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    Business Booms at Kroger-Owned Grocery Stores, but Workers Are Left Behind

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    A number of the stores’ nearly 500,000 employees have reported being homeless, receiving government food stamps or relying on food banks.When Enrique Romero Jr. finishes his shift fulfilling online orders at a Fred Meyer grocery store in Bellingham, Wash., he often walks to a nearby plasma donation center. There, he has his blood drained, and a hydrating solution is pumped into his veins, a process that leaves him tired and cold.Mr. Romero, 30, said selling his plasma made him feel “like cattle.” But the income he earns from it — roughly $500 a month — is more reliable than his wages at Fred Meyer, which is owned by the grocery giant Kroger. His part-time hours often fluctuate, and he struggles to find enough money to cover his rent, his groceries and the regular repairs required to keep his 2007 Chevy Aveo on the road.“The economy we have is grueling,” he said.Business has boomed during the pandemic for Kroger, the biggest supermarket chain in the United States and the fourth-largest employer in the Fortune 500. It owns more than 2,700 locations, and its brands include Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, Ralphs, Smith’s, Pick ’n Save and even Murray’s Cheese in New York City. The company, which is based in Cincinnati, said in December that it was expecting sales growth of at least 13.7 percent over two years. The company’s stock has risen about 36 percent over the past year.But that success has not trickled down to its vast work force of nearly 500,000 employees, a number of whom have reported being homeless, receiving government food stamps or relying on food banks to feed their families. A brief strike in Colorado last month by workers, represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, at dozens of Kroger-owned King Soopers locations brought renewed scrutiny to the issues of pay and working conditions for grocery workers, who have been on the front lines throughout the pandemic.Because his part-time hours are not guaranteed, Mr. Romero said he struggled to pay rent.Jovelle Tamayo for The New York TimesThe Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research group that surveyed more than 10,000 Kroger workers in Washington, Colorado and Southern California about their working conditions for a report commissioned by four units of the food workers union, found that about 75 percent of Kroger workers said they were food insecure, meaning they lacked consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. About 14 percent said they were homeless or had been homeless in the previous year, and 63 percent said they did not earn enough money to pay for basic expenses every month.“There is a race to the bottom that’s been going on for a while with Walmart and other large retail stores, and also restaurants, and to reverse that trend is not easy,” said Daniel Flaming, president of the Economic Roundtable.Kroger was the sole employer for 86 percent of those surveyed, partly because more than half had schedules that changed at least every week, making it difficult to commit to another employer. About two-thirds said they were part-time workers, even though they wanted more hours. Keeping workers part time is a strategy employers use to encourage turnover and reduce costs.Kristal Howard, a spokeswoman for Kroger, said the report was “one-dimensional and does not tell the complete story.”“Kroger has provided an incredible number of people with their first job, second chances and lifelong careers, and we’re proud to play this role in our communities,” she said. Ms. Howard added that the company had raised its national average hourly rate of pay to $16.68 from $13.66 in 2017, a 22 percent increase, and that its benefits package included health care, retirement savings, tuition assistance and on-demand access to mental health assistance.Some of the workers said that even though other retailers and fast food restaurants had started offering higher starting wages than Kroger, the company’s health insurance and retirement benefits, which the union negotiated, were more generous than what other employers offered. Other part-time Kroger workers say they stay on the job because they don’t want to lose their seniority and the chance for a full-time role.Despite some of the wage increases and benefits, working at a grocery store no longer provides the stable income and middle-class lifestyle that it did 30 years ago, workers say. The Economic Roundtable report studied contracts dating back to 1990 and said the most experienced clerks — known as journeymen — in Southern California made roughly $28 per hour in today’s dollars while working full-time schedules. Wages for top-paid clerks today are 22 percent lower, and those workers are far more likely to be working part-time hours.Ashley Manning, a 32-year-old floral manager at a Ralphs in San Pedro, Calif., works full time but is regularly strapped for cash. Ms. Manning, the single mother of a 12-year-old, said she had worked at Ralphs for nine years and earned $18.25 an hour. It took her four years to reach full-time status, which guarantees 40 hours per week and comes with an annual bonus ranging from $500 to $3,000.It took Ashley Manning four years to become a full-time worker at Ralphs, and even now she struggles to pay for basic living expenses. Philip Cheung for The New York TimesShe said she struggled to pay rent and moved into her grandmother’s house after being evicted last spring. She has needed help from her family to help pay for a car. She has tried to make extra money through a party planning and decorating business, but demand for those services dried up in the pandemic.“I would think, ‘I have a good job and make decent money,’ and I don’t,” Ms. Manning said. “I’m still on the poverty level.”During the pandemic, grocery store workers have been recognized as essential to keeping society going, but they have also faced health risks. At least 50,600 grocery workers around the country have been infected with or exposed to the coronavirus, and at least 213 have died from the virus, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.Ms. Manning was hospitalized for Covid-19 last summer. She blames herself for her grandmother’s subsequent death from the virus in August.