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A Fed Rate Cut Would Cap a Winning Streak for Biden and Harris on Prices

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Improved data on borrowing costs and price growth has buoyed consumers, but it might be coming too late to significantly affect the presidential raceAfter more than a year of waiting, hoping and assuring Americans that the economy could pull off a so-called “soft landing,” President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris appear to be on the brink of seeing that happen.Inflation has cooled. Economic growth remains strong, though job gains are slowing. Mortgage costs are falling and the Federal Reserve is poised to begin cutting interest rates on Wednesday.And yet, it is unclear whether those developments will significantly alter voters’ predominantly negative perceptions of the economy ahead of the presidential election.Recent weeks have brought a run of good data on consumer prices and interest rates for the administration. The price of gasoline has fallen below $3 a gallon in much of the South and Midwest and is nearing a three-year low nationally. Spiking grocery prices have slowed to a crawl. Mortgage rates are down more than a percentage point from their recent peak. The Census Bureau reported last week that the typical household income rose faster than prices last year for the first time since the pandemic. The overall inflation rate has returned to near historically normal levels, and the Fed is poised to begin cutting interest rates from a two-decade high.The Biden administration, which has taken heat from Republicans and many economists for fueling inflation with its economic policies, has begun to celebrate those developments in bold terms. Officials are claiming vindication for their multi-trillion-dollar efforts to boost households and businesses in their recovery from the pandemic recession.Mr. Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers published a blog post on Tuesday highlighting economic and job growth under Mr. Biden that has surpassed projections. Lael Brainard, who heads Mr. Biden’s National Economic Council, told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Monday that the American economy has now reached a “turning point.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Biden Incentives for Foreign Investment Are Benefiting Factories

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    Early data suggest laws to increase semiconductor production and renewable energy technology have shifted the makeup of foreign direct investment — but not increased it.Lucrative new tax breaks and other incentives for advanced manufacturing that President Biden signed into law appear to be reshaping direct foreign investment in the American economy, according to a White House analysis, with a much greater share of spending on new and expanded businesses shifting toward the factory sector.Data that include the first months after the enactment of two pieces of that agenda show that a key measure of foreign investment fell slightly from 2021 to 2022, adjusted for inflation.The numbers suggest that, in the early months after the bills were signed, the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars that Mr. Biden is directing toward manufacturing have not increased the overall amount of foreign direct investment in the economy. Instead, the laws appear to have shifted where foreign investment is being directed.A new analysis by the White House Council of Economic Advisers shows the composition of what’s known as capacity-enhancing spending on new structures or expansions of existing ones shifted rapidly toward factories, in line with one of Mr. Biden’s top economic goals.The analysis shows that two-thirds of foreign direct investment, excluding corporate acquisitions, was in manufacturing in 2022. That was more than double the average share from 2014 to 2021.The surge is small in the context of the overall economy. But administration officials call it an encouraging sign that multinational companies are being enticed to America by Mr. Biden’s industrial policy agenda. In the last year, the analysis notes, construction spending on new manufacturing facilities in the United States has increased significantly faster than in England, continental Europe or other wealthy Group of 7 nations.Administration officials say a Commerce Department survey of new foreign investment suggests investors pouring money into America’s factories are largely concentrated in Britain and continental Europe, along with Canada, Japan and South Korea. Half of 1 percent of the investment appears to be associated with China.That foreign investment is flowing largely to computer and electronics manufacturing, particularly of semiconductors, which were the centerpiece of a bipartisan industrial policy bill that Mr. Biden signed into law last summer. He also signed a climate, health and tax bill later that summer that included large new subsidies for renewable energy technology manufacturing.Since those laws were signed, companies have announced a flurry of planned investments in the United States. The administration tallies them at more than $500 billion. They include semiconductor plants in Arizona, advanced battery facilities in Georgia and much more. Many of the announced projects are from foreign companies, like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.Administration officials say shifting investment toward factories — even if the overall level of investment does not change — can produce positive spillovers for the economy. The White House analysis cites higher wages in manufacturing jobs and potential increases to productivity from foreign firms sharing knowledge with existing domestic manufacturers.“Foreign direct investment in manufacturing doesn’t just help us build up this critical sector in key focal areas of Bidenomics, such as semiconductors and clean energy,” said Jared Bernstein, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. “It also allows us to learn valuable production lessons from international companies in these and other areas.” More

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    Republican Economists Line Up Behind Biden Nominee

