Shopping becomes the national pastime at this time of year. In the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, spending by holiday gift-buyers accounts for nearly a third of the year’s retail sales. And the National Federation of Retail projects that this season could be retail’s biggest ever, with sales rising as much as 10% from last year to hit nearly $860 billion. That’s a lot of ugly reindeer sweaters. How is that even possible? As we’ve discussed before, the big three of inflation, labor shortages, and supply chain bottlenecks have made shopping more expensive. But higher prices don’t necessarily curb spending. In fact, it might increase it. You read that right. Here’s why the big three are triggering big spending on Main Street – and one big reason to be worried about it.

Over the last six months, labor shortages have been a hot topic for big and small employers alike. But there’s one job where shortages have been particularly challenging for Main Street families – school bus drivers. A lack of drivers has forced some school districts to cut routes, leaving parents to scramble to get their kids to school. And three months into the school year, the bus driver shortage hasn’t let up.We analyzed anonymized ADP data on bus drivers to find out what was going on before the pandemic and what’s happened since. Here’s what our research found.

ADPRI kicked off 2021 with data that showed a global workforce in flux. Three in four workers in our survey said they had changed, or planned to change, how or where they live. Since then, we’ve seen tremendous upheaval in the labor market. In the U.S., companies are scrambling to hire and job openings are near record highs. But workers who quit in record numbers have been slow to return, and the labor market is still 5 million people smaller than it was before the pandemic. Here’s the cool part: There’s a wealth of new data to mine. In 2022, data will be more important than ever for employers navigating the new, dynamic workforce and evolving business landscape. With data in mind, here’s what’s in and what’s out for workforce trends in the coming year.

While you were worrying about labor, supply chains, and inflation, you might have missed the news that U.S. economic growth slowed from July through September to just 2%. That’s below even the tortoise-like pace that defined growth in the decade before the pandemic. It’s also a far cry from the sonic 6.7% growth we saw in the second quarter of this year. The delta-variant was behind the economic downshift, as another uptick in cases limited our rebound. Now, with viral outbreaks re-contained, the outlook for GDP in the final three months of 2021 will hinge on Main Street’s ability to navigate the big three: Hiring bottlenecks, inflation, and supply shortages.

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.

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?

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.

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.