“She was one of the people that would help me the most, if I was short on a bill or needed help, to pick my daughter up from school,” she said. But when her grandmother was in critical condition, Ms. Manning said, she was told that she couldn’t take more time off after being sick with Covid-19.The illness and the company’s response were jarring, given that corporate workers had the flexibility to work from home, she said, adding that she ultimately took disability leave for a stretch.Kroger has one of the country’s starkest gaps between a chief executive’s compensation and that of the median employee. Rodney McMullen, Kroger’s chief executive since 2014, earned $22.4 million in 2020, while the median employee earned $24,617 — a ratio of 909 to 1. The average C.E.O.-to-worker pay ratio in the S&P 500 is 299 to 1, with grocery chains like Costco (193 to 1) and Publix (153 to 1) lower than that.These disparities have fomented outrage among employees, who are also dealing with issues like fights over masks and theft and violence in stores.King Soopers grocery store workers in Denver went on a strike last month over wages and working conditions.Michael Ciaglo/Getty ImagesIn Colorado, more than 8,000 workers at the Kroger-owned King Soopers chain walked off the job last month when union contract negotiations broke down over wages, employee safety issues and scheduling.Around the time of the strike, a nonprofit publication, A More Perfect Union, published an internal Kroger document in which the company acknowledged that one in five of its employees received government assistance in 2017. The document also included research showing that employee turnover was lower in places where it raised wages.In response, Kroger said it had developed an improvement plan after the analysis, which included the wage increase and steps to improve tuition assistance and retirement benefits. The company commissioned its own study that stated last month that Kroger’s average pay and benefits in Colorado and three other Western states were higher than those of other retailers.After more than a week of picketing, the union — Local 7 of the U.F.C.W. — won large concessions, including wage increases of more than $5A an hour for some workers and a plan to move at least 500 part-time workers into full-time roles within a few months.As successful as the strike was for workers in Colorado, Larry Cohen, former president of the Communications Workers of America, said the contracts covered only employees at specific Kroger chains, making it difficult for unions to gain broader leverage.“When all contracts are local, how do you deal with a giant national company?” Mr. Cohen said. “Not very well.”Kroger has tightly controlled labor expenses during the pandemic. The company offered hero pay and thank-you bonuses to workers in the early months of the pandemic but ended those well before vaccinations were available. (Grocery workers were also not given priority for vaccinations in many states.) While some municipalities like Los Angeles and Seattle sought to institute hazard pay mandates, Kroger and grocery lobbying associations fought such efforts.Workers protested outside a Kroger-owned Food 4 Less store in California that was closed after the local government mandated hazard pay for grocery employees.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesKroger’s resistance to wage increases peaked last year when the Los Angeles City Council approved a hazard pay mandate requiring large grocers and pharmacies to pay employees an additional $5 an hour for four months. In response, Kroger said it would close three stores in the area in May — two Ralphs locations and a Food 4 Less — blaming increased costs. The company pointed to a release at the time that said the stores were underperforming. But City Council members were left with the sense that the closures were retaliatory.Paul Koretz, a member of the Council, said he had dealt with backlash from some constituents about the impending closing of a Ralphs in his district, a go-to for the local Orthodox Jewish community. He said Ralphs representatives had warned him that they would close the store if the mandate was instituted.“I’m not sure I really believed that Ralphs would do it,” he said. “It just seemed so counterintuitive that you would mess with your very loyal customers.”Shoppers in his district have adapted since the store closed. But he said he believed that the impact of the closings on employees and Council members’ fear of angering constituents probably had a chilling effect on other municipalities that were considering similar measures. The mandated hazard pay gave many Kroger workers a glimpse of how their day-to-day lives could improve with more money. Areli Rivas, a part-time cashier at a Ralphs in Van Nuys, Calif., who is married to a full-time worker at the store, said the extra pay gave her “peace of mind.”“The economy we have is grueling,” said Mr. Romero, outside the Fred Meyer store where he works.Jovelle Tamayo for The New York TimesThe mother of two said it was hard to justify purchases like a new backpack for her son, even though his current one is fraying. More pay would also allow her to get her daughter a new glasses prescription.Some workers like Ms. Manning said that they couldn’t afford to shop at their store and that the employee discount of 10 percent applied only to Kroger-branded goods and did not always include produce and other essentials.Kroger said that the discount covered 19,000 private-label food products and that it did include dairy, proteins and produce.Pio Figueroa, 25, who has been working at a Ralphs in Laguna Beach, Calif., for about six years, said he was able to manage his monthly expenses now that he was among the highest earners in his store, making about $22.50 an hour. But at one point, he was making $15 or $16 per hour at the chain and struggled mightily.“There were times I could only budget to spend $100 on food and everything a week,” he said. “So there were times I would go without a meal or definitely think, ‘What am I going to eat tonight?’” More

