(Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell says he and his colleagues have learned a lot over the last decade about the meaning of full employment. Now, they’re looking at a new set of labor-market indicators as they chart a recovery from the steepest economic downturn on record.
Call it the Powell dashboard.
The Fed chair has recently highlighted several data points that underscore the central bank’s shift in focus beyond headline numbers and toward the most vulnerable sections of the workforce. It’s an important development for Fed-watchers to graspin guaging how long policy makers will keep interest rates near zero as they judge incoming data, including Friday’s jobs report.
The approach marks an evolution from that of Powell’s immediate predecessor, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who maintained a “dashboard” of metrics to help determine remaining slack in the labor market created by the Great Recession. It focused Fed-watchers on an array of statistics like job openings, layoffs, underemployment and long-term joblessness that applied to the entire labor force.
By comparison, the statistics on Powell’s list home in on things like Black unemployment, wage growth for low-wage workers and labor force participation for those without college degrees, categories that historically have taken longer to recover from downturns than broader metrics.
“It’s a pretty notable change,” said Seth Carpenter, a former Fed official who is now chief U.S. economist at UBS. The new definition of full employment reflects a growing understanding among policy makers that they can’t conclude the economy has reached such a state until “you really are starting to see businesses compete for workers at every part of the income distribution,” he said.
Here are some of the numbers Powell is watching that underscore the challenges ahead:
Black Unemployment
Covid sent Black unemployment surging to 16.7% in April and May of last year. By January it had recovered to 9.2%. But it reversed some of that progress last month, rising to 9.9%, according to Labor Department figures published Friday.
The Fed has faced growing pressure to acknowledge the uneven expansion in recent years, and the experience of the pandemic has only added to it. Powell has repeatedly said he wants to see broad-based gains in employment, and not just in the aggregate or at the median. In August, the Fed announced changes to its monetary policy strategy to codify a more inclusive approach.
The long economic expansion that preceded the pandemic continually defied forecasts of accelerating inflation even as unemployment dwindled, indicating potential for further labor-market gains. By mid-2019, Black unemployment had fallen to 5.2% — a record low in nearly a half-century of data.
During the financial crisis of 2008, Fed officials cut their benchmark interest rate to nearly zero, and didn’t begin raising it until December 2015. By then, the overall unemployment rate had recovered from a high of 10% to just 5%. But they didn’t take into account the unemployment rate for Black Americans, which at the time stood at 9.4%.
Low-Wage Earnings
As Fed chair, Yellen often cited wage growth as a metric for judging progress toward full employment, including a measure produced by the Atlanta Fed in her dashboard.
In a Feb. 10 speech, Powell cited pay for the bottom 25% of earners in particular. Just before the onset of the pandemic in the U.S., wage growth for this group of workers was 4.7% on a 12-month average basis, according to the Atlanta Fed. That marked its highest rate relative to overall wage growth since the late 1990s.
By January of this year, the latest month for which data are available, it had moderated to 4%. In the wake of both the 2001 and the 2007-09 downturns, earnings growth for the lowest wage quartile took almost three years to bottom out.
No College
Powell has also highlighted labor force participation rates specifically for those without college educations. The pandemic has had an outsize effect on them. As of last month, their participation rate was just 54.7%, according to the Labor Department figures published Friday.
Compare that with February 2020, when it stood at 58.3%, up from a low of 56.9% in 2015.
The magnitude of job losses during the Great Recession made the recovery from it a slow process. Many individuals looking for work eventually became discouraged and gave up, leading them to stop being counted as unemployed.
Under Yellen, the Fed elevated the labor force participation rate in its analysis of the state of employment to account for the likelihood that many of the so-called labor-force dropouts would take jobs if work was available. But the slow pace of recovery fanned arguments among policy makers over whether everyone who had lost work — especially the least-educated — would be able to find new employment and should therefore be counted in the shortfall.
In 2015, the year Yellen’s Fed began raising rates, “many forecasters worried that globalization and technological change might have permanently reduced job opportunities for these individuals, and that, as a result, there might be limited scope for participation to recover,” Powell said in his Feb. 10 speech.
But the next five years proved them wrong as those without college degrees were increasingly drawn back into the workforce.
As the Fed chair put it during an event on March 4: “Today, we’re still a long way from our goals.”
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
