that will happen. Janet L. Yellen, the Treasury secretary, has predicted that rapid price jumps will cool by later next year.Still, the current pace of inflation has become an uncomfortable political problem for President Biden and has created a delicate balancing act for the Fed, which is still trying to get the labor market back to full strength. Prices climbed by 4.4 percent in the year through September, according to the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, which is the central bank’s preferred inflation gauge. That beats out recent months to become the fastest pace of increase since 1991.Between August and September, prices climbed by 0.3 percent. That is in line with what economists expected and slower than rapid numbers posted earlier in the summer. Policymakers may take that as a sign that inflation was moderating, if still rapid on an annual basis, coming into the fall.Friday’s data reconfirms what more timely inflation measures like the Consumer Price Index had already shown: Inflation continues to run at a rapid pace in the United States. That is happening in large part because supply chains are struggling to keep up with strong demand, thanks to virus-tied factory shutdowns, clogged ports and a shortage of transit workers, among other factors. The combination has made it hard to buy a kitchen table or a used car, and has caused the prices of many goods to jump sharply.As prices climb, the Fed is preparing to slow down the large-scale bond purchases it had been using to lower long-term borrowing costs and support the economy. The central bank has been buying $120 billion in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities, but it is poised to announce its plan to slow that program as soon as next week. Mr. Powell has said buying could stop altogether by mid-2022.That would leave the Fed in a position to raise its policy interest rate, its more traditional and arguably more powerful tool, should it need to do so to tamp down price increases. That rate has been set near zero since March 2020.When the Fed raises interest rates, it makes it more expensive to borrow to buy houses, cars and washing machines. As demand cools, supply catches up and price gains moderate or even reverse, reducing inflation.But the downside is that slower consumption and economic growth also lead to less business expansion and hiring. Slowing the job market is an unattractive prospect at a moment when millions of people remain out of work following lockdowns early in the pandemic and with concerns lingering about health and child care.The Fed is closely watching measures of inflation expectations, which have risen in recent weeks, as it tries to assess whether price gains might jump out of control.Understand the Supply Chain CrisisCard 1 of 5Covid’s impact on the supply chain continues. More

  • 88 Shares159 Views

    in Economy

    Missing Foreign Workers Add to Hiring Challenges

    by

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

  • 163 Shares199 Views

    in Economy

    OSHA, citing Covid failures, moves to strip three states of workplace safety authority.

    by

    The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said Tuesday that it was taking steps that could strip three states — Arizona, South Carolina and Utah — of their authority to regulate workplace safety, citing shortcomings in policies on coronavirus protection.Under federal law, states can assume responsibility for occupational safety if the government approves their plan for doing so and if the plan remains at least as effective as federal enforcement.Federal officials said Tuesday that the three states had failed to adopt a rule that OSHA issued in June — or to adopt one at least as effective — requiring certain Covid-related safety measures by employers, like providing protective equipment.“OSHA has worked in good faith to help these three state plans come into compliance,” Jim Frederick, the agency’s acting director, said on a call with reporters. “But their continued refusal is a failure to maintain their state plan commitment to thousands of workers in their state.”Emily H. Farr, the director of South Carolina’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, expressed disappointment in the action, saying that the state’s program had “proven effective as South Carolina has consistently had one of the lowest injury and illness rates in the nation.”Officials in Arizona and Utah did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Twenty-eight states or territories have OSHA-approved plans for enforcing workplace safety. Where no plan has been approved, OSHA retains primary authority.The action comes as OSHA prepares to release a rule mandating that companies with 100 or more workers require employees to be vaccinated or to submit to weekly Covid-19 testing. Some states have indicated that they will challenge the rule, though the legal basis for doing so appears weak.OSHA, which is part of the Labor Department, will publish a notice in the Federal Register announcing its proposal to reconsider and revoke approval of the three states’ self-regulation plans. There will be a 35-day comment period on the proposal before it can be finalized.Seema Nanda, the Labor Department solicitor, said that as a result of the process, the states’ authority to regulate workplace safety could be revoked entirely or partially, such as for certain industries. More