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    CPI Inflation Climbed 7.5 Percent in January, the Fastest Rise Since 1982

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    Consumer Price Index data showed prices climbing faster than expected, picking up across a broad array of goods and services.

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    Year-over-year changes in the Consumer Price Index
    Seasonally adjustedSource: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesA key inflation measure released on Thursday showed that prices are climbing at the fastest pace in 40 years and broadening to touch nearly every corner of the American economy, heightening the risk that they will stay elevated for longer and that policymakers may have to react more aggressively.Markets tumbled after the government released Consumer Price Index data for January, which showed prices jumping 7.5 percent over the year and 0.6 percent over the past month, exceeding forecasts. More worrying were the report’s details, which showed inflation moving beyond pandemic-affected goods and services, a sign that rapid gains could prove longer lasting and harder to shake off.Investors speculated that the hot inflation would spur a decisive reaction from the Federal Reserve — possibly a big interest rate increase at the central bank’s next gathering in March, though few Fed officials have signaled comfort with such a large move. Making money more expensive to borrow and spend could weigh on demand, slowing the economy and tamping down prices.Wall Street is now anticipating that interest rates could rise to more than 1.75 percent by the end of the year, up from near zero now, and the possibility of a more forceful Fed reaction sent a key bond yield above 2 percent for the first time since July 2019 and deflated stock prices.Most economists still believe inflation will cool by year’s end, as automobile prices climb at a more moderate pace and as supply chain problems hopefully ease. But high and widespread price increases portend trouble for a White House that is struggling to convince voters that the economy is strong, and for a Fed that looks increasingly at risk of falling behind the curve.“It was more than expected, and it was broad-based,” said Priya Misra, head of global rates strategy at TD Securities, adding that she now expects price gains to slow less drastically this year. “We’ve gotten used to these big headline numbers, but every aspect of ‘transitory’ you can push back against now.”Economists thought price gains would fade quickly in 2021 — making now-infamous predictions that inflation would prove “transitory” — only to have those projections proved wrong time and again as booming consumer demand for goods collided with roiled global supply chains that could not ramp up production fast enough.High inflation has been a political liability for the White House, as rising prices have eaten away at household paychecks, leaving consumers feeling pessimistic.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesLately, it is more than just shortages of goods at play. Price gains are increasingly hitting consumers in hard-to-avoid ways as they show up in necessities: January’s inflation reading was driven by food, electricity and shelter costs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.High and broadening inflation has become a political liability for President Biden, as rising prices eat away at household paychecks and detract from a strong labor market with solid wage growth. That has left consumers feeling pessimistic and has all but killed Mr. Biden’s chance to pass a sweeping climate and social policy bill given lawmaker concerns about rising prices.Understand Inflation in the U.S.Inflation 101: What is inflation, why is it up and whom does it hurt? Our guide explains it all.Your Questions, Answered: We asked readers to send questions about inflation. Top experts and economists weighed in.What’s to Blame: Did the stimulus cause prices to rise? Or did pandemic lockdowns and shortages lead to inflation? A debate is heating up in Washington.Supply Chain’s Role: A key factor in rising inflation is the continuing turmoil in the global supply chain. Here’s how the crisis unfolded.Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimated that inflation was costing the average household $276 a month, compared with a more normal rate of inflation, which had been hovering just around 2 percent before the pandemic.“While today is a reminder that Americans’ budgets are being stretched in ways that create real stress at the kitchen table, there are also signs that we will make it through this challenge,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. He emphasized that wages grew more quickly than prices last month — though in general they have not kept up with price gains over the past year.The White House has introduced policies that might help to ease inflation slightly — discussing plans to help place military veterans into the short-staffed trucking industry, for instance — but the Fed is primarily in charge of slowing down demand to keep prices under control. Fed officials have already shifted away from trying to foster a quick economic rebound and toward bringing inflation down. After Thursday’s report, investors expected the Fed to withdraw economic support even more quickly. Markets braced for a half-percentage-point increase in the federal funds rate at the central bank’s meeting next month — double the usual increment.The inflation reading sent stocks down and government bond yields up. The S&P 500 dropped 1.8 percent, while the Nasdaq composite fell 2.1 percent. The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes rose 0.1 percentage points, to about 2.03 percent, the highest level since November 2019.James Bullard, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, fretted about the January inflation report in an interview with Bloomberg News and suggested that policymakers should be open to both a bigger-than-normal rate increase and to increasing rates in between officially scheduled meetings.“You have got the highest inflation in 40 years, and I think we are going to have to be far more nimble and far more reactive to data,” said Mr. Bullard, who has at times espoused bold stances that are not followed by his policymaking colleagues.The Fed generally moves borrowing costs in between meetings only at stressed moments and in emergencies, as was the case when it cut rates to zero between planned gatherings in March 2020.Inflation is abnormally high relative to the central bank’s goal: The Fed aims for 2 percent inflation on average over time, defining that target using a different but related inflation index that is also sharply elevated.And it increasingly appears to be driven less by the pandemic and more by a strong economy. Price increases in 2021 came heavily from roiled supply chains that sent new and used car prices and furniture costs up sharply. Those continue to be a big factor elevating overall inflation, but other areas are also fueling the rapid rise.

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    Year-over-year changes in the Consumer Price Index
    Not seasonally adjustedSource: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesRent of a primary residence, which counts for a big chunk of overall inflation and tends to respond more to economic conditions than to one-off trends, climbed 0.5 percent in January from the prior month, a slight acceleration. Other shelter costs rose at a steady but notable pace.“Low vacancies and the end of rent moratoriums are expected to continue to push rents higher in the year ahead,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, wrote in a note after the release.As costs for shelter and other services pick up, policymakers are hoping that supply chains will start to catch up. That could allow prices for goods to moderate or even fall — taking pressure off overall inflation.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 6What is inflation? More

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    How The Trucker Protests Are Snarling the Auto Industry