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    Jared Bernstein, the president’s choice for chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, won praise for his work that led to a provision in the Trump tax cuts in 2017.WASHINGTON — Nearly every living economist who led the White House Council of Economic Advisers in a Republican administration — including the three chairs under President Donald J. Trump — signed a letter urging Congress to confirm President Biden’s new nominee to lead the council, Jared Bernstein.The letter, obtained by The New York Times, praises Mr. Bernstein for engaging with economists across ideological lines and for his work drafting the original proposal for the opportunity zones program that was included in the 2017 tax package that Mr. Trump signed into law.The Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on Mr. Bernstein’s nomination on Tuesday. Democrats had worried about his chances of clearing a committee vote after Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, was hospitalized in February for treatment of depression. They had stepped up efforts to court Republican senators to support Mr. Bernstein. Mr. Fetterman has since returned to work in the Senate.Mr. Bernstein has been a member of the council since the start of Mr. Biden’s administration. The president tapped him to succeed Cecilia Rouse, who stepped down at the end of last month to return to her post at Princeton University. Before then, Mr. Bernstein was an adviser to Mr. Biden when he was the vice president, a longtime fixture at liberal think tanks in Washington and a frequent sparring partner with conservative economists on cable news.He also worked with Kevin Hassett, a conservative economist who went on to head the council under Mr. Trump, to draft a white paper for the Economic Innovation Group think tank about a novel effort meant to steer investment to impoverished parts of the United States. Those were the so-called opportunity zones, which were included in the 2017 tax law.The program designates areas in every state where investors in real estate, operating businesses or other projects are eligible for significant tax advantages, including potentially not having to pay capital gains taxes on profits from their investments in those areas.Republicans have championed the zones since the law was passed. Some critics, including in Washington think tanks, have criticized them for delivering investments to some areas that were already gentrifying rapidly. Recent research has shown a widening share of zones attracting investment in the years since they were established.Mr. Hassett, who spearheaded the letter to members of the Banking Committee on Mr. Bernstein’s behalf, and his fellow former heads of the council cited the idea for the zones as one example of Mr. Bernstein’s outside-the-box thinking on economics.Mr. Bernstein has “established a reputation for producing informative, data-driven analysis and developing creative policy ideas,” the former heads of the council wrote.Along with Mr. Hassett, two other acting heads of the council under Mr. Trump signed the letter: Tomas Phillipson and Tyler Goodspeed. Other signatories included Michael J. Boskin, who led the council under President George H.W. Bush, and three chairs under President George W. Bush: Ben S. Bernanke, N. Gregory Mankiw and R. Glenn Hubbard.Mr. Hassett said he had been unable to reach the only other living past chair of the council under a Republican, Alan Greenspan, to ask him to sign the letter.In an interview, Mr. Hassett praised Mr. Bernstein’s collegiality and suggested that he would continue a bipartisan tradition of council chairs seeking advice from their predecessors from both political parties.“I disagree with Jared about a lot, and Jared and I have been disagreeing about things for 20 years,” Mr. Hassett said. “But he really is a fundamentally good person who tries to figure things out with an open mind, and who changes his mind.” More

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    Top Economist Leaves White House, and an Economy Not Yet ‘Normal’

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    Cecilia Rouse says lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic continue to haunt the recovery from recession — and drag on Americans’ optimism for the economy.WASHINGTON — Cecilia Rouse, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, stepped down on Friday to return to teaching at Princeton University. As a going-away present fit for an economist, her staff presented her with a chart showing every previous chair of the council, ranked by the number of jobs created during their tenure.Dr. Rouse’s name tops the list. In the two years since she was confirmed to be President Biden’s top economist, becoming the first Black chair of the council, the U.S. economy has created more than 11 million jobs. While that is a record for any presidential administration, it is also a direct result of the unusual circumstances of the fast-moving pandemic recession, which temporarily kicked millions of people out of the labor force before a swift recovery added back most of those jobs.As Dr. Rouse acknowledged in an interview this week, all that job growth has yet to restore a full sense of economic normality. Inflation remains much higher than normal. Consumers are pessimistic. The economy and the people who live and work in it, she said, are still to some degree stuck in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic.That phenomenon has scrambled markets like commercial real estate, Dr. Rouse said, exacerbated price growth and most likely hurt productivity across the economy by encouraging remote work. She said she believed in-person work was more likely to produce innovation that stokes economic growth.The effects have lingered longer than she initially expected.