As prices for products including gas, steaks, bacon and camping equipment climb rapidly, eating into paychecks and dominating headlines, consumers are more likely to take note and ask for better pay.

“Things change completely when inflation is a big number,” Mr. Blanchard said. “Salience changes.”

There are signs that wages are feeding into price increases, at the margin. Prices have recently begun to rise sharply for core services, a set of purchases outside of health care, rent and transportation for which wages tend to make up a major cost of production.

“That was concerning,” said Alan Detmeister, an economist at UBS who formerly led the Fed’s wage and price section. But, he added, it is hardly conclusive.

More anecdotally, stories of workers winning big wage increases in a tight labor market abound.

While wages in lower-qualification fields like leisure and hospitality have been rising rapidly for months, professional pay may also be on the cusp of picking up: Banks have been making big base salary increases, and Amazon will raise its maximum base salary for corporate and technology workers to $350,000 from $160,000 as it competes for a limited pool of highly trained employees.

Amazon, which has also increased wages for warehouse employees, has raised prices partly in response.

“With the continued expansion of Prime member benefits and the increased member usage that we’ve seen, as well as the rise in wages and transportation costs, Amazon will increase the price of our Prime membership in the United States,” Brian T. Olsavsky, the company’s chief financial officer, said on a Feb. 3 earnings call. The monthly price is rising to $14.99 from $12.99, and the annual membership is jumping to $139 from $119.

“This is our first price increase since 2018,” Mr. Olsavsky noted.

Other companies are raising pay but have said they are covering the climbing costs by improving efficiency. That’s the sort of sweet spot the White House and the Fed are hoping for, because it could leave workers earning more without pressuring prices relentlessly up.

“We do anticipate when we do our annual review process that we will have a nominally higher wage rate increase provided to our associates,” Kevin Hourican, president and chief executive at the food distributor Sysco, said on a Feb. 8 earnings call. “And we have productivity improvement efforts that can help offset those types of increases.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/business/economy/wages-rise-labor-shortage.html

A few days later, he got a surprise call from Mr. Grove. The Hungarian-born executive, then Intel’s president who later wrote the management book “Only the Paranoid Survive,” had built a culture where lower-level employees were encouraged to challenge superiors if they could back up their positions. Mr. Grove began mentoring Mr. Gelsinger, a relationship that lasted three decades.

By 1986, Mr. Grove had convinced Mr. Gelsinger not to pursue a doctorate at Stanford University and instead made him, at age 24, the leader of a 100-person team designing Intel’s 80486 microprocessor. Mr. Gelsinger eventually earned eight patents, became Intel’s youngest vice president in 1992 and the first person with the title of chief technology officer in 2001.

His climb up Intel’s ladder was shaped by another priority: his faith.

Though raised in the mainstream United Church of Christ, Mr. Gelsinger said he didn’t really become a Christian until he attended the nondenominational church in Silicon Valley where he met Linda Fortune, who later became his wife. It was at that church in 1980 that he heard the minister quote Revelations.

After Mr. Gelsinger became a born-again Christian, he wrestled privately with whether to join the clergy. In a 2019 oral history conducted by the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., he said he eventually decided to become a “workplace minister,” where “you really view yourself as working for God as your C.E.O., even though you’re working for Intel.”

Intel Slips

In the mid-2000s, Mr. Gelsinger’s footing within Intel shifted. Mr. Grove retired as board chairman in 2004. Another executive, Paul Otellini, was appointed chief executive in 2005. Mr. Gelsinger said he was a “dissonant voice” on Intel’s senior executive team.

Mr. Otellini pushed him to leave, Mr. Gelsinger said. (Mr. Otellini died in 2017.) In 2009, Mr. Gelsinger accepted an offer to become president and chief operating officer of EMC, a maker of data storage gear.

Departing Intel after 30 years as a company man hurt badly. “I was just so angry and emotional about the departure,” Mr. Gelsinger said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/technology/intel-ceo-patrick-gelsinger.html

A few days later, he got a surprise call from Mr. Grove. The Hungarian-born executive, then Intel’s president who later wrote the management book “Only the Paranoid Survive,” had built a culture where lower-level employees were encouraged to challenge superiors if they could back up their positions. Mr. Grove began mentoring Mr. Gelsinger, a relationship that lasted three decades.

By 1986, Mr. Grove had convinced Mr. Gelsinger not to pursue a doctorate at Stanford University and instead made him, at age 24, the leader of a 100-person team designing Intel’s 80486 microprocessor. Mr. Gelsinger eventually earned eight patents, became Intel’s youngest vice president in 1992 and the first person with the title of chief technology officer in 2001.