  • 100 Shares159 Views

    in Economy

    The Economic Rebound Is Still Waiting for Workers

    by

    Despite school reopenings and the end of some federal aid, many people are in no rush to land a job. Savings and health concerns are playing a role.Fall was meant to mark the beginning of the end of the labor shortage that has held back the nation’s economic recovery. Expanded unemployment benefits were ending. Schools were reopening, freeing up many caregivers. Surely, economists and business owners reasoned, a flood of workers would follow.Instead, the labor force shrank in September. There are five million fewer people working than before the pandemic began, and three million fewer even looking for work.The slow return of workers is causing headaches for the Biden administration, which was counting on a strong economic rebound to give momentum to its political agenda. Forecasters were largely blindsided by the problem and don’t know how long it will last.Conservatives have blamed generous unemployment benefits for keeping people at home, but evidence from states that ended the payments early suggests that any impact was small. Progressives say companies could find workers if they paid more, but the shortages aren’t limited to low-wage industries.Instead, economists point to a complex, overlapping web of factors, many of which could be slow to reverse.The health crisis is still making it hard or dangerous for some people to work, while savings built up during the pandemic have made it easier for others to turn down jobs they do not want. Psychology may also play a role: Surveys suggest that the pandemic led many to rethink their priorities, while the glut of open jobs — more than 10 million in August — may be motivating some to hold out for a better offer.The net result is that, arguably for the first time in decades, workers up and down the income ladder have leverage. And they are using it to demand not just higher pay but also flexible hours, more generous benefits and better working conditions. A record 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August, in some cases midshift to take a better-paying position down the street.“It’s like the whole country is in some kind of union renegotiation,” said Betsey Stevenson, a University of Michigan economist who was an adviser to President Barack Obama. “I don’t know who’s going to win in this bargaining that’s going on right now, but right now it seems like workers have the upper hand.”The slow return of workers is causing headaches for the Biden administration, which was counting on a strong economic rebound to give momentum to its political agenda.Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesRachel Eager spent last fall at home, taking the last class for her bachelor’s degree over Zoom while waiting to be recalled to her job at a New York City after-school program. That call never came.So Ms. Eager, 25, is looking for work. She has applied for dozens of jobs and had a handful of interviews, so far without luck. But she is taking her time. Ms. Eager says she is still worried about catching Covid-19 — she would prefer to work remotely, and if she does end up taking an in-person job, she wants it to be worth the risk. And she doesn’t want another job with low pay, little flexibility and no benefits.“Many, many people are realizing that the way things were prepandemic were not sustainable and not benefiting them,” she said. She has been applying for jobs in data analysis, nonprofit management and other fields that would offer better pay, benefits and a sense of purpose.Ms. Eager, who is vaccinated, said that she had always been careful with money and that she built savings this year by staying home and socking away unemployment benefits and other aid. “My financial situation is OK, and I think that is 99 percent of the reason that I can be choosy about my job prospects,” she said.Americans have saved trillions of dollars since the pandemic began. Much of that wealth is concentrated among high earners, who mostly kept their jobs, reduced spending on dining and vacations, and benefited from a soaring stock market. But many lower-income Americans, too, were able to set aside money thanks to the government’s multitrillion-dollar response to the pandemic, which included not only direct cash assistance but also increased food aid, forbearance on mortgages and student loans and an eviction moratorium. Economists said the extra savings alone aren’t necessarily keeping people out of the labor force. But the cushion is letting people be more picky about the jobs they take, when many have good reasons to be picky.In addition to health concerns, child care issues remain a factor. Most schools have resumed in-person classes, but parents in many districts have had to grapple with quarantines or temporary returns to remote learning. And many parents of younger children are struggling to find day care, in part because that industry is dealing with its own staffing crisis.Liz Kelly-Campanale left her job as a winemaker last year to care for her two children in Portland, Ore. She thought about going back to work when schools resumed in-person instruction this fall. But the Delta variant upended those plans.