“We still have Covid with us,” Dr. Rouse said in her office at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “It is still impacting decisions that we’re making, whether it’s on our personal side, economic decisions.”She later added, “Sometimes I, in this course of the last few years, I wished my Ph.D. was in psychology.”In a wide-ranging interview reflecting on her time at the council, Dr. Rouse defended the Biden administration’s policy choices in responding to the pandemic and to deeper problems in the economy. She also repeatedly emphasized the need for “humility” in evaluating decisions that had been made in response to a wide range of possible risks.She did not directly answer questions about whether she agreed with previous chairs of the council who have argued that direct payments to lower-income Americans included in that legislation helped to inflame an inflation rate that hit a 40-year high last summer.But Dr. Rouse said the plan was an appropriate “insurance policy” in 2021 against the possibility of a double-dip recession. At the time, job growth had slowed and new waves of the coronavirus were colliding with a vaccine rollout that officials hoped would stabilize the economy but were unsure of.She also said that American workers were better off in their current situation — with low unemployment and strong job growth but higher-than-normal price growth — than they would have been if the economy had fallen back into recession and millions of people had been thrown out of work, potentially hurting their ability to find jobs in the future..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“I believe workers are better off today than they would have been had the federal government not intervened,” Dr. Rouse said. “But you know, some of this will depend on how long we have inflation with us. Because inflation is costly.” Asked when she expected it to return to more normal levels, she replied, “Hopefully by the end of the year.”Fiscal hawks have criticized Mr. Biden for signing a rescue plan that was not offset by spending cuts or tax increases and thus added to the national debt. Dr. Rouse said the plan “may well have” paid for itself in fiscal terms. She explained that possibility in terms of the debt the government incurred to finance the plan, offset by the consumer and business activity generated by the plan’s provisions that sent money to people, which increased gross domestic product.“If we hadn’t really provided that kind of support, G.D.P. would have been much smaller,” she said. “So the federal government might have spent less and so the debt might have been smaller, but G.D.P. might have been much smaller as well.”Previous administrations have claimed their policies will “pay for themselves” by spurring economic growth and higher tax revenues. Those include the tax cuts signed by President Donald J. Trump in 2017, which his administration said would pay for themselves, but which independent evidence showed added trillions to the national debt.Dr. Rouse repeatedly said in the interview that future researchers would have the final say on the impact of Mr. Biden’s policies — particularly on inflation. She and her staff were part of a modeling effort in early 2021 that concluded that even with Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion injection into the economy, there was little chance of prices rising so quickly that the Federal Reserve would not be able to control inflation.“I would say that we were all working under uncertainty,” she said on Thursday, when asked about those models. “I think time will tell as to whether that was the right move.”A labor economist at Princeton, Dr. Rouse pledged in the White House to advance Mr. Biden’s efforts to promote racial equity in the economy and American society. That included improving the data the federal government collects on economic outcomes by race and ethnicity.Asked about that work, Dr. Rouse pointed to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that breaks out monthly job figures for Native Americans, along with a handful of other new efforts. “It’s a slow process,” she said.Mr. Biden praised Dr. Rouse and her role in helping to navigate the economic challenges of his administration in a statement issued by the White House on Friday. “No matter the challenge, Cecilia provided insightful analysis, assessed problems in a new way and insisted that we examine the accumulation of evidence in drawing conclusions,” he said. More