His climb up Intel’s ladder was shaped by another priority: his faith.

Though raised in the mainstream United Church of Christ, Mr. Gelsinger said he didn’t really become a Christian until he attended the nondenominational church in Silicon Valley where he met Linda Fortune, who later became his wife. It was at that church in 1980 that he heard the minister quote Revelations.

After Mr. Gelsinger became a born-again Christian, he wrestled privately with whether to join the clergy. In a 2019 oral history conducted by the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., he said he eventually decided to become a “workplace minister,” where “you really view yourself as working for God as your C.E.O., even though you’re working for Intel.”

Intel Slips

In the mid-2000s, Mr. Gelsinger’s footing within Intel shifted. Mr. Grove retired as board chairman in 2004. Another executive, Paul Otellini, was appointed chief executive in 2005. Mr. Gelsinger said he was a “dissonant voice” on Intel’s senior executive team.

Mr. Otellini pushed him to leave, Mr. Gelsinger said. (Mr. Otellini died in 2017.) In 2009, Mr. Gelsinger accepted an offer to become president and chief operating officer of EMC, a maker of data storage gear.

Departing Intel after 30 years as a company man hurt badly. “I was just so angry and emotional about the departure,” Mr. Gelsinger said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/technology/intel-ceo-patrick-gelsinger.html

In a statement after their two-day policy meeting in January, Fed officials laid the groundwork for higher borrowing costs “soon.” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said at a news conference after the meeting that “I would say that the committee is of a mind to raise the federal funds rate at the March meeting, assuming that the conditions are appropriate for doing so.”

Inflation has continued to run hot since the Fed’s last meeting, and wage growth remains elevated. A key inflation measure released last week showed that prices were climbing at the fastest pace in 40 years and broadening beyond pandemic-affected goods and services, a sign that rapid gains could prove longer lasting and harder to shake off.

January’s Consumer Price Index showed prices jumping 7.5 percent over the year and 0.6 percent from the prior month, exceeding forecasts. A separate inflation gauge that the Fed prefers also showed that prices remained elevated at the end of 2021. Overall, prices have been climbing at the fastest pace since 1982.

Wall Street is now anticipating that interest rates could rise to more than 1.75 percent by the end of the year, up from near zero now. Markets began to bet on a double-size rate increase after January’s inflation data came in surprisingly strong. But some Fed officials have been tempering those expectations, saying they need to take a steady approach.

Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said on Sunday that the Fed needed to get moving but that its approach ought to be “measured.”

“I see that it is obvious that we need to pull some of the accommodation out of the economy,” Ms. Daly said on “Face the Nation.” “But history tells us with Fed policy that abrupt and aggressive action can actually have a destabilizing effect on the very growth and price stability we’re trying to achieve.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/business/economy/fed-january-meeting-minutes.html

“If they get it in Dec. 25, they probably take it out in January when they’re done with their festivities,” Ms. Bovino said, noting that shoppers may be more forgiving of higher prices when “they are buying with other people’s money.”

Plus, spending patterns have become less predictable during the pandemic, complicating efforts to predict what will happen next. Before the pandemic, holiday shopping would push retail sales higher in December, and a slowdown in spending would be reflected in January. This year’s gain came after a drop in December that on Wednesday was revised to 2.5 percent.

Still, Ms. Bovino noted that “people were still spending” in January, and the purchasing was broad-based: Sales at car dealers rose 5.7 percent in January over the previous month, while e-commerce sales rose 14.5 percent. Spending at electronics and appliances stores rose 1.9 percent, while sales at clothing and general merchandise stores, such as department stores, were higher as well.

The effect of the latest coronavirus wave was evident in some sectors. Spending at restaurants, bars and gas stations fell about 1 percent as people stayed home. But overall, sales in January rose far faster than the 2 percent gain economists had expected.

Consumers were spending even as they faced fast-rising prices and short supplies of new cars, appliances and much more. Consumer prices increased 0.6 percent in the January from the prior month, the government said last week, and 7.5 percent from 12 months earlier. Supply chain woes coupled with strong consumer demand pushed prices higher through all of last year.

Several consumer products companies have said recently that sales have held up even as they have increased prices for products to offset higher labor and transportation costs. Procter Gamble, the maker of Crest toothpaste and Tide detergent, said last month that price increases helped drive revenue 6 percent higher from a year earlier, to $21 billion in the three months that ended Dec. 31.

Kraft Heinz reported on Wednesday that it raised prices 3.8 percent in the three months that ended in December, compared with the same period the prior year. Its sales slipped in the quarter but were stronger than analysts had expected, thanks largely to the price increases.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/business/economy/retail-sales-january.html

Democrats have emphasized that Ms. Raskin recently committed to a new set of ethics standards, agreeing not to work for financial services companies for four years after she leaves government — a pledge Ms. Cook and Mr. Jefferson also made, at the urging of Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts.