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    Blockades of U.S.-Canada border crossings could hurt the auto industry, factory workers and the economy, which are still recovering from pandemic disruptions.After two years of the pandemic, semiconductor shortages and supply chain chaos, it seemed as if nothing else could go wrong for the auto industry and the millions of people it employs. But then came thousands of truckers who, angry about vaccine mandates, have been blocking major border crossings between Canada and the United States.With Canadian officials baffled about what to do, the main routes that handle the steel, aluminum and other parts that keep car factories running on both sides of the border were essentially shut down Wednesday and Thursday.Ford Motor, General Motors, Honda and Toyota have curtailed production at several factories in Michigan and Ontario, threatening paychecks and offering a fresh reminder of the fragility of global supply chains and of the deep interdependence of the U.S. and Canadian economies, which exchange $140 million in vehicles and parts every day.No one knows how this is going to end. The protests are expected to swell in the coming days and could spread, including to the United States. Canada’s transport minister has called the bridge blockades illegal. Marco Mendicino, Canada’s minister of public safety, said on Thursday that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the national force, was sending additional officers to the Canadian capital, Ottawa, and to Windsor, Ontario. The mayor of Windsor has threatened to remove the protesters. But those statements have seemed to have little impact. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan pleaded with Canadian officials to quickly reopen traffic.“They must take all necessary and appropriate steps to immediately and safely reopen traffic so we can continue growing our economy,” Ms. Whitmer said in a statement on Thursday.The chaos is already starting to take an economic toll. The pain is likely to be most acute for smaller auto parts suppliers, for independent truckers and for workers who get paid based on their production. Many of these groups, unlike large automakers like G.M., Ford and Toyota, lack the clout to raise prices of their goods and services. Companies and workers in Canada are more likely to suffer because they are more dependent on the United States.The longer crossings between the countries remain blocked, the more severe the damage, not only to the auto industry but also to the communities that depend on manufacturing salaries. Workers at smaller firms typically receive no compensation for lost hours, said Dino Chiodo, the director of auto at the giant Canadian union Unifor. Workers who have been sent home early because of parts shortages will spend less at stores and restaurants.“People say, ‘I have $200 less this week, what do I do?’” Mr. Chiodo said. “It affects the Canadian and U.S. economy as a whole.”Auto factories and suppliers in the United States generally keep at least two weeks of raw materials on hand, said Carla Bailo, the president of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. If the bridges remain blocked for longer than that, she said, “then you’re looking at layoffs.”The blockades came after a demonstration in Ottawa that started nearly two weeks ago. The protests began over a mandate that truck drivers coming from the United States be vaccinated against the coronavirus and have grown to include various pandemic restrictions. Some have demanded that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resign. The truckers have been joined by various groups, including some displaying Nazi symbols and damaging public monuments. Police in Ottawa said on Thursday that the protesters and their supporters, including some in the United States, had almost overwhelmed the city’s 911 system with calls.The crossing that has the auto industry and government officials most concerned is the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Windsor and Detroit. It carries roughly a quarter of the trade between the two countries, which has been relatively unrestricted for decades. While food and other products are also affected, about a third of the cargo that uses the bridge is related to the auto industry, Ms. Bailo said.The blockade has been felt as far south as Kentucky, where production has been disrupted at a Toyota factory, the company said on Thursday. The shutdown at the border also will prevent manufacturing at Toyota’s three Canadian plants for the rest of the week, a spokesman for the automaker, Scott Vazin, said.Demonstrators blocking access to the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor. The bridge accounts for roughly a quarter of the trade between the United States and Canada.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressG.M. said it had canceled two shifts on Wednesday and Thursday at a factory in Lansing, Mich., that makes Buick Enclave and Chevrolet Traverse sport utility vehicles. The company also sent workers from the first shift at a plant in Flint, Mich., home early. Ford said Thursday that plants in Windsor and Oakville, also in Ontario, were running at reduced capacity.Shortages of semiconductors and other components have not been all bad for giant automakers, creating scarcity that has driven up prices of cars in the last year. Ford and G.M. both reported healthy profits for 2021. And the economic damage will not be severe if the bridge and other crossings reopen soon, industry experts said.But the last two years have shown that, because supply chains are so complex, problems at obscure parts makers can have far-reaching and unpredictable impact. Last year, Ford had to shut down plants for weeks at a time in part because of a fire at a chip factory in Japan.“If it stretches on for weeks it could be catastrophic,” said Peter Nagle, an analyst who covers the car industry at IHS Markit, a research firm.Mr. Nagle said the bridge blockade was worse than the semiconductor shortage for carmakers. They “were already running pretty tight because of other supply chain shortages,” he said. “This is just bad news on top of bad news.”The auto industry operates relatively seamlessly across Canada, the United States and Mexico. Some parts can travel back and forth across borders multiple times as raw materials are processed and are turned into components and, eventually, vehicles.An engine block, for example, might be cast in Canada, sent to Michigan to be machined for pistons, then sent back to Canada for assembly into a finished motor. The blockades have stranded some truckers on the wrong side of the border, creating a chain reaction of missed deliveries.The slowdown in Canadian trade will disproportionately affect New York, Michigan and Ohio, said Arthur Wheaton, the director of labor studies at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. At the same time, he added, the protests were “certainly raising concerns for all U.S. manufacturers.”“There is already a shortage of truck drivers in North America, so protests keeping truckers off their routes exacerbates problems for an already fragile supply chain,” Mr. Wheaton said.Carmakers had hoped that shortages of computer chips and other components would ease this year, allowing them to concentrate on the long-term: the transition to electric vehicles.A larger fear for many elected officials and business executives is that the scene at the Ambassador Bridge could inspire other protests. The Department of Homeland Security warned in an internal memo that a convoy of protesting truckers was planning to travel from California to Washington, D.C., potentially disrupting the Super Bowl and President Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1.“While there are currently no indications of planned violence,” the memo, which was dated Tuesday, said, “if hundreds of trucks converge in a major metropolitan city, the potential exists to severely disrupt transportation, federal government operations, commercial facilities and emergency services through gridlock and potential counter protests.”Mr. Chiodo, the Canadian union leader, said that “the people who are demonstrating are doing it for the wrong reasons. They want to get back to the way things were before the pandemic, and in reality they are shutting things down.”The scene in Ottawa remained a raucous party Thursday, with hundreds of people on the street, many wearing Canadian flags like capes. The song “Life Is a Highway,” by the Canadian musician Tom Cochrane, pumped from loudspeakers set up on the back of an empty trailer that had been converted into a stage.But there was a thinning out of protesters — with some empty spaces where trucks had been the day before.Johnny Neufeld, 39, a long-haul trucker from Windsor, Ontario, said the vaccine mandate would spell the end of his job transporting molds into the United States since he had chosen not to be inoculated out of fear the shots had been developed too quickly. He got his first ticket from the police Thursday morning, a fine of 130 Canadian dollars (about $100) for being in a no-stopping zone.“This is a souvenir,” he said.Dan Bilefsky More

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    Why the January Jobs Report May Disappoint, and Is Sure to Perplex