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    Biden Warns That Climate Change Could Upend Federal Spending Programs

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    A chapter in the new Economic Report of the President focuses on the growing risks to people and businesses from rising temperatures, and the government’s role in adapting to them.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration warned on Monday that a warming planet posed severe economic challenges for the United States, which would require the federal government to reassess its spending priorities and how it influenced behavior.Administration economists, in an annual report, said that reassessment should include a new look at the climate-adaptation implications of aid to farmers, wildland firefighting and wide swaths of safety-net programs like Medicaid and Medicare, as the government seeks to shield the poorest Americans from suffering the worst effects of climate change.The White House Council of Economic Advisers also warned that, left unchanged, federal policies like fighting forest fires and subsidizing crop insurance for farmers could continue to encourage Americans to live and work in areas at high risk of damage from warming temperatures and extreme weather — effectively forcing taxpayers across the country to pay for increasingly costly choices by people and businesses.The findings were contained in a chapter of the annual Economic Report of the President, which was released on Monday afternoon and this year focused on long-run challenges to the U.S. economy. They came on a day when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, reported that Earth was barreling quickly toward a level of warming that would make it significantly more difficult for humans to manage drought, heat waves and other climate-related disasters.The White House report details evidence showing the United States is more vulnerable to the costs of extreme weather events than previously thought, while suggesting a series of policy shifts to ensure the poorest Americans do not foot the bill.“Climate change is here,” Cecilia Rouse, the departing chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview. “And as we move forward, we’re going to have to be adapting to it and ensuring that we minimize the cost to families and businesses and others.”The report broadly suggests that climate change has upended the concept of risk in all corners of the American economy, distorting markets in ways that companies, people and policymakers have not fully kept up with. It also suggests that the federal government will be left with significantly higher costs in the future if it does not better identify those risks and correct those market distortions — like paying more to provide health care for victims of heat stroke or to rebuild coastal homes flooded in hurricanes.State and local officials, not the federal government, have authority where development happens, so people keep building in high-risk areas, a classic example of what economists call a moral hazard.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesFor example, the report cites evidence that private mortgage lenders are already offloading loans with a high exposure of climate risk to federally backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It highlights how the federal flood insurance program, which essentially underwrites all home flooding insurance policies in the country, is at risk of insolvency.At a time when administration officials and the Federal Reserve are struggling to stabilize the nation’s financial system, the report warns that home buyers and corporate investors appear to be underestimating climate-related risks in their markets, which could lead to a financial crisis.“Rapid changes in asset prices or reassessments of the risks in response to a shifting climate could produce volatility and cascading instability in financial markets if not anticipated by regulators,” the report says..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.To address those dangers, the report offers components for a federal climate adaptation strategy. Its recommendations — some of them already in early stages through existing administration actions — include producing better information about climate risk, helping financial markets accurately price that risk and better protecting the most vulnerable from the effects of climate change.Perhaps the most significant proposal, and probably the most politically sensitive, is a call for Washington to exert more pressure on state and local officials, pushing them to be careful about where and how they let people build homes, businesses and infrastructure projects.That proposal would address a core problem that has hindered America’s efforts to adapt to climate change. When people build in places that are most exposed to the effects of climate change — along coastlines, near riverbanks, at the edge of forests prone to wildfires — state and local governments get most of the benefits, in the form of higher tax revenues and economic growth. But when flooding, fires or other major disasters happen, the federal government typically pays the bulk of the cost for responding and rebuilding.Yet for the most part, state and local officials, not the federal government, have authority over where and how development happens — so people keep building in high-risk areas, a classic example of what economists, including the authors of the report, call a moral hazard.In response, the document proposes using federal funds to change the behavior of state and local officials, by tying that money to state and local decisions. That approach has been tried before, with little success. In 2016, the Obama administration suggested adjusting the level of disaster aid provided to states, based on what steps they took to reduce their exposure to disasters. States objected, and the change never happened.Subsidizing crop insurance for farmers could continue to encourage Americans to work in areas at high risk of damage from warming temperatures and extreme weather, the Biden administration will warn.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesAdministration officials said they were already trying to leverage some spending from the infrastructure law President Biden signed in 2021 to influence state and local behavior. The report suggests much more aggressive action could be necessary.It also proposes a rethinking of the nation’s system of insuring against disasters — moving away from separate localized policies that cover fire, flooding and other events, and more toward a nationally mandated “multiperil catastrophe insurance” system that is backstopped by the federal government.Perhaps most sobering for Washington’s current fiscal moment — when Mr. Biden is battling with House Republicans who are seeking sharp cuts to federal spending and raising anew concerns over the growing national debt — is the report’s suggestion that climate effects could subject growing numbers of Americans to heat stroke, respiratory illnesses and other ailments in the years to come. That could further drive up government costs for health programs like Medicare and Medicaid.The Council of Economic Advisers has begun a yearslong effort to project those climate-related effects on future federal budgets, which it detailed in a highly technical paper released this month.The report released on Monday also included chapters on the economics of child care, higher education, digital assets and more.In reviewing Mr. Biden’s economic record, White House economists dived deep into the issue that has bedeviled the recovery on his watch: persistently high inflation. The report lists several explanations for why price growth has surprised administration and outside economists over the last two years but never settles on a primary driver. It does concede that pandemic relief spending under Mr. Biden and President Donald J. Trump may have played a role, by helping Americans save more than usual — and then begin to spend that extra savings.“If the drawdown of excess savings, with current income, boosted aggregate demand, it could have contributed to high inflation in 2021 and 2022,” the report says. More