“If you have an exposure, all of a sudden your kids are out of school for 10 days,” she said. “For people who have jobs where they can work from home, it’s maybe a little more feasible, but I can’t really drive a forklift around the house.”Ms. Kelly-Campanale, 37, said she might go back to work once her children, now 6 and 3, are vaccinated and the pandemic seems under control. But she said the pandemic has led her to rethink her priorities.“So much of how I saw myself was tied up in what I did for a living — it was a huge adjustment to all of a sudden not be doing that all the time,” she said. “But once I made that adjustment, it also became apparent that there were also benefits to having that work-life balance.”Economists worry that if the pandemic leads many people to opt out of the work force, it could have long-term consequences for economic growth. Rising labor force participation, particularly among women, was a major driver of the strong gains in income and production after World War II. Many economists argue that the reversal of that trend in recent decades has hurt economic growth..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In the shorter term, many economists think that more people will return to work as pandemic-related issues recede and as people deplete their savings.“Eventually those savings, especially for lower-income people, they’re going to run out,” said Pablo Villanueva, an economist at UBS. “A lot of people are going to be increasingly unable to stay out of work even if they have some fear of Covid.”Some businesses seem determined to wait them out. Wages have risen, but many employers appear reluctant to make other changes to attract workers, like flexible schedules and better benefits. That may be partly because, for all their complaints about a labor shortage, many companies are finding that they can get by with fewer workers, in some instances by asking customers to accept long waits or reduced service.“They’re making a lot of profits in part because they’re saving on labor costs, and the question is how long can that go on,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist for the employment site ZipRecruiter. Eventually, she said, customers may get tired of busing their own tables or sitting on hold for hours, and employers may be forced to give into workers’ demands.Some businesses are already changing how they operate. When Karter Louis opened his latest restaurant this year, he abandoned the industry-standard approach to staffing, with kitchen workers earning low wages and waiters relying on tips. At Soul Slice, his soul-food pizza restaurant in Oakland, Calif., everyone works full time, earns a salary rather than an hourly wage, and receives health insurance, retirement benefits and paid vacation. Hiring still hasn’t been easy, he said, but he isn’t having the staffing problems that other restaurants report.Restaurant owners wondering why they can’t find workers, Mr. Louis said, need to look at the way they treated workers before the pandemic, and also during it, when the industry laid off millions.“The restaurant industry didn’t really have the back of its people,” he said.Still, better pay and benefits alone won’t bring back everyone who has left the job market. The steepest drop in labor force participation came among older workers, who faced the greatest risks from the virus. Some may return to work as the health situation improves, but others have simply retired.And even some nowhere near retirement have made ends meet outside a traditional job.When Danielle Miess, 30, lost her job at a Philadelphia-area travel agency at the start of the pandemic, it was in some ways a blessing. Some time away helped her realize how bad the job had been for her mental health, and for her finances — her bank balance was negative on the day she was laid off. With federally supplemented unemployment benefits providing more than she made on the job, she said, she gained a measure of financial stability.Ms. Miess’s unemployment benefits ran out in September, but she isn’t looking for another office job. Instead, she is cobbling together a living from a variety of gigs. She is trying to build a business as an independent travel agent, while also doing house sitting, dog sitting and selling clothes online. She estimates she is earning somewhat more than the roughly $36,000 a year she made before the pandemic, and although she is working as many hours as ever, she enjoys the flexibility.“The thought of going to an office job 40 hours a week and clocking in at the exact time, it sounds incredibly difficult,” she said. “The rigidity of doing that job, feeling like I’m being watched like a hawk, it just doesn’t sound fun. I really don’t want to go back to that.” More

