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May 13, 2024
MainStreet Macro: Are consumers still all right? An update
Last week, a measure of consumer sentiment showed that people are more downbeat about their current and future economic well-being than they were a month ago. With the stock market reaching new highs in May, gas prices falling, and unemployment below 4 percent for the longest time since the 1960s, this gloomy shift is puzzling.
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August 30, 2021
MainStreet Macro: Jackson Hole
Every year at this time, some 120 prominent central bankers, finance leaders and academics gather in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to discuss pressing global issues. The highlight of the conference is a Friday-morning speech given by the head of the Federal Reserve – this year Chair Jay Powell. Traders, economists and other finance geeks hang on the speech’s every word for signs of a shift in monetary policy -- essentially whether the Fed will nudge interest rates up or down
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August 23, 2021
MainStreet Macro: Consumer Mojo
Consumers have a special kind of economic mojo. What people buy, how much they buy and where they buy it – that’s the economy in a nutshell.
Consumer spending was the first part of the economy to recover after the pandemic, and has been a tailwind to growth ever since. However, recent surveys point to a drop in consumer confidence. There are signs the consumer tailwind is losing some of its strength.
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August 16, 2021
MainStreet Macro: Working from Home- The Good, the Bad and the Virtual
This week we’re talking about a subject that a lot of us have gained experience with over the past year – working from home.
During the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, as much as a third of the U.S. workforce did their jobs from home specifically because of the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number shrank to just 13% in July as more adults were vaccinated. We review four key findings from the survey, “On-site, Remote or Hybrid: Employee Sentiment on the Workplace”.
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August 9, 2021
MainStreet Macro: A jobs recovery like no other
by Nela Richardson, Ph.D.
Last week was a big one for labor market data. On Wednesday, the ADPRI National Employment Report showed that the economy added 330,000 jobs in July, a marked slowdown from the 728,000-job pace we saw in the second quarter. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a blockbuster report showing that private payrolls had grown by 703,000 in July. Including the government, the economy added a total of 943,000 jobs. Though the monthly ADP and government numbers have often disagreed dramatically, year-to-date they sing the same tune. Here are three reasons why this is a jobs recovery like no other.
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August 2, 2021
MainStreet Macro: When a Summer Off is a Bad Thing
The labor market is still recovering from last year’s bruising round of pandemic-related business closures, during which, for the first time in history, women bore more than their share of job losses. For some, that premature exit from the workforce was “voluntary”, a decision made to focus on increased family responsibilities during the pandemic. For others, the exit was decidedly involuntary, with women more concentrated in service-related jobs that were hit hardest by the pandemic.
As the labor market continues its uneven path to pre-pandemic levels of employment here are three trends to watch for women this summer.
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July 26, 2021
MainStreet Macro: Pivotal Moments
Main Street businesses, the real-world heroes in the economy’s battle against the viral menace of COVID-19, are at just such a pivotal moment. This week, official GDP data is likely to confirm what we already know — the U.S. grew like gangbusters in the second quarter of the year. Yet as good as the economic numbers look from a distance, up close there’s growing unease that Main Street isn’t out of the woods yet when it comes to the pandemic. Here are three pivotal moments Main Street is facing.
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July 19, 2021
MainStreet Macro: How much is too much inflation?
As inflation climbs -- businesses and consumers wonder what this trend means for economic recovery. In this episode of MainStreet Macro, ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson breaks down the three key relationships influencing inflation and overall economic health.
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July 12, 2021
MainStreet Macro: Special Edition- The glass ceiling just got harder to crack
Women’s job losses during the pandemic topped those of men for the first time in U.S. economic history. The “shecession” left millions of women pulled between work and new family responsibilities. As employees, women also were concentrated in industries hit hardest by social-distancing restrictions, such as retail and leisure and hospitality. At the ADP Research Institute, we wanted to know what happened to the women who stayed in the workforce during the pandemic year. Here are a few things we learned about women in the workplace during the pandemic.
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