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    Good News on Jobs May Mean Bad News Later as Hiring Spree Defies Fed

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    Employers hired rapidly and paid more in July, suggesting the Federal Reserve may have to remain aggressive in its effort to cool the economy.America’s job market is remarkably strong, a report on Friday made clear, with unemployment at the lowest rate in half a century, wages rising fast and companies hiring at a breakneck pace.But the good news now could become a problem for President Biden later.Mr. Biden and his aides pointed to the hiring spree as evidence that the United States is not in a recession and celebrated the report, which showed that employers added 528,000 jobs in July and that pay picked up by 5.2 percent from a year earlier. But the still-blistering pace of hiring and wage growth means the Federal Reserve may need to act more decisively to restrain the economy as it seeks to wrestle inflation under control.Fed officials have been waiting for signs that the economy, and particularly the job market, is slowing. They hope that employers’ voracious need for workers will come into balance with the supply of available applicants, because that would take pressure off wages, in turn paving the way for businesses like restaurants, hotels and retailers to temper their price increases.The moderation has remained elusive, and that could keep central bankers raising interest rates rapidly in an effort to cool down the economy and restrain the fastest inflation in four decades. As the Fed adjusts policy aggressively, it could increase the risk that the economy tips into a recession, instead of slowing gently into the so-called soft landing that central bankers have been trying to engineer.“We’re very unlikely to be falling into a recession in the near term,” said Michael Gapen, head of U.S. economics research at Bank of America. “But I’d also say that numbers like this raise the risk of a sharper landing farther down the road.”Interest rates are a blunt tool, and historically, big Fed adjustments have often set off recessions. Stock prices fell after Friday’s release, a sign that investors are worried that the new figures increased the odds of a bad economic outcome down the line.Even as investors zeroed in on the risks, the White House greeted the jobs data as good news and a clear sign that the economy is not in a recession even though gross domestic product growth has faltered this year.“From the president’s perspective, a strong jobs report is always extremely welcome,” Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview. “And this is a very strong jobs report.”Still, the report appeared to undermine the administration’s view of where the economy is headed. Mr. Biden and White House officials have been making the case for months that job growth would soon slow. They said that deceleration would be a welcome sign of the economy’s transition to more sustainable growth with lower inflation.The lack of such a slowdown could be a sign of more stubborn inflation than administration economists had hoped, though White House officials offered no hint Friday that they were worried about it.“We think it’s good news for the American people,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters in a briefing. “We think we’re still heading into a transition to more steady and stable growth.”The State of Jobs in the United StatesEmployment gains in July, which far surpassed expectations, show that the labor market is not slowing despite efforts by the Federal Reserve to cool the economy.July Jobs Report: U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs in the seventh month of the year. The unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, down from 3.6 percent in June.Care Worker Shortages: A lack of child care and elder care options is forcing some women to limit their hours or has sidelined them altogether, hurting their career prospects.Downsides of a Hot Market: Students are forgoing degrees in favor of the attractive positions offered by employers desperate to hire. That could come back to haunt them.Slowing Down: Economists and policymakers are beginning to argue that what the economy needs right now is less hiring and less wage growth. Here’s why.The Fed, too, had been counting on a cool-down. Before July’s employment report, a host of other data points had suggested that the job market was decelerating: Wage growth had been moderating fairly steadily; job openings, while still elevated, had been declining; and unemployment insurance filings, while low, had been edging higher.The Fed had welcomed that development — but the new figures called the moderation into question. Average hourly earnings have steadily risen since April on a monthly basis, and Friday’s report capped a streak of hiring that means the job market has now returned to its prepandemic size.“Reports like this emphasize just how much more the Fed needs to do to bring inflation down,” said Blerina Uruci, a U.S. economist at T. Rowe Price. “The labor market remains very hot.”Central bankers have raised borrowing costs three-quarters of a percentage point at each of their last two meetings, an unusually rapid pace. Officials had suggested that they might slow down at their meeting in September, lifting rates by half a point — but that forecast hinged partly on their expectation that the economy would be cooling markedly.Instead, “I think this report makes three-quarters of a point the base case,” said Omair Sharif, founder of Inflation Insights, a research firm. “The labor market is still firing on all cylinders, so this isn’t the kind of slowdown that the Fed is trying to generate to alleviate price pressures.”Fed policymakers usually embrace strong hiring and robust pay growth, but wages have been climbing so fast lately that they could make it difficult to slow inflation. As employers pay more, they must either charge their customers more, improve their productivity or take a hit to their profits. Raising prices is typically the easiest and most practical route.The blistering pace of hiring means the Federal Reserve may need to act more decisively to tame inflation.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesPlus, as inflation has soared, even robust wage growth has failed to keep up for most people. While wages have climbed 5.2 percent over the past year, far faster than the 2 percent to 3 percent gains that were normal before the pandemic, consumer prices jumped 9.1 percent over the year through June.Fed officials are trying to steer the economy back to a place where both pay gains and inflation are slower, hoping that once prices start to climb gradually again, workers can eke out wage gains that leave them better off in a sustainable way.“Ultimately, if you think about the medium and longer term, price stability is what makes the whole economy work,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said at his July news conference, explaining the rationale.Some prominent Democrats have questioned whether the United States should be relying so heavily on Fed policies — which work by hurting the labor market — to cool inflation. Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, both Democrats, have been among those arguing that there must be a better way.But most of the changes that Congress and the White House can institute to lower inflation would take time to play out. Economists estimate that the Biden administration’s climate and tax bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, would have a minor effect on price increases in the near term, though it may help more with time.While the White House has avoided saying what the Fed should do, Mr. Bernstein from the Council of Economic Advisers suggested that Friday’s report could give the Fed more cushion to raise rates without harming workers.“The depth of strength in this labor market is not just a buffer for working families,” he said. “It also gives the Fed room to do what they need to do while trying to maintain a strong labor market.”Still, the central bank could find itself in an uncomfortable spot in the months ahead.An inflation report scheduled for release on Wednesday is expected to show that consumer price increases moderated in July as gas prices came down. But fuel prices are volatile, and other signs that inflation remains out of control are likely to persist: Rents are climbing swiftly, and many services are growing more expensive.And the still-hot labor market is likely to reinforce the view that conditions are not simmering down quickly enough. That could keep the Fed working to restrain economic activity even as overall inflation shows early, and perhaps temporary, signs of pulling back.“We’re going to get inflation slowing in the next couple of months,” Mr. Sharif said. “The activity part of the equation is not cooperating right now, even if inflation overall does cool off.”Isabella Simonetti More

