FEATURED POST
October 7, 2024
Hiring in an age of uncertainty
There were a few data signals going into Friday’s blockbuster jobs report that many market watchers and economists missed.
Layoffs, as measured by a rolling four-week average of initial jobless claims, hit their lowest level in more than a year and a half. August showed an uptick in job openings, a hint that companies were about to ramp up hiring. And September’s ADP National Employment Report suggested that a rebound in private-sector hiring was under way.
Read more
Subscribe to Data Lab
Stay up-to-date on the latest reports and trends.
Stay up to date with Data Lab
Please complete all fields.
Filter by:
July 11, 2022
MainStreet Macro: Wages go prime time: Part 1
Wages are the bridge between job growth and rising inflation, and their trajectory will determine whether the Federal Reserve can put the brakes on rising prices without skidding the economy into recession. To that end, the central bank is eying one particular data point with new intensity.
Read more
June 27, 2022
MainStreet Macro: A Penny Saved
Savings accounts were the unsung heroes of the pandemic recovery.
The personal saving rate – the share of a person’s disposable income left after taxes and spending on necessities and everything else – soared to a record of almost 34 percent in April 2020. That means people saved 34 cents for every dollar earned in the early days of the pandemic.
Read more
June 21, 2022
MainStreet Macro: The New World of Inflation
by Nela Richardson, Ph.D.
The Federal Reserve met last week and raised short term interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point. That’s the biggest rate hike since 1994. At that time year-over-year CPI inflation was just shy of 3 percent gas prices were around a $1 a gallon and house price growth was up 2.5 percent from the previous year.
Read more
June 13, 2022
MainStreet Macro: Missing Workers: Hiring in a Tight Job Market
Summer usually signals the start of theme park season, when adventure-seekers line up for the adrenaline rush of their favorite roller coaster and its ups and downs.
Labor market watchers can relate to those ups and downs – maybe too much, lately. It’s clear that employers, workers and jobseekers are more than ready for some stability.
The labor market’s high-speed airtime cost more than 19 million workers their jobs at the beginning of the pandemic. Since then, we’ve recovered, but that ride has been bumpy and uneven.
Read more
June 6, 2022
MainStreet Macro: What are small businesses telling us about inflation?
I spend a lot of time talking about small employers because they punch above their weight when it comes to the economy. Companies with fewer than 500 employees created two-thirds of net new jobs leading into the pandemic, and they led the recovery afterward. Each quarter, we at the ADP Research Institute survey our small company clients to gather their insight on the business landscape. This quarter, they wanted to talk about the macroeconomy and – no surprise -- inflation. Here are three things clients are telling us.
Read more
May 31, 2022
MainStreet Macro: Globalization: The Promise, Perils, and Possibilities
Last week I joined the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Switzerland. After a two-year hiatus from in-person events, world leaders, CEOs, international investors, and nonprofits reconvened at a time of great risk to global growth. This week, on the occasion of the Davos meetings, I’ll review the promise, the perils and the possibilities of globalization from the perspective of Main Street.
Read more
May 23, 2022
MainStreet Macro: How data is transforming Main Street
Last week I spoke at the World Data Summit in Amsterdam, a conference at which experts from across the globe met to discuss the most pressing data issues of our time. As the name suggests, data is fast becoming the universal language of business. For that reason, in this week’s blog I thought we’d talk about why data is important to Main Street.
Read more
May 16, 2022
MainStreet Macro: Peak or Plateau?
One of my family’s favorite pastimes is playing board games. Our faves include chess (which my teenage boys dominate), Scrabble (my husband’s the GOAT on this one) and Monopoly (the most frequent victor is me, obviously).
But not all games are quite so fun. My least favorite, when it comes to the economy, are guessing games.
Wall Street right now is in the midst of a guessing game on key economic data. I call this game “peak or plateau”. This week, we examine three elements of the economy to determine if we’re at a peak or a plateau.
Read more