  • 100 Shares139 Views

    in Economy

    Biden's Stimulus Is Stoking Inflation, Fed Analysis Suggests

    by

    Inflation is likely getting a temporary boost from the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that the Biden administration ushered in early this year, new Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco research released on Monday suggested.The analysis may add fuel to a hot debate in Washington over whether the administration’s policies are contributing to a spike in prices. Critics of the government spending package that was signed into law in March, including former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, have said it was poorly targeted and risked overheating the economy. Supporters of the relief program have said it provided critical aid to workers and businesses still struggling through the pandemic.The new paper comes down somewhere in the middle, finding that the spending had some effect on inflation but suggesting that it is most likely to be temporary. The economists estimated that it would add 0.3 percentage points to the core Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation index in 2021 and “a bit more” than 0.2 percentage points in 2022. Core inflation strips out volatile items like food and fuel.While those numbers are significant, they are not what most people would consider “overheating” — the Fed aims for 2 percent inflation on average over time, and a few tenths of a percent here or there are not a reason for much alarm.But the result is only a rough estimate, one the researchers came up with to help inform an continuing political and economic debate.Both the Trump and Biden administrations signed trillions of dollars in virus relief spending into law. The packages included two bipartisan bills in 2020 that pumped more than $3 trillion into the economy, including direct checks to individuals and generous unemployment benefits. Another $1.9 trillion — called the American Rescue Plan — was passed this year by Democrats after they took control of both Congress and the White House.“The later timing and large size of the A.R.P. stirred debate about whether it is causing an overheating of the economy and fueling a sustained increase in inflation,” the San Francisco Fed researchers noted.The economists tried to answer that question by looking at how much spare capacity is in the economy using a labor market measure — the ratio of job openings to unemployment. The logic is that inflation tends to pick up when there is very little labor market slack, because businesses raise wages to attract workers and then raise prices to cover their climbing labor costs.Government stimulus can push up the number of job openings in the economy as it fuels demand while constraining the number of available workers because it gives would-be employees a financial cushion, allowing them to take their time as they search for a new job.Based on the package’s size and using historical evidence on how fiscal spending affects the labor market, the researchers found that the American Rescue Plan might raise the vacancy-to-unemployment ratio close to its historical peak in 1968, fueling some inflation — but that the price impact would be small and short-lived.U.S. Inflation & Supply Chain ProblemsCard 1 of 6Covid’s impact on supply continues. More