Ms. Brainard agreed to a weaker version of that commitment that would bar her from working at bank holding companies and depository institutions outside of mission-driven exceptions like banks that target underserved communities, a spokesperson for Ms. Warren’s office said Tuesday.

Mr. Powell declined to make a similar commitment, the spokesperson said. The Fed chair did signal that he would adhere to the administration’s ethics rules, which ban paid work related to government service for two years upon leaving office.

On Tuesday, a dozen Republican chairs in the room where the committee met remained empty while Democrats occupied their seats across the room. Democrats took a vote to show support, though it was not binding, and Mr. Brown pledged to reschedule.

“Few things we do as senators will do more to help address our country’s economic concerns more than to confirm this slate of nominees, the most diverse and most qualified slate of Fed nominees ever put forward,” Mr. Brown said, chiding Republicans for skipping the session.

“They’re taking away probably the most important tool we have — and that’s the Federal Reserve — to combat inflation,” he later added.

The Fed has four current governors, in addition to its 12 regional presidents, five of whom vote on monetary policy at any given time. Mr. Powell has already been serving as chair on an interim basis, since his leadership term officially expired this month.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/business/economy/senate-republicans-vote-fed-nominees.html

But the big marketing push has come during the Super Bowl. Avocados From Mexico began airing quirky commercials in the past decade, one featuring the comedian Jon Lovitz’s floating head and another with the 1980s actress Molly Ringwald as an infomercial host hawking pricey gear for your avocado, like a personal carrier or a yurt.

On Sunday, Avocados From Mexico aired its latest ad during the game. It featured ancient Roman tailgaters at the Colosseum noshing on guacamole and dancing. Reviews online were mixed.

Avocado farmers in the Michoacán region said even a ban that lasted a couple of months could have a huge negative impact on the local economy.

“The growing season basically ends in May, and if we lose a couple of months to sell, we’ll end up with too much fruit to sell in two month’s time,” said Jose Humberto Solorzano Mendoza, a third-generation avocado grower who has created a digital platform for producers to share pricing information to improve transparency. “The produce will be worthless, and it will fall off the trees after May.”

And a collapse in prices, he said, could lead to increased immigration from the area into the United States. “There are people who are living here because of the avocado,” he said. “They make their living from that. If we don’t have the avocado, they’ll move on.”

Mr. Ernst of the International Crisis Group said that if the “warning shot” of a temporary ban turned into something more long term, it would affect the economy and make it easier for the criminal enterprises to attract recruits.

“You have tens of thousands of hardworking, law-abiding families that depend on this industry,” Mr. Ernst said. “If you take away their livelihoods, you play into the hands of the criminal groups.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/business/us-mexico-avocado-ban.html

“Important questions about Ms. Raskin’s use of the ‘revolving door’ remain unanswered largely because of her repeated disingenuousness with the committee,” Mr. Toomey said in his statement Tuesday.

Mr. Brown said ahead of the vote that he did not know what the next steps would be if Republicans boycotted. During the committee session, as a dozen Republican chairs sat empty and no formal vote was taken, he pledged to reschedule. Democrats did take a vote to show support, but it was not binding.

“Few things we do as senators will do more to help address our country’s economic concerns more than to confirm this slate of nominees, the most diverse and most qualified slate of Fed nominees ever put forward,” he said, chiding Republicans for skipping out.

“They’re taking away probably the most important tool we have — and that’s the Federal Reserve — to combat inflation,” he later added.

The Fed presently has four governors, and Mr. Powell already has been serving as chair on an interim basis, since his leadership term officially expired earlier this month.

In any case, Ms. Raskin may struggle to pass the full Senate. Winning confirmation would require her to maintain full support from all 50 lawmakers who caucus with Democrats and for all those lawmakers to be present unless she can win Republican votes. Senator Ben Ray Luján, Democrat of New Mexico, has been absent as he recovers from a stroke.

“The Republicans are playing hardball because they can,” said Ian Katz, the managing director at Capital Alpha Partners. “At the least, it delays her confirmation. It could have the ultimate effect of killing it.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/business/economy/senate-republicans-vote-fed-nominees.html

The plague, the death, the supply chain, long lines at the post office, the collapse of many aspects of civil society might all play a role in that statistic. But in his classic 1951 study of the office-working middle class, the sociologist C. Wright Mills observed that “while the modern white-collar worker has no articulate philosophy of work, his feelings about it and his experiences of it influence his satisfactions and frustrations, the whole tone of his life.” I remember a friend once saying that although her husband wasn’t depressed, he hated his job, and it was effectively like living with a depressed person.

