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Fed survey shows lows in employment and dissatisfaction with pay

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Job seekers attends the JobNewsUSA.com South Florida Job Fair held at the Amerant Bank Arena on June 26, 2024 in Sunrise, Florida. 

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

In another sign of cracks forming in the U.S. labor market, a New York Federal Reserve survey Monday showed a slide in people reporting they are employed, a surge in those looking for work and growing dissatisfaction with pay.

The thrice-yearly measure of labor activity, confidence and satisfaction reflected growing concern in July about job security and in increase in those expecting to work past typical retirement age. Workers are still looking for higher starting salaries but are getting lower offers.

The results come with the unemployment rate ticking higher and Wall Street and Fed policymakers watching the developments closely for clues about where things are headed for the U.S. economy.

Among the findings was that, of those who were employed at the time of the last survey in March, 88% still had jobs, the lowest in data that goes back to 2014. Similarly, those who expected to become unemployed rose to 4.4%, a 0.5 percentage point increase from a year ago and the highest in the survey’s history.

Moreover, the level of those searching for a new job in the previous four weeks popped to 28.4%, up 9 percentage points from a year ago and another historic high going back to March 2014.

On wages, satisfaction with current compensation dropped to 56.7%, down more than 3 percentage points from the same period in 2023. Satisfaction with benefits tumbled to 56.3%, off more than 8 points from a year ago, while satisfaction with opportunities for promotion slid to 44.2%, down from 53.5% last year and most pronounced among women, those without a college degree and respondents with household incomes less than $60,000.

The typical wage offering for full-time jobs in the past four months declined slightly to $68,905 while the average “reservation wage,” or the minimum level workers would accept for a new job rose to $81,147, up about $2,500 from a year ago but fractionally below the record high in the last survey.

Finally, the expected likelihood of working past age 62 nudged up to 48.3% of respondents and increased to 34.2% of those saying they expect to work past 67, an increase of more than 2 percentage points.

While the unemployment rate of 4.3% would be considered low by historical standards, it has been on the rise lately and spurring fears of a broader erosion in the economy. July saw a gain of just 114,000 in nonfarm payrolls, so the August report, to be released in early September, will be closely watched.

Following their most recent meeting, Fed officials described job growth as having “moderated.” The central bank is widely expected to reduce its key borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point at their next meeting in September, the first move lower in more than four years.

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“The Republicans should pray for rain”—the title of a paper published by a trio of political scientists in 2007—has been an axiom of American elections for years. The logic was straightforward: each inch of election-day showers, the study found, dampened turnout by 1%. Lower turnout gave Republicans an edge because the party’s affluent electorate had the resources to vote even when it was inconvenient. Their opponents, less so.

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Inflation rate slipped to 2.1% in April, lower than expected, Fed’s preferred gauge shows

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Inflation rate slipped to 2.1% in April, lower than expected, Fed’s preferred gauge shows

Inflation barely budged in April as tariffs President Donald Trump implemented in the early part of the month had yet to show up in consumer prices, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve’s key inflation measure, increased just 0.1% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.1%. The monthly reading was in line with the Dow Jones consensus forecast while the annual level was 0.1 percentage point lower.

Excluding food and energy, the core reading that tends to get even greater focus from Fed policymakers showed readings of 0.1% and 2.5%, against respective estimates of 0.1% and 2.6%.

Consumer spending, though, slowed sharply for the month, posting just a 0.2% increase, in line with the consensus but slower than the 0.7% rate in March. A more cautious consumer mood also was reflected in the personal savings rate, which jumped to 4.9%, up from 0.6 percentage point in March to the highest level in nearly a year.

Personal income surged 0.8%, a slight increase from the prior month but well ahead of the forecast for 0.3%.

Markets showed little reaction to the news, with stock futures continuing to point lower and Treasury yields mixed.

People shop at a grocery store in Brooklyn on May 13, 2025 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Trump has been pushing the Fed to lower its key interest rate as inflation has continued to gravitate back to the central bank’s 2% target. However, policymakers have been hesitant to move as they await the longer-term impacts of the president’s trade policy.

On Thursday, Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell held their first face-to-face meeting since the president started his second term. However, a Fed statement indicated the future path of monetary policy was not discussed and stressed that decisions would be made free of political considerations.

Trump slapped across-the-board 10% duties on all U.S. imports, part of an effort to even out a trading landscape in which the U.S. ran a record $140.5 billion deficit in March. In addition to the general tariffs, Trump launched selective reciprocal tariffs much higher than the 10% general charge.

Since then, though, Trump has backed off the more severe tariffs in favor of a 90-day negotiating period with the affected countries. Earlier this week, an international court struck down the tariffs, saying Trump exceeded his authority and didn’t prove that national security was threatened by the trade issues.

Then in the latest installment of the drama, an appeals court allowed a White House effort for a temporary stay of the order from the U.S. Court of International Trade.

Economists worry that tariffs could spark another round of inflation, though the historical record shows that their impact is often minimal.

At their policy meeting earlier this month, Fed officials also expressed worry about potential tariff inflation, particularly at a time when concerns are rising about the labor market. Higher prices and slower economic growth can yield stagflation, a phenomenon the U.S. hasn’t seen since the early 1980s.

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