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    The January jobs report is arriving at a critical time for the U.S. economy. Inflation is rising. The pandemic is still taking a toll. And the Federal Reserve is trying to decide how best to steer the economy through a swirl of competing threats.Unfortunately, the data, which the Labor Department will release on Friday, is unlikely to provide a clear guide.A slew of measurement issues and data quirks will make it hard to assess exactly how the latest coronavirus wave has affected workers and businesses, or to gauge the underlying health of the labor market.“It’s going to be a mess,” said Skanda Amarnath, executive director of Employ America, a research group.Data for the report was collected in mid-January, near the peak of the wave of cases associated with the Omicron variant. There is no question that the surge in cases was disruptive: A Census Bureau survey estimated that more than 14 million people in late December and early January were not working either because they had Covid-19 or were caring for someone who did, more than at any other point in the pandemic.Understand Inflation in the U.S.Inflation 101: What is inflation, why is it up and whom does it hurt? Our guide explains it all.Your Questions, Answered: We asked readers to send questions about inflation. Top experts and economists weighed in.What’s to Blame: Did the stimulus cause prices to rise? Or did pandemic lockdowns and shortages lead to inflation? A debate is heating up in Washington.Supply Chain’s Role: A key factor in rising inflation is the continuing turmoil in the global supply chain. Here’s how the crisis unfolded.But exactly how those disruptions will affect the jobs numbers is less certain. Forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg expect the report to show that employers added 150,000 jobs in January, only modestly fewer than the 199,000 added in December. But there is an unusually wide range of estimates, from a gain of 250,000 jobs to a loss of 400,000.The Biden administration and its allies are bracing for a grim report, warning on Twitter and in conversations with reporters that a weak January jobs number would not necessarily be a sign of a sustained slowdown.Economists generally agree. Coronavirus cases have already begun to fall in most of the country, and there is little evidence so far that the latest wave caused lasting economic damage. Layoffs have not spiked, as they did earlier in the pandemic, and employers continue to post job openings.“You could have the possibility of a payroll number that looks really truly horrendous, but you’re pulling on a rubber band,” said Nick Bunker, director of economic research for the job site Indeed. “Things could bounce back really quickly.”Still, the January data will be unusually confusing because Omicron’s impact will affect different particulars in different ways.Two Measures of EmploymentThe number that usually gets the most attention, the count of jobs gained or lost, is based on a government survey that asks thousands of employers how many employees they have on their payrolls in a given pay period. People who miss work — because they are out sick, are quarantining because of coronavirus exposure or are caring for children because their day care arrangements have been upended — might not be counted, even though they haven’t lost their jobs.Forecasting the impact of such absences on the jobs numbers is tricky. The payroll figure is meant to include anyone who worked even a single hour in a pay period, so people who miss only a few days of work will still be counted. Employees taking paid time off count, too. Still, the sheer scale of the Omicron wave means that absences are almost certain to take a toll.The jobs report also includes data from a separate survey of households. That survey considers people “employed” if they report having a job, even if they are out sick or absent for other reasons. The different definitions mean that the report could send conflicting signals, with one measure showing an increase in jobs and the other a decrease.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 6What is inflation? More

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    Despite Labor Shortages, Workers See Few Gains in Economic Security