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    Biden’s New Vaccine Push Is a Fight for the U.S. Economy

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    The effort reflects the continuing and evolving threat the coronavirus pandemic poses to the economic recovery.WASHINGTON — President Biden’s aggressive move to expand the number of vaccinated Americans and halt the spread of the Delta variant is not just an effort to save lives. It is also an attempt to counter the continuing and evolving threat that the virus poses to the economy.Delta’s rise has been fueled in part by the inability of Mr. Biden and his administration to persuade millions of vaccine-refusing Americans to inoculate themselves against the virus. That has created another problem: a drag on the economic recovery. Real-time gauges of restaurant visits, airline travel and other services show consumers pulled back on some face-to-face spending in recent weeks.After weeks of playing down the threat that a new wave of infections posed to the recovery, the president and his team blamed Delta for slowing job growth in August. “We’re in a tough stretch,” he conceded on Thursday, after heralding the economic progress made under his administration so far this year, “and it could last for a while.”The virus threatens the recovery even though consumers and business owners are not retrenching the way they did when the coronavirus began to spread in the United States in the spring of 2020. Far fewer states and cities have imposed restrictions on business activity than in previous waves, and administration officials vowed on Thursday that the nation would not return to “lockdowns or shutdowns.”But a surge in deaths crippled consumer confidence in August and portends a possible chill in fall spending as people again opt for limited in-person commerce. The unchecked spread of the virus has also contributed to a rapid drop in the president’s approval ratings — even among Democrats.The explosion of new cases and deaths also appears to have deterred many would-be workers from accepting open jobs in businesses across the country, economists say. That comes as businesses and consumers are complaining about a labor shortage and as administration officials pin their hopes on rising wages to power consumer spending in place of fading government support for distressed families.The plan Mr. Biden announced on Thursday would mandate vaccinations for federal employees and contractors and for millions of health care workers, along with new Labor Department rules requiring vaccines or weekly tests for employees at companies with more than 100 employees. It would push for more testing, offer more aid to small businesses, call on schools to adopt vaccine requirements and provide easy access to booster shots for eligible Americans. The president estimated the requirements would affect 100 million Americans, or about two-thirds of all workers.“We have the tools to combat the virus,” he said, “if we can come together and use those tools.”Mr. Biden faces political risks from his actions, which drew swift backlash from many conservative lawmakers who accused him of violating the Constitution and abusing his powers.But administration officials have always viewed vaccinating more Americans as the primary strategy for reviving the recovery.“This is an economic downturn that has been spawned from a public health crisis,” Cecilia Rouse, the chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said last month in an interview. “So we will get back to economic health when we get past the virus, when we return to public health as well.”That is likely true even in places that already have high inoculation rates. Mr. Biden’s inability thus far to break through vaccine hesitancy, particularly in conservative areas, has also become a psychological spending drag on those in highly vaccinated areas. That is because vaccinated Americans appear more likely to pull back on travel, dining out and other activity out of fear of the virus.“People who vaccinate themselves very early are people who are already very careful,” said Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, a University of Pennsylvania economist who has studied the interplay between the pandemic and the economy. “People who do not vaccinate themselves are less careful. So there is a multiplier effect” when it comes to those kinds of decisions.The economic effect from the virus varies by region, and it has changed in key ways over the course of the pandemic. In some heavily vaccinated parts of the country — including liberal states packed with Mr. Biden’s supporters — virus-wary Americans have pulled back on economic activity, even though infection rates in their areas are low. In some less-vaccinated states like Texas that have experienced a large Delta wave, data suggest rising hospitalization and death rates are not driving down activity as much as they did in previous waves.“It appears the latest Covid surge has been less impactful on the economy than previous surges in Texas,” said Laila Assanie, a senior business economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which surveys employers in the state each month about their activity during the pandemic.Business owners, Ms. Assanie said, “said they were better prepared this time around.”The threat of the Delta variant has caused consumers to pull back on some face-to-face spending.Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesRespondents to the survey said consumer spending had not fallen off as much this summer, compared with the initial spread of the coronavirus in March 2020 or a renewed spike last winter, even as case and hospitalization rates neared their previous peak from January. But many employers reported staffing pressures from workers falling ill with the virus. The share of businesses reporting that concerns about the pandemic were an impediment to hiring workers tripled from July to August.Data from Homebase, which provides time-management software to small businesses, show that employment in entertainment, dining and other coronavirus-sensitive sectors has fallen in recent weeks as the Delta variant has spread. But the decline is smaller than during the spike in cases last winter, suggesting that economic activity has become less sensitive to the pandemic over time. Other measures likewise show that economic activity has slowed but not collapsed as cases have risen..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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{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-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.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;}That trend has helped bolster overall consumer spending and hiring in the short term and helped keep the economy on track for its fastest annual growth in a quarter century. But there is a risk that it will be undercut by a continued pandemic dampening of labor force participation. Economists who have tracked the issue say that even if consumers have grown more accustomed to shopping or dining out as cases rise, there is little sign that would-be workers, even vaccinated ones, have become more accepting of the risks of returning to service jobs as the pandemic rages.“It’s becoming increasingly clear that employers are eager to hire,” said Andrew Atkeson, an economist at the University of California at Los Angeles who has released several papers on the economics of the pandemic. “The problem is not that people aren’t spending. It’s that people are still reluctant to go back to work”The Delta wave also appears to be sidelining some workers by disrupting child care and, in some cases, schools — forcing parents to take time off or to delay returning to jobs.Some forecasters believe the combination of rising vaccination rates and a growing share of Americans who have already contracted the virus will soon arrest the Delta wave and set the economy back on track for rapid growth, with small-business hiring and restaurant visits rebounding as soon as the end of this month. “Now is the time to start thinking about the post-Delta world,” Ian Shepherdson, the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote in a research note this month.Other economists see the possibility that a continued Delta wave — or a surge from another variant in the months to come — will substantially slow the recovery, because potential workers in particular remain sensitive to the spread of the virus.“That’s a very real danger,” said Austan Goolsbee, a former head of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama whose research earlier in the pandemic showed fear, not government restrictions, was the driving force behind lost economic activity from the virus.“At the same time,” Mr. Goolsbee said, “it also shows promise: the fact that when we get control of the spread of the virus, or even stabilize the spread of the virus, the economy wants to come back.”The greatest lift to the country, and likely to Mr. Biden’s popularity, from finally curbing the virus would not be regained business sales or jobs created. It would be stemming a death toll that has climbed to about 650,000 since the pandemic began.“I always tell undergraduates, when they take economics with me, that economics is not about optimizing output,” said Mr. Fernández-Villaverde, the University of Pennsylvania economist. “It’s about optimizing welfare. And if you’re dead, you’re not getting a lot of welfare.”Ben Casselman More

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    Amid Economic Turmoil, Biden Stays Focused on Longer Term