  • 138 Shares169 Views

    in Economy

    As Starbucks Workers Seek a Union, Company Officials Converge on Stores

    by

    A push in the Buffalo area could produce the first union at company-owned stores in the U.S. But backers say moves by management are having a chilling effect.BUFFALO — During her decade-plus at Starbucks, Michelle Eisen says she has endured her share of workplace stress. She points to the company’s increased use of productivity goals, inadequate attention to training and periods of understaffing or high turnover.But she had never encountered a change that the company made after workers at her store and two other Buffalo-area locations filed for a union election in late August: two additional “support managers” from out of state, who often work on the floor with the baristas and who, according to Ms. Eisen, have created unease.“For a lot of newer baristas, it’s an imposing force,” Ms. Eisen said. “It is not an easy job. It should not be complicated further by feeling like you’re having everything you’re doing or saying watched and listened to.”Workers and organizers involved in the unionization effort say the imported managers are part of a counteroffensive by the company intended to intimidate workers, disrupt normal operations and undermine support for the union.Starbucks says the additional managers, along with an increase in the number of workers in stores and the arrival of a top corporate executive from out of town, are standard company practices. It says the changes, which also include temporarily shutting down stores in the area, are intended to help improve training and staffing — longstanding issues — and that they are a response not to the union campaign but to input the company solicited from employees.“The listening sessions led to requests from partners that resulted in those actions,” said Reggie Borges, a Starbucks spokesman. “It’s not a decision where our leadership came in and said, ‘We’re going to do this and this.’ We listened, heard their concerns.”None of the nearly 9,000 corporate-owned Starbucks locations in the country are unionized. The prospect that workers there could form a union appears to reflect a recent increase in labor activism nationwide, including strikes across a variety of industries.According to the National Labor Relations Board, union elections are supposed to be conducted under “laboratory conditions,” in which workers can vote in an environment free of intimidation, in an election process that is not controlled by the employer.Former labor board officials say the company’s actions could cause an election to be set aside on these grounds should the union lose.“You could say it’s part of an overall series of events that seems to create a tendency that people would be chilled or inhibited,” said Wilma B. Liebman, a chairwoman of the board during the Obama administration.A labor board official recently recommended that a union election at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama be overturned for similar reasons, but Mr. Borges said Starbucks did not believe anything it had done would warrant overturning an election.Starbucks has faced union campaigns before, including efforts in the early 2000s in New York City and in 2019 in Philadelphia, where the firing of two employees involved in union organizing was deemed unlawful by a labor board judge. Starbucks has appealed the ruling.Though none of the campaigns were successful in this country, a Starbucks-owned store in Canada recently unionized, and some stores owned by other companies that have licensing agreements with Starbucks are unionized.Many of the ways Starbucks has responded in Buffalo — where union backers seek to become part of Workers United, an affiliate of the giant Service Employees International Union — are typical of employers. The measures include holding meetings with employees in which company officials question the need for a third party to represent them.Starbucks is also seeking to persuade the labor board to require that workers at all 20 Buffalo-area stores take part in the election, rather than allow stores to vote individually, arguing that employees can spend time at multiple locations. (Union organizers typically favor voting in smaller units to increase the chance of gaining a foothold in at least some locations.) The board is likely to rule on this question and set an election date in the coming weeks.But some of the company’s actions during the union campaign are unorthodox, according to labor law experts. “A huge increase in staffing, shutting down stores, it’s all unusual,” said Matthew Bodie, a law professor at St. Louis University who is a former labor board attorney.Michelle Eisen, a Starbucks worker in Buffalo, said the sudden presence of managers from out of state created unease among many employees.Libby March for The New York TimesA recent visit to a Starbucks near the airport, where workers have filed for a union election, turned up at least nine baristas behind the counter but only a handful of customers.“It’s insane,” said Alexis Rizzo, a longtime Starbucks employee who has been a leader of the organizing campaign at the store. “Even if you’re just trying to run to the back to grab a gallon of milk, you now have to run an obstacle course to fit between all the folks who have no real reason to be there.”Ms. Rizzo said the number of employees in the store at once — which she said had run into the teens — made those who predate the union election filing feel outnumbered and demoralized. “It’s intimidating,” she said. “You go to work and it’s just you and 10 people you don’t know.”Starbucks said the additional personnel were intended to help the store after an uptick in workers who were out sick.Some of the additional employees have come to the airport location from a nearby store that Starbucks recently turned into a training facility. That store does not have an election petition pending, but many of its workers have pledged support for the union effort, and some feel separated and disoriented as well.“Initially, people thought our store could use a little reset,” said Colin Cochran, a pro-union employee at the store that was turned into a training facility, who has mostly been assigned to other locations since then. “As it’s dragged out and we’re getting sent to more and more other stores, it’s been frustrating. We want to see each other again.”Workers said their anxiety had been heightened by the sudden appearance of new managers and company officials from out of town.In a video of a meeting in September, a district manager in Arizona tells co-workers that the company has asked her to spend time in Buffalo over the next 90 days. “There’s a huge task force out there that’s trying to fix the problem because if Buffalo, N.Y., gets unionized, it will be the first market in Starbucks history,” the district manager says in the video, provided by a person at the meeting and viewed by The New York Times. When someone asks if the task force is a “last-ditch effort to try and stop it,” the district manager responds, “Yeah, we’re going to save it.”Will Westlake, a barista in a Buffalo suburb called Hamburg, where workers have also filed for a union election, said a store log showed that several company officials from outside the Buffalo area had been to the store during the past six weeks. Included were at least seven visits from Rossann Williams, Starbucks’ president of retail for North America.The officials sometimes work on laptops facing the baristas, sometimes join them behind the bar to work and inquire about the store, and sometimes perform menial tasks like cleaning the bathroom, Mr. Westlake said. He said that many of his co-workers felt intimidated by these officials and that he found the presence of Ms. Williams “surreal.”Starbucks said that many of the officials were regional leaders and coaches who were helping to solve operational issues and remodel stores, and that they were part of a companywide effort dating to May, when Covid-19 infection rates declined and stores across the country got busier.“The resurgence of business came so fast we were not prepared,” Ms. Williams said in an interview.Colin Cochran was among the pro-union workers at the Starbucks store that was turned into a training facility.Libby March for The New York TimesThe company says that it has added staffing in a number of cities beyond Buffalo, especially in the Midwest and the Mountain West, and that it brought on an additional recruiter in each of its 12 regions in the spring to expedite hiring. It said it had turned about 40 stores around the country into temporary training facilities.On a Saturday in October, Ms. Williams visited the training store, saying little as she stood behind a group of workers while a trainer instructed them at the bar.Later, seated outside the store to discuss her work in Buffalo, she waved off the idea that temporarily shutting down a store or making other significant changes might compromise the union election’s laboratory conditions.“If I went to a market and saw the condition some of these stores are in, and I didn’t do anything about it, it would be so against my job,” she said. “There’s no way I could come here and say I’m not going to do anything.” More