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    Over the past two months, Brenda Garcia, who works at a Chipotle in Queens, has struggled to land more than 20 hours per week, making it difficult to keep up with her expenses. When she confronts her manager, he vows to try to find her more work, but the problem invariably persists. In one recent week, the store scheduled her for a single 6.25-hour shift.“It’s not enough for me — they’re not giving me a stable job,” said Ms. Garcia, whose work involves chopping vegetables and other tasks before burritos are assembled. “They’re not giving me the hours and the days I’m supposed to be getting.”Ms. Garcia’s limited hours are not unusual at Chipotle, which has a largely part-time work force. A weekly schedule at her store from early January showed at least a dozen workers with fewer than 20 hours and several with fewer than 15.With workers nationwide quitting at high rates and companies complaining that they can’t fill jobs, employers might be expected to rethink their dependence on part-time scheduling. While some employees prefer the flexibility, many say it leaves them with too few hours, too little income or erratic hours.But that rethinking does not appear to have happened. Government data show that in retail businesses, the portion of workers on part-time schedules last year stood about where it was just before the pandemic, and that it increased somewhat in hospitality industries like restaurants and hotels.In a twice-yearly survey by Daniel Schneider, a Harvard sociologist, and Kristen Harknett, a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco, one-quarter of workers at large retailers and restaurant chains said they were scheduled 35 hours a week or less and wanted more hours. That was down from about one-third in 2019, but the change was driven by a decline in the number of workers wanting more hours, most likely because of pandemic health risks and work-life conflicts, not because employers were providing more hours.Even as employers complain of having to scramble to fill vacancies, there is little evidence that service workers are winning any meaningful, long-term gains. While businesses have raised wages, those increases can be easily eroded by inflation, if they haven’t been already. The overall national rate of membership in unions — which can obtain wage increases for workers even absent labor shortages — matched its lowest level on record last year.Limited work hours are not unusual at Chipotle, which has a largely part-time work force.Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesAnd the unpredictable schedules that arise when employers constantly adjust staffing in response to customer demand, something that is common among part-timers, are roughly as prevalent as before the pandemic. The survey by Dr. Schneider and Dr. Harknett found that about two-thirds of workers continue to receive less than two weeks’ notice of their schedules.“Companies are doing all they can not to bake in any gains that are difficult to claw back,” Dr. Schneider said. “Workers’ labor market power is so far not yielding durable dividends.”The changes that make work lower paying, less stable and generally more precarious date back to the 1960s and ’70s, when the labor market evolved in two key ways. First, companies began pushing more work outside the firm — relying increasingly on contractors, temps and franchisees, a practice known as “fissuring.”Second, many businesses that continued to employ workers directly began hiring them to part-time positions, rather than full-time roles, particularly in the retail and hospitality industries.According to the scholars Chris Tilly of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Françoise Carré of the University of Massachusetts Boston, the initial impetus for the shift to part-time work was the mass entry of women into the work force, including many who preferred part-time positions so they could be home when children returned from school.Before long, however, employers saw an advantage in hiring part-timers and deliberately added more. “A light bulb went on one day,” Dr. Tilly said. “‘If we’re expanding part-time schedules, we don’t have to offer benefits, we can offer a lower wage rate.’”By the late 1980s, employers had begun using scheduling software to forecast customer demand and staffed accordingly. Having a large portion of part-time workers, who could be given more hours when stores got busy and fewer hours when business slowed, helped enable this practice, known as just-in-time scheduling.But the arrangement subjected workers to fluctuating schedules and unreliable hours, disrupting their personal lives, their sleep, even their children’s brain development.Nonetheless, the model continued to spread, and the shift to a heavily part-time work force was largely complete across retail by the mid-1990s.A recent study commissioned by Kroger found that about 70 percent of the supermarket company’s nearly 85,000 store employees in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington State were part time. A survey of more than 10,000 Kroger workers on behalf of four union locals by the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research group, found widespread evidence of just-in-time scheduling, with more than half of workers reporting that their schedules changed at least weekly.Kroger, one of the nation’s largest employers, said in a statement that many of its employees sought part-time jobs for their flexibility and for health care benefits that competitors didn’t offer, as well as for opportunities for upward mobility. “We provide hundreds of thousands of people with first jobs (think baggers, cashiers, stockers, etc.), second chances, retirement employment, college gigs,” the statement said.The company added that locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers union had negotiated and agreed to the relevant provisions of its labor contracts for decades.A spokeswoman for Chipotle, where Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ is helping workers organize, likewise said that managers and employees mutually agreed on hours and that the company enabled employees to pick up additional shifts at other New York City stores when they were available.But the practices remain contentious. In mid-January, more than 8,000 Denver-area workers at King Soopers, a supermarket chain owned by Kroger, went on strike, citing the lack of full-time employment as a key issue.Workers picketing during a strike at King Soopers in Denver. A key issue was the lack of full-time employment.Michael Ciaglo/Getty ImagesRenae Vigil, who works in the meat department at a King Soopers in Denver and serves as a union steward, said many of her colleagues would like to work full time so that “they wouldn’t be worried about how to pay bills, how to get this or that paid, but at King’s, it’s like winning a lotto.”The frustrations suggest a relatively straightforward way for employers to reduce labor shortages: Offer more full-time positions.But Kim Cordova, president of U.F.C.W. Local 7, which represents the King Soopers workers, said employers like Kroger were rarely moved by this logic. “They’ve told us they think the market is going to correct itself, this is temporary and they don’t want to lock themselves into changing permanently,” she said. The food workers union estimated that King Soopers had 2,400 unfilled Denver-area jobs early this year.While the strike ended last month, after the company committed to raise pay, contribute more to health benefits and add at least 500 full-time positions, a majority of King Soopers workers are likely to remain on part-time schedules. Most retail and restaurant workers, who lack a union to organize a strike and provide strike pay, may have a harder time winning such changes.Susan Lambert, a social work scholar at the University of Chicago who studies employers’ scheduling practices, said she and a colleague had recently interviewed store managers in Seattle and Chicago and found that some had, in fact, sought to provide more consistent schedules during the pandemic.The change was driven by a combination of data, showing that more humane scheduling practices need not undermine profitability, and a desire by some employers to retain workers amid labor shortages, Dr. Lambert said. But she conceded that the changes were mostly at the margins.“There are not major investments in changing major systems,” she said.Data collected by the Labor Department indicate that the amount of part-time work in the retail and hospitality industries remains far above where it stood in the early 1970s. The same appears to be true of companies’ reliance on contractors and temps, which scholars say has helped weaken wage growth over the past several decades.Employers who outsource work to contractors or temps do not appear to have rethought those arrangements as a result of the pandemic, said Susan Houseman, a labor economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. She pointed to the temporary help industry’s return to close to its prepandemic share of employment and an increase in self-employment during the past two years.Gig companies whose apps allow people to find work as independent contractors say they have had an increase in workers over the last year or two. According to Uber, the number of drivers and couriers working through its service in a given month grew roughly 70 percent from January to October last year, or nearly 640,000.DoorDash said the number of people working through its delivery app as of the fall quarter had more than doubled during the pandemic, to over three million, and Instacart said the number of full-service shoppers on its service — those who shop for and deliver groceries — had increased by more than two and a half times, to over 500,000.The companies say that workers who use their apps value the flexibility of gig work, and that it helps sustain people during fallow periods or in places where work can be hard to find, such as rural communities. But gig jobs typically lack a variety of benefits and protections, like a minimum wage, and can reinforce economic insecurity.To Dr. Schneider, the Harvard sociologist, the insecurity that service workers continue to face during the pandemic, supposedly a period of unusual leverage, shows how resistant their industries are to changing.“I think it exposes something about how attached employers are to this just-in-time model,” he said. “This is something that goes to the heart of their business models.” More

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    Inflation Hits the Fast Food Counter

