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May 6, 2024
MainStreet Macro: What the pay gap says about inflation
One of the puzzles of today’s economy is inflation: Why isn’t it falling as fast as economists or the Federal Reserve expected? Inflation has slowed a lot over the past year, but recently it has stubbornly defied expectations of further declines.
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November 1, 2021
MainStreet Macro: Show me the money!
ADPRI’s Third Quarterly Workforce Vitality Report (WVR), released last week, provides an in-depth analysis of wage trends. The work is based on anonymous and aggregated data derived from about 250,000 U.S. employers and approximately 18 million private-sector U.S. workers.
Here are four things we learned from the WVR in the third quarter of this year.
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October 25, 2021
MainStreet Macro: Gummed up?
Pandemic spending habits are front and center this week, when we get data on two major measures of economic health – consumer confidence and spending.
Consumer spending has led the pandemic recovery. But consumer confidence took a hit recently, when the delta variant led to a surge in coronavirus infections and renewed anxiety about health conditions. The trajectory of spending -- will it slow or remain resilient? -- is the number one question facing the economy right now. Is consumer spending gummed up?
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October 18, 2021
MainStreet Macro: Scarcity
The concept of scarcity drives economic theory because we don’t live in a world where resources are free-flowing and abundant. Scarcity requires people and businesses to make constant tradeoffs to get what they want. The role of scarcity in economic activity has been highlighted by the pandemic. Supply shortages are everywhere. From new cars to chicken wings, inventories are running low. In this week’s MSM, we dive deep into the idea of scarcity in the context of our current supply shortages by answering three big questions just in time for the holiday shopping season.
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October 11, 2021
MainStreet Macro: A short-term fix
Every now and again something distracts me from Main Street businesses, consumers and employees. Today, my attention is directed toward Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. There, until last week, the Treasury Department was facing dire consequences as Congress fought over raising the debt ceiling.
The urgency of the moment has passed after lawmakers in Congress approved a short-term fix to raise the debt ceiling enough to fund government spending through Dec. 3. What happens next? Glad you asked. This week, we tell you three things every Main Streeter should know about the debt ceiling.
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October 4, 2021
MainStreet Macro: Where do jobs numbers come from?
Monthly jobs reports are among the most closely watched estimates of U.S. economic health. Even in normal times, they have the power to move stock prices, influence Fed interest rate policy, and shape spending priorities at the local, state and national level. There are two important monthly measures of employment. The official government non-farm payroll report is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, rain or shine, on the first or second Friday of every month. In today's blog, we provide a peek under the hood of these two critical indicators and discuss their similarities and differences.
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September 27, 2021
MainStreet Macro: Is there an urban exodus of high-income earners in tech and finance?
As disruptive as the past 18 months have been, one place where workers have sought solitude is at home. The housing market has boomed since the pandemic as remote and hybrid work options led to a big uptick in demand for home offices and outdoor space to walk all the puppies that were adopted early days of the lockdown.
Much has been said about the pandemic-driven migration to the suburbs. But so far, we’ve had only limited data available to understand it. This week, ADP dove into its payroll data, where we uncovered three worker migration trends that could have long-run implications for the workplace.
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September 20, 2021
MainStreet Macro: No Free Lunch
There’s a saying in economics – there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The idea is that things that look free often have hidden cost. The cost of borrowing, for both Main Street and Wall Street, isn’t exactly free, but it is really, really cheap right now thanks to the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policy, which has kept interest rates at rock-bottom levels. But all that cheap money can come at a high cost to all of us down the road. When Fed governors meet this week to take their regular measure of the economy, they’ll be weighing three of the biggest tradeoffs of cheap money.
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September 13, 2021
MainStreet Macro: Wages, Three Ways
Wages have been on a tear lately. In August, they grew 4.3% from a year earlier. To put that number in perspective, in the decade leading up to the pandemic, wages never grew more than 3.5% from the previous year.
There are three possible reasons wages are accelerating, each with a different implication for the broader economic recovery. On this weeks blog we discuss wages three ways.
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