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    The president’s advisers are pushing their most detailed argument yet for the long-term benefits of a $4 trillion agenda to remake the American economy.WASHINGTON — President Biden and his economic team on Thursday made their most detailed case yet for trillions of dollars in new federal spending to rebuild public investment in workers, research and physical infrastructure, focusing on long-term ingredients of economic growth and equality as the current recovery from recession showed signs of distress.The president’s aides published what amounted to a deeper economic backbone for the argument that Mr. Biden is making publicly and privately to sell his plans to lawmakers, including the message he conveyed to a group of Republican senators he invited to the White House on Thursday to discuss an infrastructure package centered on roads, bridges, transit and broadband.That meeting ended with encouraging words from both sides. Republicans said Mr. Biden invited the senators, who had previously offered a nearly $570 billion, narrowly focused package, to return with an updated offer, including how to pay for new spending.Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who is leading the Republicans’ negotiations, said lawmakers would prepare an updated offer for the president to review by early next week, including a more detailed list of the kinds of projects they would be willing to fund and a set of proposals to cover the costs. The senators said they expected Mr. Biden would then respond with a counteroffer.“I made it clear that this was not a stagnant offer from us,” Ms. Capito said. “He made it clear that he is serious in wanting to pursue this.”She said Republican senators were open to raising the overall top-line price tag of their offer, which is a fraction of the new spending the president proposed. She also suggested that Republicans would be willing to cut a deal with Mr. Biden even if he decided to pursue a more progressive package, including priorities beyond traditional infrastructure, with only Democratic votes. Other senators predicted the sides would know by Memorial Day whether they could reach a deal.“It’s in nobody’s interest to draw this out beyond the time when you think it’s workable,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri. “But I certainly left there thinking there’s a workable agreement to be had if we want to stretch a little both ways.”Shortly before the meeting, the White House Council of Economic Advisers posted a document to its website that cast Mr. Biden’s $4 trillion economic agenda as a way to correct decades of tax-cutting policies that had failed to bolster the middle class. In its place, the administration is pushing a rebuilding of public investment, like infrastructure, research and education, as the best way to fuel economic growth and improve families’ lives.The so-called issue brief reflects the administration’s longer-term thinking on economic policy when conservatives have ramped up criticism of the president over slowing job growth and accelerating inflation.Administration officials express confidence that recent price surges in used cars, airfare and other sectors of the economy will prove temporary, and that job growth will speed up again as more working-aged Americans are vaccinated against Covid-19 and regain access to child care during work hours. They say Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic aid package, which he signed in March, will lift job growth in the coming months, noting that new claims for unemployment fell to a pandemic-era low on Thursday.The officials also said it was appropriate for the president to look past the current crisis and push efforts to strengthen the economy long term.The two halves of Mr. Biden’s $4 trillion agenda, the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan, are premised on the economy returning to a low unemployment rate where essentially every American who wants to work is able to find a job, Cecilia Rouse, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview.“The American Rescue Plan was rescue,” Dr. Rouse said. “It was meant as stimulus as we work through this hopefully once-in-a-century, if not longer, pandemic. The American Jobs Plan, American Families Plan are saying, look, that’s behind us, but we knew going into the pandemic that there were structural problems in our country and in our economy.”Mr. Biden’s plans would raise taxes on high earners and corporations to fund new federal spending on physical infrastructure, care for children and older Americans, expanded access to education, an accelerated transition to low-carbon energy and more.Those efforts “reflect the empirical evidence that a strong economy depends on a solid foundation of public investment, and that investments in workers, families and communities can pay off for decades to come,” Mr. Biden’s advisers wrote. “These plans are not emergency legislation; they address longstanding challenges.”The five-page brief focuses on arguments about what drives productivity, wage growth, innovation and equity in the economy. The issues predate the coronavirus recession and recovery, and Democrats in particular have pledged for years to address them.The brief begins by attacking the “old orthodoxy” of tax-cutting policies by presidents and Congress, including the 2017 tax cut passed by Republicans under President Donald J. Trump. A driving rationale behind that law was an effort to encourage more investment by private companies, bolstering what economists call the nation’s capital stock. The brief faults those policies for not producing the rapid gains in economic growth that champions of those policies promised, and it says that raising taxes on high earners “will help ensure that the gains from economic growth are more broadly shared.”Republicans continue to insist that tax cuts, particularly for businesses, are the key to economic competitiveness and middle-class prosperity. They have refused to negotiate any changes to their party’s signature 2017 tax law as part of an infrastructure agreement, even as they concede some need for a limited version of the new public investments Mr. Biden is calling for.Republicans used the meeting on Thursday to reiterate that they would be unwilling to raise corporate or personal taxes lowered by their 2017 law. Instead, they pitched the president on the use of zero-interest loans and public-private partnerships, in addition to existing gasoline taxes and other government savings.Mr. Biden would raise taxes to reverse what his economic team calls the federal government’s underinvestment in policies that help educate children and adults, facilitate the development of new technologies and industries and support parents so they are able to work and earn more. His team cites the wave of quickly developed coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, which grew out of publicly funded research, as an example of public investments yielding private-sector innovation.“Those started with ideas that were funded by the public sector decades ago,” Dr. Rouse said. “And then the private sector built on top of that, so it’s really, the private sector needs to work with the public sector. We are all very grateful that the public sector was willing to take that risk, and it didn’t pay off right away.”“In many ways, the federal government should be patient,” she said. “We are a kind of entity, we should be patient. So I’m not saying we have to wait a million years for something to pay off, but we don’t need to have the kind of immediate payoff that a private company might need to see.”That argument is in many ways a departure from how administrations typically pitch economic policies during a crisis. There is no focus in the brief on immediate job creation or a quick bump in economic growth.Weeks after Mr. Biden detailed both halves of his plan, the administration has offered no projections about the effects of his policies on jobs or growth. Instead, Dr. Rouse and other administration officials cited forecasts by the Moody’s Analytics economist Mark Zandi, which are among the more favorable outside analyses of the president’s agenda.Administration officials say there is no need for their economic team to produce such forecasts. Congressional Republicans have repeatedly called for the White House to produce an estimate of how many jobs would be created by Mr. Biden’s plans. More

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    Biden Plan Spurs Fight Over What ‘Infrastructure’ Really Means