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    On a chilly Tuesday afternoon this month, James Marsh stopped by a Chipotle near his suburban Chicago home to grab something to eat.It had been a while since Mr. Marsh had been to Chipotle — he estimated he goes five times a year — and he stopped cold when he saw the prices.“I had been getting my usual, a steak burrito, which had been maybe in the mid-$8 range,” said Mr. Marsh, who trades stock options at his home in Hinsdale, Ill. “Now it was more than $9.”He walked out.“I figured I’d find something at home,” he said.The pandemic has led to price spikes in everything from pizza slices in Manhattan to sides of beef in Colorado. And it has led to more expensive items on the menus at fast-food chains, traditionally establishments where people are used to grabbing a quick bite that doesn’t hurt their wallet.At a Chipotle in Costa Mesa, Calif., the price of a chicken burrito — nothing fancy, hold the guacamole — about a year ago was $7.25. These days, that same burrito costs around $7.95, according to price data collected by analysts. In Ann Arbor, Mich., a ShackBurger at Shake Shack used to cost $5.69; now it’s $6.09. And in Oklahoma City, an order of 50 bone-in wings from Wingstop that cost $41.99 early last year is now $47.49, a 13 percent increase.Last year, the price of menu items at fast-food restaurants rose 8 percent, its biggest jump in more than 20 years, according to government data. And, in some cases, portions have shrunk.In Ann Arbor, Mich., a ShackBurger at Shake Shack used to cost $5.69; now it’s $6.09.Amy Lombard for The New York Times“In recent years, most fast-food restaurants had, maybe, raised prices in the low single digits each year,” said Matthew Goodman, an analyst at M Science, an alternative data research and analytics firm. “What we’ve seen over the last six-plus months are restaurants being aggressive in pushing through prices.”This comes at a time when the hypercompetitive fast-food market is booming.Chains like McDonald’s, Chipotle and Wingstop were big winners of the pandemic as consumers, stuck at home working and tired of cooking multiple meals for their families, increasingly turned to them for convenient solutions. But in the past year, as the cost of ingredients rose and the average hourly wage increased 16 percent to $16.10 in November from a year earlier, according to government data, restaurants began to quietly bump up prices.But making customers pay more for a burger or a burrito is a tricky art. For many restaurants, it involves complex algorithms and test markets. They need to walk a fine line between raising prices enough to cover expenses while not scaring away customers. Moreover, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Chains that are operated by franchisees typically allow individual owners to decide pricing. And national chains, like Chipotle and Shake Shack, charge different prices in various parts of the country.When Carrols Restaurant Group, which operates more than 1,000 Burger Kings, raised prices in the second half of last year, the number of customers actually improved from the third to the fourth quarter. “Over time, we generally have not seen a whole lot of pushback from consumers” on the higher prices, Carrols’ chief executive, Daniel T. Accordino, told analysts at a conference in early January.Menu prices are likely to continue to climb this year. Many restaurants say they are still paying higher wages to attract employees and expect food prices to rise.“We expect unprecedented increases in our food basket costs versus 2021,” Ritch Allison, the chief executive of Domino’s Pizza, told Wall Street analysts at a conference this month. While Domino’s hasn’t raised prices, it is altering its promotions — offering the $7.99 pizza deal only to customers ordering online and shrinking the number of chicken wings in certain promotions to eight from 10 — in an effort to maintain profit margins.In Oklahoma City, a bucket of 50 bone-in wings from Wingstop that cost $41.99 early last year is now $47.49.Amy Lombard for The New York TimesDespite the higher food and labor costs, some restaurants are seeing sales and profits rebound past prepandemic levels.When McDonald’s reports earnings this month, Wall Street analysts expect that its revenues will have hit a five-year high of more than $23 billion, a $2 billion increase from 2019. Net income is predicted to top $7 billion, up from $6 billion in 2019. Other chains like Cracker Barrel and Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse, have resumed dividend payments or cash buybacks of stock after suspending those activities early in the pandemic to conserve cash.And next month, when Chipotle reports results for 2021, analysts expect revenues to top $7.5 billion, a 34 percent jump from 2019. Net income is expected to almost double from prepandemic levels. In the third quarter, the company repurchased nearly $100 million of its stock. Chipotle declined to make an executive available for an interview, citing the quiet period ahead of its earnings release.While Chipotle executives blamed higher labor costs for a 4 percent price increase in menu items this summer, the company has been looking for ways to boost its profitability.One way was to charge higher prices for delivery. Delivery orders through vendors like DoorDash and Uber Eats exploded for Chipotle and other fast-food chains during the pandemic. But so did the commission fees that Chipotle paid the vendors. So in the fall of 2020, it began running tests to see what would happen if it raised the prices of burritos and guacamole and chips that customers ordered for delivery, executives told Wall Street analysts in an earnings call. It essentially meant the customer covered Chipotle’s side of the delivery costs.The company discovered customers were willing to pay for the convenience of delivery. Now, customers ordering Chipotle for delivery pay about 21 percent more than if they had ordered and picked the food up in the stores, according to an analysis by Jeff Farmer, an analyst at Gordon Haskett Research Advisors.At a Chipotle in Costa Mesa, Calif., the price of a chicken burrito about a year ago was $7.25. Now it costs $7.95.Amy Lombard for The New York Times“I would say that our ultimate goal, so this would be over the long term, maybe the medium term, is to fully protect our margins,” said Jack Hartung, the chief financial officer of Chipotle, on a call with Wall Street analysts last fall. “When you look at our pricing versus other restaurant companies’ for the quality of the food, the quantity of the food, and the quality and convenience of the experience, we offer great value. So we believe we have room to fully protect the margin.”That doesn’t mean customers are thrilled about the extra costs.This month, Jacob Herlin, a data scientist in Lakewood, Colo., placed an order: a steak-and-guacamole burrito for $11.95, a Coca-Cola for $3, and chips and guacamole, which were free with a birthday coupon. The total was $14.95, before tax.But when he clicked to have the food delivered, the price for the burrito jumped to $14.45 and the soda climbed to $3.65, bringing the total to $18.10 before tax, 21 percent more than if he had picked the food up himself.There was more. Mr. Herlin was charged a delivery fee of $1 and another “service fee” of $2.32, bringing the total for the delivered meal to $23.20. He tipped the driver an additional $3.Mr. Herlin said he did not mind paying for delivery and wanted drivers to be paid a decent wage. But he felt that Chipotle wasn’t being upfront with customers about the added costs.“They’re basically hiding the fees two different ways, through that base price increase and through the hidden ‘service fee,’” Mr. Herlin said in an email. “I would very much prefer if they had the same pricing and were just honest about a $5 delivery fee.” More

