DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ Don’t Count Out the Consumer Yet
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

With fears that Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank fallout will stifle businesses’ access to credit, there is plenty of reason to worry about what lies ahead for U.S. consumers. But for now, they are doing fine.

☆ Fed’s Tightening Plans Collide With SVB Fallout
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank give Federal Reserve policy makers two good reasons to hold off on raising rates when they meet next week. But the latest run of economic data can only serve to remind them why, until last week anyway, they planned to keep raising rates. Investors’ expectations for the Fed have been whipsawing this year. Early on there were hopes that cooler inflation would lead the Fed to raise its range on overnight rates by a final quarter point at its March meeting, and then go on hold. A monster January employment report and unexpectedly strong inflation reports changed that.

☆ Bank Mayhem Is on Fed’s Radar on Jobs Friday
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The labor-force participation rate rose to 62.5% last month, the highest level since March 2020. There is no such thing as a perfect jobs report, but February’s was pretty darn good. The Labor Department reported on Friday that the U.S. economy added 311,000 jobs last month, more than the 225,000 that economists expected. January’s blowout jobs number was revised lower, but only marginally—it now shows a payroll gain of 504,000 as opposed to 517,000.

☆ You Can’t Fire Them, They Quit
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

There are still far more job openings than there were before the pandemic. Johnny Paycheck didn’t have the guts to say “Take this job and shove it.” You can’t say the same thing for a lot of U.S. workers. The Labor Department on Wednesday reported that the number of unfilled jobs in the U.S. at the end of January slipped to seasonally adjusted 10.82 million from December’s 11.23 million, and that the number of layoffs and discharges during January picked up to 1.72 million from 1.48 million a month earlier.

☆ Time to Get Used to Higher Rates
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

With inflation high, the job market tight and the economy chugging along, investors are coming to terms with the idea that the Federal Reserve will be setting rates higher for longer. But “longer” might mean even longer than the Fed expects. “The latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday. That suggests not only that when it meets later this month, the Fed’s rate-setting committee will raise its target range on overnight interest rates once again, and perhaps by a half a percentage point if economic data over the next couple of weeks runs hot, but also that it may raise its assessment of how high it will lift rates over the course of the year.

☆ Low-Wage Workers Climb the Earnings Ladder
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Competition for low-wage workers will become more intense, a new paper says. With the broad job losses the pandemic set off concentrated in low-wage industries, the earnings gap between the rich and the poor seemed likely to only widen. It has narrowed instead, with wage growth among lower-paid and less-educated workers outstripping wage growth among the better-paid and more highly educated. Their findings suggest that even as the pandemic fades, competition for low-wage workers will be more intense than before the pandemic. That could lead to further reductions in income inequality, raise labor costs at firms that employ low-wage workers, and reshape the U.S. business landscape.

☆ The Economy’s Road to Wellville
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-04 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Visits to barbers will likely grow in frequency this year. When the Federal Reserve’s efforts to slow America’s economy don’t appear to be working, people like to say it is pushing against a string. But with the pandemic’s grip on the country continuing to loosen, right now the central bank is pushing against something much harder. Three years after the Covid crisis struck, it might feel as though things are finally getting back to normal. Sure, people have re-engaged in all sorts of activities that they gave up during the height of the pandemic.

☆ Manufacturing’s Death Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Manufacturers now have a couple of things going for them. American manufacturers were slightly less morose last month. The Institute for Supply Management on Wednesday said its index of factory activity ticked up to a seasonally adjusted 47.7 in February from the 32-month low of 47.4 hit in January. That still leaves it below 50, indicating that more of the manufacturers the ISM polled experienced reduced activity than growth. A similarly constructed manufacturing index from S&P Global rose to 47.3 last month from 46.9 in January.

Big companies are announcing layoffs, home and stock prices are wobbling, inflation is squeezing household budgets and the Federal Reserve is still raising interest rates. Not surprisingly, Americans have been hearing the “R” word a lot. It’s the wrong one. The U.S. could still skirt a recession, but it is already in a richcession. That’s when, amid economic uncertainty, the well-off feel more of the bite.

☆ The U.S. Consumer Bounces Back
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Restaurants were busier last month, as the category for food services and drinking places had the biggest gains. Retail sales came roaring back last month in the U.S. If anything, they probably understate the strength of the American consumer. The Commerce Department on Wednesday reported that retail sales rose a seasonally adjusted 3% in January from a month earlier, after slipping 1.1% in December. There was strength across the board, with all of the retail categories within the report experiencing gains.

☆ Inflation Brings Back the Heat
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Federal Reserve can probably take last month’s bump up in inflation in stride. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t care about it. The Labor Department on Tuesday reported that overall consumer prices rose a seasonally adjusted 0.5% in January from December and it revised December’s monthly change from down 0.1% to up 0.1%. Core prices, which exclude the often volatile food and energy categories in an attempt to better capture inflation’s trend, rose 0.4% in January, with December’s gains revised to 0.4% from 0.3%.

☆ Giving Labor Less of the American Pie
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Federal Reserve worries that Americans’ wages are growing far too fast for it to be able to get inflation back down to where it wants. One danger is that instead of snuffing out an inflation problem it could instead prevent U.S. workers from regaining decades of lost ground. Labor costs have been cooling off lately, but not enough for the Fed. Last week the Labor Department reported that its index of overall wages and benefits, which the central bank follows closely, rose 1% in the fourth quarter from the third quarter. That was a smaller gain than in recent quarters, but enough to put it 5.1% above its year-earlier level.