  • 100 Shares149 Views

    in Economy

    John Deere Workers Strike After Failed Contract Talks

    by

    About 10,000 unionized employees walked out, as worker activism rises during nationwide labor shortages.Employees of Deere & Company formed picket lines after some 10,000 unionized workers went on strike to demand better pay and benefits at a time when the agriculture equipment maker was on track for a year of record profits.Meg Mclaughlin/Quad City Times, via Associated PressSome 10,000 unionized workers at the agriculture equipment maker Deere & Company went on strike early Thursday after overwhelmingly rejecting a contract proposal worked out with the company by negotiators for the United Automobile Workers union.“Our members at John Deere strike for the ability to earn a decent living, retire with dignity and establish fair work rules,” Chuck Browning, the director of the union’s agricultural department, said in a statement. “We stay committed to bargaining until our members’ goals are achieved.”Deere said it was “determined to reach an agreement” that would benefit workers. “We will keep working day and night to understand our employees’ priorities and resolve this strike, while also keeping our operations running for the benefit of all those we serve,” Brad Morris, the company’s vice president for labor relations, said in a statement.The strike deadline was announced on Sunday after the union said its members had voted down the tentative agreement reached on Oct. 1 with the company, which makes the John Deere brand of tractors. Union negotiators had said the proposal would provide “significant economic gains” and “the highest-quality health care benefits in the industry.”But workers, who are spread out across 14 facilities, primarily in Iowa and Illinois, criticized the deal for insufficiently increasing wages, for denying a traditional pension to new employees and for failing to substantially improve an incentive program that they consider stingy.“We’ve never had the deck stacked in our advantage the way it is now,” said Chris Laursen, a worker at a John Deere plant in Ottumwa, Iowa, who was president of his local there until recently.Mr. Laursen cited several sources of leverage for workers: the profitability of Deere & Company — which is on a pace to set a record of nearly $6 billion this fiscal year — as well as relatively high agricultural commodity prices and supply-chain bottlenecks resulting from the pandemic.“The company is reaping such rewards, but we’re fighting over crumbs here,” he said.Deere, long known to farmers for its green-and-yellow product line, is a publicly traded company valued at more than $100 billion. After a brief plunge early in the pandemic, its shares have tripled, far outpacing the overall market. They rose slightly on Thursday.Steve Volkmann, an analyst with the investment bank Jefferies, acknowledged that Deere was doing well. “Crop prices have increased with every other commodity,” he said, “and when farmers make money, they tend to buy equipment.” And he said Deere’s leadership in agricultural technology had helped make it more profitable.Mr. Volkmann said the financial damage from the labor dispute, if it was settled quickly, would be limited. The company’s bigger challenge, he said, comes from the pandemic’s disruption to the worldwide supply chain, which has caused shortages and raised prices for some components.“Deere is already under some stress,” he said. “They’re not producing at full capacity anyway — they just don’t have the parts.”As many employers grapple with worker shortages, workers across the country appear more willing to undertake strikes and other labor actions.Last week, more than 1,000 workers at Kellogg, the cereal maker, went on strike, and Mondelez International, which makes Oreos and other Nabisco snacks, experienced a work stoppage this summer. Coal miners in Alabama have been on strike for months. Workers have also waged prominent union campaigns at Amazon and Starbucks.Those on strike elsewhere in the country have raised similar complaints as the Deere employees, pointing out that they put in long hours as essential workers during the pandemic but are not sharing much of the profits that their companies reaped during that time.“There was no reprieve — everyone was working seven days a week,” said Dan Osborn, the president of a Kellogg workers local in Omaha.Mr. Osborn said his members were upset over a two-tier compensation system that they worry puts downward pressure on the wages and benefits of veteran workers. “Divide and conquer, it’s an age-old adage,” he said.The Facebook pages of some U.A.W. locals on Thursday encouraged workers to turn out for picketing, which one said would qualify them for strike pay and health insurance.Union members at General Motors walked off the job for almost six weeks in 2019 before agreeing to a four-year contract that included substantial wage increases and closed disparities in a two-tier wage structure.Under the tentative deal at Deere, wages would have increased 5 or 6 percent this year, depending on a worker’s pay grade, and then an additional 3 percent each in 2023 and 2025.Pension benefits would have increased but would have remained substantially lower for workers hired after 1997, and many workers were disappointed to see benefits eliminated for new hires, Mr. Laursen said.Other workers are perturbed about the lack of health care benefits for retirees, which also ceased for workers hired after 1997.Analysts suggested that Deere might be wary of taking on additional long-term obligations because its current level of profitability is unlikely to last.“It’s a very cyclical business,” said Ann Duignan, an analyst with J.P. Morgan. “They may be having record profits this year, but we believe we are close to a peak.”Many workers were frustrated with similar elements of the last contract that the union negotiated with Deere, in 2015, and had been anticipating a showdown ever since.“I’ve been saving since the last contract,” said Toby Munley, a Deere electrician in Ottumwa, where U.A.W. members voted to reject the previous contract, as did another local in Iowa. “People were feeling it then.” That contract was narrowly approved overall.Looming over the negotiation is suspicion among rank-and-file workers toward the international union after a series of scandals in recent years involving corruption in the union and illegal payoffs to union officials from executives at the company then known as Fiat Chrysler.The scandals led to more than 15 convictions, including those of two recent U.A.W. presidents.Mr. Munley said he had worried that the U.A.W. would try to negotiate a marginally better deal and sell the membership on it before the strike deadline Wednesday night, but said he was encouraged that the union had held firm.“I was happy to see we didn’t come back with a tentative agreement,” he said. “It restored some of my faith in my international.”Nelson D. Schwartz More