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    Republicans say the White House is tucking liberal social programs into legislation that should be focused on roads and bridges. Administration officials say their approach invests in the future.WASHINGTON — The early political and economic debate over President Biden’s $2 trillion American Jobs Plan is being dominated by a philosophical question: What does infrastructure really mean?Does it encompass the traditional idea of fixing roads, building bridges and financing other tangible projects? Or, in an evolving economy, does it expand to include initiatives like investing in broadband, electric car charging stations and care for older and disabled Americans?That is the debate shaping up as Republicans attack Mr. Biden’s plan with pie charts and scathing quotes, saying that it allocates only a small fraction of money on “real” infrastructure and that spending to address issues like home care, electric vehicles and even water pipes should not count.“Even if you stretch the definition of infrastructure some, it’s about 30 percent of the $2.25 trillion they’re talking about spending,” Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said on “Fox News Sunday.”“When people think about infrastructure, they’re thinking about roads, bridges, ports and airports,” he added on ABC’s “This Week.”Mr. Biden pushed back on Monday, saying that after years of calling for infrastructure spending that included power lines, internet cables and other programs beyond transportation, Republicans had narrowed their definition to exclude key components of his plan.“It’s kind of interesting that when the Republicans put forward an infrastructure plan, they thought everything from broadband to dealing with other things” qualified, the president told reporters on Monday. “Their definition of infrastructure has changed.”Mr. Biden defended his proposed $2 trillion package, saying it broadly qualified as infrastructure and included goals such as making sure schoolchildren are drinking clean water, building high-speed rail lines and making federal buildings more energy efficient.Behind the political fight is a deep, nuanced and evolving economic literature on the subject. It boils down to this: The economy has changed, and so has the definition of infrastructure.Economists largely agree that infrastructure now means more than just roads and bridges and extends to the building blocks of a modern, high-tech service economy — broadband, for example.But even some economists who have carefully studied that shift say the Biden plan stretches the limits of what counts.Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard University, is working on a project on infrastructure for the National Bureau of Economic Research that receives funding from the Transportation Department. He said that several provisions in Mr. Biden’s bill might or might not have merit but did not fall into a conventional definition of infrastructure, such as improving the nation’s affordable housing stock and expanding access to care for older and disabled Americans.“It does a bit of violence to the English language, doesn’t it?” Mr. Glaeser said.“Infrastructure is something the president has decided is a centrist American thing,” he said, so the administration took a range of priorities and grouped them under that “big tent.”Proponents of considering the bulk of Mr. Biden’s proposals — including roads, bridges, broadband access, support for home health aides and even efforts to bolster labor unions — argue that in the 21st century, anything that helps people work and lead productive or fulfilling lives counts as infrastructure. That includes investments in people, like the creation of high-paying union jobs or raising wages for a home health work force that is dominated by women of color.“I couldn’t be going to work if I had to take care of my parents,” said Cecilia Rouse, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “How is that not infrastructure?”But those who say that definition is too expansive tend to focus on the potential payback of a given project: Is the proposed spending actually headed toward a publicly available and productivity-enabling investment?A child care center in Queens, N.Y., last month. For those who support an expansive definition of infrastructure, anything that helps people work and lead productive lives counts.Kirsten Luce for The New York Times“Much of what it is in the American Jobs Act is really social spending, not productivity-enhancing infrastructure of any kind,” R. Glenn Hubbard, an economics professor at Columbia Business School and a longtime Republican adviser, said in an email.Specifically, he pointed to spending on home care workers and provisions that help unions as policies that were not focused on bolstering the economy’s potential.Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has called the Biden plan a “Trojan horse. It’s called infrastructure. But inside the Trojan horse is going to be more borrowed money and massive tax increases.”Republicans have slammed the provisions related to the care economy and electric vehicle charging options, and they have blasted policies that they have at times classified themselves as infrastructure.Take broadband, something that conservative lawmakers have in the past clearly counted as infrastructure. Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, has said that the White House’s broadband proposal could lead to duplication and overbuilding. While Mr. Blunt has allowed it to count as infrastructure in a case where you “stretch the definition,” top Republicans mostly leave it out when describing how much of Mr. Biden’s proposal would go to infrastructure investment, focusing instead on roads and bridges.Likewise, Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said the proposal “redefines infrastructure” to include things like work force development. But one of Mr. Portman’s own proposals said that skills training was essential to successful infrastructure investment.“Many people in the states would be surprised to hear that broadband for rural areas no longer counts,” said Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden in the White House. “We think that the people in Jackson, Miss., might be surprised to hear that fixing that water system doesn’t count as infrastructure. We think the people of Texas might disagree with the idea that the electric grid isn’t infrastructure that needs to be built with resilience for the 21st century.”White House officials said that much of Mr. Biden’s plan reflected the reality that infrastructure had taken on a broader meaning as the nature of work changes, focusing less on factories and shipping goods and more on creating and selling services.Other economists back the idea that the definition has changed.Dan Sichel, an economics professor at Wellesley College and a former Federal Reserve research official, said it could be helpful to think of what comprises infrastructure as a series of concentric circles: a basic inner band made up of roads and bridges, a larger social ring of schools and hospitals, then a digital layer including things like cloud computing. There could also be an intangible layer, like open-source software or weather data.“It is definitely an amorphous concept,” he said, but basically “we mean key economic assets that support and enable economic activity.”The economy has evolved since the 1950s: Manufacturers used to employ about a third of the work force but now count for just 8.5 percent of jobs in the United States. Because the economy has changed, it is important that our definitions are updated, Mr. Sichel said.The debate over the meaning of infrastructure is not new. In the days of the New Deal-era Tennessee Valley Authority, academics and policymakers sparred over whether universal access to electricity was necessary public infrastructure, said Shane M. Greenstein, an economist at Harvard Business School whose recent research focuses on broadband.“Washington has an attention span of several weeks, and this debate is a century old,” he said. These days, he added, it is about digital access instead of clean water and power.Some progressive economists are pressing the administration to widen the definition even further — and to spend more to rebuild it.“The conversation has moved a lot in recent years. We’re now talking about issues like a care infrastructure. That’s huge,” said Rakeen Mabud, the managing director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive advocacy group in Washington. But “there’s room to do more,” she said. “We should take that opportunity to really show the value of big investments.”Some economists who define infrastructure more narrowly said that just because policies were not considered infrastructure did not mean they were not worth pursuing. Still, Mr. Glaeser of Harvard cautioned that the bill’s many proposals should be evaluated on their merits.“It’s very hard to do this much infrastructure spending at this scale quickly and wisely,” he said. “If anything, I wish it were more closely tied to cost-benefit analysis.” More