After the latest job report, the economist and Times columnist Paul Krugman estimated that people’s confidence in the economy was about 12 points lower than it ought to have been, given that wages were up. As the pandemic drags on, either the numbers aren’t able to quantify how bad things have become or people seem to have persuaded themselves that things are worse than they actually are.

It’s not in just the data where the words “job satisfaction” seem to have become a paradox. It’s also present in the cultural mood about work. Not long ago, a young editor I follow on Instagram posted a response to a question someone posed to her: What’s your dream job? Her reply, a snappy internet-screwball comeback, was that she did not “dream of labor.” I suspect that she is ambitious. I know that she is excellent at understanding the zeitgeist.

It is in the air, this anti-ambition. These days, it’s easy to go viral by appealing to a generally presumed lethargy, especially if you can come up with the kind of languorous, wry aphorisms that have become this generation’s answer to the computer-smashing scene in “Office Space.” (The film was released in 1999, in the middle of another hot labor market, when the unemployment rate was the lowest it had been in 30 years.) “Sex is great, but have you ever quit a job that was ruining your mental health?” went one tweet, which has more than 300,000 likes. Or: “I hope this email doesn’t find you. I hope you’ve escaped, that you’re free.” (168,000 likes.) If the tight labor market is giving low-wage workers a taste of upward mobility, a lot of office workers (or “office,” these days) seem to be thinking about our jobs more like the way many working-class people have forever. As just a job, a paycheck to take care of the bills! Not the sum total of us, not an identity.

Even elite lawyers seem to be losing their taste for workplace gunning. Last year, Reuters reported an unusual wave of attrition at big firms in New York City — noting that many of the lawyers had decided to take a pay cut to work fewer hours or move to a cheaper area or work in tech. It’s happening in finance, too: At Citi, according to New York magazine, an analyst typed “I hate this job, I hate this bank, I want to jump out the window” in a chat, prompting human resources to check on his mental health. “This is a consensus opinion,” he explained to H.R. “This is how everyone feels.”

Things get weird when employers try to address this discontent. Amazon’s warehouse workers have, for the past year, been asked to participate in a wellness program aimed at reducing on-the-job injuries. The company recently came under fire for the reporting that some of its drivers are pushed so hard to perform that they’ve taken to urinating in bottles, and warehouse employees, for whom every move is tracked, live in fear of being fired for working too slowly. But now, for those warehouse workers, Amazon has introduced a program called AmaZen: “Employees can visit AmaZen stations and watch short videos featuring easy-to-follow well-being activities, including guided meditations [and] positive affirmations.” It’s self-care with a dystopian bent, in which the solution for blue-collar job burnout is … screen time.

The cultural mood toward the office even appears in the television shows that knowledge workers obsessed over. Consider “Mad Men,” a show set during the peaking economy of the late 1960s. It was a show that found work romantic. I don’t mean the office affairs. I mean that the characters were in love with their work (or angrily sometimes out of love, but that’s a passion of its own). More than that, their careers and the little dramas of their daily work — the presentations to clients, the office politics — gave their lives a sense of purpose. (At the show’s end, Don Draper went to a resort that looks an awful lot like Esalen to find out the meaning of life, and meditated his way into a transformative … Coke ad campaign.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/magazine/anti-ambition-age.html

At $3.1 billion, China’s operating budget is comparable to the average, inflation-adjusted cost of hosting previous Winter Olympics, according to the University of Oxford researchers.

“Judging by the cost of previous Winter Olympics, that should be enough to cover the cost, especially when you consider that many of the facilities have already been built,” said one of the experts, Bent Flyvbjerg, a professor of major program management at Oxford.

But it is hard to assess what portion of the coronavirus prevention costs, if any, is being included in the budget, Mr. Flyvbjerg said. Chinese accounting is often opaque, and there are many budgets in which health spending can be counted, he said.

The government has also pressed businesses to take on more of the cost of hosting the Games. Other host cities of previous Olympics spent heavily to build lodging for athletes and journalists and a media center. China has taken a different approach.

In Zhangjiakou, an area near Beijing where some competitions are being held, the Chinese authorities have temporarily taken over the Malaysian-owned Genting Secret Garden ski resort. The resort expanded its capacity to 3,800 rooms and vacation apartments, up from 380 before China won its Olympic bid. Lim Chee Wah, the founder and a co-owner of the resort, said in an interview that he had not been told how much the government would compensate him for the use of the resort for most of the winter season, but that he trusted it would be fair.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/business/economy/olympics-china-economics.html