  • 125 Shares109 Views

    in Economy

    U.S. Workers Quitting Their Jobs Hit a Record in August

    by

    As the economy struggles to get back on track amid the pandemic, businesses are struggling to find employees — and workers are discovering that they have leverage.Nearly 4.3 million workers voluntarily quit their jobs in August, the Labor Department said Tuesday. That was up from four million in July and is by far the most in the two decades the government has been keeping track.

    .dw-chart-subhed {
    line-height: 1;
    margin-bottom: 6px;
    font-family: nyt-franklin;
    color: #121212;
    font-size: 15px;
    font-weight: 700;
    }

    Number of People Who Left Their Jobs Voluntarily by Month
    Note: Seasonally adjusted. Voluntary quits exclude retirements.Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesThe explosion of quitting is the latest evidence that the balance of power in the labor market has swung toward workers, at least temporarily. Average hourly earnings have surged in recent months, particularly for the lowest-paid workers, and yet many businesses report they are still having difficulty finding workers.The abundance of opportunities may be helping to fuel the wave of quitting: The government’s tally includes people who left jobs to take other, perhaps better-paying, positions — or who didn’t have another job lined up but were confident they could find one — as well as those choosing to leave the work force. (The figure does not include retirements, which are counted separately.)The number of open jobs actually fell somewhat in August, to 10.4 million from a record 11.1 million in July, as the latest wave of the pandemic took a bite out of consumer demand, especially in the service sector. But the slowdown did little to ease the hiring logjam: There were more open jobs than unemployed workers in August. Openings were particularly elevated in the leisure and hospitality sector, where the number of people quitting was also highest. Economists said the spread of the more-contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus could be contributing to workers’ reluctance to return to work.At the same time, hiring fell in August. That is consistent with data released earlier showing that job growth slowed in late summer. That data, also from the Labor Department but based on different surveys, showed that the Delta-driven slowdown continued in September. So did the hiring difficulties: The labor force shrank in September, as higher wages failed to draw people back to work.“We know that the Delta variant has likely made it more difficult to unlock labor supply because there are some workers who are concerned about health risks — and then on top of that, many school reopenings were disrupted,” said Daniel Zhao, an economist at the career site Glassdoor. “It’s possible that as the Delta wave recedes, then we will realize some of those benefits of reopened schools and a revitalized economy, but that is going to take some time.” More