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    Your Inflation Questions, Answered

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    The New York Times asked readers to send questions about inflation. Economists at the Federal Reserve, the White House and Wall Street weighed in.Inflation is high and has been for months. It’s weighing on consumer confidence, making policymakers nervous and threatening to eat away at household paychecks well into 2022.This is the first time many adults have experienced meaningful inflation: Price gains had been largely quiescent since the late 1980s. When the Consumer Price Index climbed 7 percent in the year through December, it was the fastest pace since 1982.Naturally, people have questions about what this will mean for their pocketbooks, their finances and their economic futures.Closely intertwined with price worries are concerns about interest rates: The Federal Reserve is poised to raise borrowing costs to try to slow down demand and keep the situation under control.To bring some clarity to a complicated situation, we collected more than 600 reader questions, narrowed them down to a handful that reflected common themes, and asked top economists and experts — from the White House, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, academia and financial advisory firms — to weigh in. Here is what they had to say.Readers want to know what caused inflation, and what might come next.What would cause prices to keep increasing vs. staying at their current level? Why wouldn’t competition keep prices in check? — Nick Altmann, ChicagoPrices have been rising for two basic reasons: Consumers are buying a lot of goods and services, and supply is limited.Consumer demand is the easier part of that equation to explain. Households saved money during long months of lockdown in 2020, often helped by repeated government stimulus checks and other payments. Some saw their wealth further buoyed by a rising stock market and soaring home prices. Now, jobs are plentiful and wages are rising, further shoring up many families’ finances. People have money, and they want to spend it on services and, more than usual, on goods like furniture and camping gear.That rapid consumption is running up against constrained supply. Factories shut down early in the pandemic, and in parts of Asia, they continue to do so as Omicron cases surge. There aren’t enough containers to ship all of the goods people want to buy, and ports have become clogged trying to process so many imports.As companies have struggled to get their hands on enough goods to go around, many have raised prices, in many cases to cover their own climbing costs. Some, noticing that they and their competitors were able to charge more without crushing consumer demand, have tested how far they can push up prices — expanding their profits.In theory, competition should eat away at extra earnings over time. New firms should jump into the market to sell that same products for less and steal away the customer. Existing competitors should ramp up production to meet demand.But this may be a unappealing time for new firms to enter the market. Established companies may be hesitant to expand production if doing so involved a lot of investment, because it is not clear how long today’s strong demand will last.“It is a very uncertain environment,” said Matthew Luzzetti, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank. “A new firm stepping in is a lot of investment, with a lot of financial risk.”Until companies can produce and transport enough of a given product to go around — as long as shortages remain — companies will be able to raise prices without running much risk of losing customers to a competitor.In past periods of inflation, do employers typically increase wages or award higher-than-average yearly increases to help employees offset inflation? If so, in what industries is this practice most common? — Annmarie Kutz, Erie, Pa.There is no standard historical experience with wages and inflation, Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said during an interview with The New York Times on Twitter Spaces last week.Your Inflation Questions, AnsweredOur economics reporter, Jeanna Smialek, poses reader questions to Mary C. Daly, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, in an audio conversation on Twitter. (Recorded Jan. 14, 2022).Wages did increase sharply alongside inflation in the 1970s and 1980s, but in the decades since, pay has struggled to keep pace with price increases. Factors like unionization, worker bargaining power and the state of the labor market all affect whether companies pay more. Those can vary quite a bit by sector. For instance, lower-wage service industries have been competing mightily for workers in recent months, and pay is climbing faster there.“The history isn’t so clear that cost of living translates into higher wages, but that’s largely because inflation has been low and stable for a very long time,” Ms. Daly said.Prices have been rising for two basic reasons: Consumers are buying a lot of goods and services, and supply is limited.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesMany are curious about how it will affect their personal finances.Is inflation a valid reason for asking for a raise (or a larger raise than I would otherwise receive)? In addition to other merits (work performance, role change, etc.), does my reduced purchasing power due to inflation give me ground to stand on when negotiating my new salary? — Deirdre Kennedy, St Paul, Minn.Several economists and advisers agreed: Higher prices can be a valid reason to ask for a raise.“Absolutely sit down with your boss and say, ‘I’m a great performer, I do this work, I want to stay with the company but it’s been harder and harder to make ends meet and I would like to talk about some compensation to make that easier,’” Ms. Daly said last week.I’m 55 and on track to have put aside enough for a modest but workable retirement in 10-15 years. How much less might my savings and investments be worth in the face of current trends? I’m concerned I won’t have enough time to bounce back if it gets really bad and that higher prices will eat up my resources long before I die. — Jon Willow, Interlochen, Mich.There’s good news here: Hardly any economists or policymakers expect today’s inflation to last. Fed officials in December projected that price gains will drop back below 3 percent by the end of the year, and will level off to normal levels over the longer term.That’s a reason to avoid reacting too swiftly, advisers said. But if you do worry inflation will last, there are a few ways to assess how it might affect your savings, said Christine Benz, Morningstar’s director of personal finance.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 6What is inflation? More