☆ Jobs Market Parties Like It’s 1969
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Economists keep saying that the labor market will start to really cool off any second now. But not this second.

☆ The Fed Fights the Fed
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Federal Reserve, led by Jerome Powell, stuck to its story that more hikes are coming. The Federal Reserve’s message to investors: Trust us, this time will be different. Fed policy makers on Wednesday raised their target range on rates by just a quarter point, a step down from the half-point increase at their December meeting as well as the three-quarter point increases of their previous four meetings. This was hardly a surprise. Even before the Fed’s December decision, interest-rate futures had started implying that a quarter-point hike was the most likely outcome of Wednesday’s meeting.

☆ Growth Was Less Than Advertised, Better Than Feared
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The U.S. economy probably wasn’t as strong in the fourth quarter as advertised in the headline figure of Thursday’s report on gross domestic product. But it still wasn’t all that bad, and this year might not be entirely horrible, either. The Commerce Department reported that GDP grew at an inflation-adjusted 2.9% annual rate in the fourth quarter from the previous quarter, a hair better than economists expected, and just a touch lower than third quarter’s 3.2%. The slight decline in GDP in the first half of last year, now more than made up for, feels like a distant memory.

☆ Housing’s Big Hurdle Is Affordability
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Buying a home has gotten a little more affordable in recent months. Which isn’t to say that homes are affordable at all. That is the biggest challenge the housing market faces this year. While it is reasonable to expect there will be some improvement in the housing market in the months ahead, at current rates and prices there won’t be much of one.

☆ Retailers Get a Seasonal Beating
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/retailers-get-a-seasonal-beating-11674059330

☆ On Inflation, Investors Fight the Fed
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Prices for used cars and trucks dropped 2.5%, in December. Inflation is cooling and Treasury market investors are betting that it is going to get a lot colder. Federal Reserve policy makers aren’t so sure. That disparity is creating tension between markets and the central bank that won’t be resolved until one camp is proven right.

☆ American Companies Face Pressure on the Margins
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Per-share earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to be down 2.2% in last year’s fourth quarter. Earnings at big public companies haven’t been growing all that much lately. Which isn’t to say that companies haven’t been extremely profitable. Earnings season is getting under way, and results for the final quarter of last year look to be underwhelming. Exclude those, and analysts estimate earnings fell by 6.7%.

☆ The Fed’s Fear of a Wage-Price Spiral Might Soon Abate
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The unemployment rate slipped in December, but with many businesses desperate to hire, wage growth appears to be cooling. The job market happens to be strong and inflation happens to be high. A big question for the Federal Reserve this year is how much those two things have to do with each other. At the moment Fed policy makers fear that correlation does, in fact, imply causation. They believe that while some of the rise in inflation can be laid at the feet of temporary factors such as pandemic-related bottlenecks that are now starting to unwind, a tight job market is also to blame.

☆ Companies Are Gritting Their Teeth and Hiring
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A lot of businesses are feeling morose about where the economy is heading. And yet they still are looking to hire more workers. The Labor Department on Wednesday reported that there were a seasonally adjusted 10.5 million unfilled job openings in the U.S. as of the last day of November, about equal to the (upwardly revised) count for October. That was down from the extremes hit earlier last year, but still far above anything seen during the prepandemic period.

☆ Get Ready for the Richcession
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-02 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Dolce & Gabbana and other businesses that cater to the well-off might be in for disappointment. Economic downturns are usually horrible for poor people, bad for the middle class and an inconvenience for the rich. But if the economy enters a recession in 2023, or even if it manages to narrowly evade one, it might be the well-heeled who take a bigger hit than usual. Call it the richcession.

☆ Even a Soft Landing Would Be Hard on Stocks
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Economists are generally split on what will happen to the economy in the new year, with some forecasting the U.S. will experience a mild recession and others forecasting a so-called soft landing, where the economy is able to narrowly skirt a downturn. For most Americans, neither outcome might count as really horrible, particularly if, as many economists think, the job market doesn’t take much of a hit. But for many of the companies that dominate the U.S. stock market, even a soft-landing scenario could be quite painful.

☆ Some Consumer Cheer, Just in Time for the Holidays
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Despite retailers’ angst about the holiday shopping season, the American consumer looks undiminished. There is nothing quite like falling prices for putting fuel in consumers’ tanks. For all retailers’ angst about the holiday shopping season, the American consumer looks undiminished. The Commerce Department on Friday reported that consumer spending rose a seasonally adjusted 0.1% last month from a month earlier after, jumping 0.9% (revised up from 0.8%) in October. The report also showed that inflation is cooling, with the Commerce Department’s measure of consumer prices—the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge—rising just 0.1% in November after rising 0.4% in October.

☆ Homing in on a Housing Recovery
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Most Americans agree that now is a horrible time to buy a house. But it could be a great time to start betting on a housing recovery. This wasn’t the sort of year for the housing market that most people expected. Heading into 2022, the biggest problem faced by real-estate agents was that there wasn’t enough inventory to meet demand, while home builders were struggling to increase construction. Would-be home buyers hated how prices had shot higher during the pandemic and that mortgage rates were beginning to drift higher, but if they could swing it, they would buy.

Search resuls for: "Lahart"

25 mentions found