The organizing campaign was a response to long-simmering tensions in the architecture profession, where workers often accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in debt in college and graduate school but earn modest salaries while working long hours.

The campaign also appeared to reflect a growing interest in unionizing among white-collar professionals, such as tech workers, doctors, journalists and academics, who have formed unions during the past decade as a way to address a loss of professional autonomy in addition to low wage growth and job security.

At SHoP, a high-profile firm of about 135 employees that is known for work on such projects as the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and a Manhattan luxury building once known as the Steinway Tower, several employees said they worked 50 hours a week on average and 60 or 70 hours a week every month or two when a big deadline loomed.

Typical of the industry, many who worked these hours over the past few years were junior architects earning $50,000 to $80,000 a year — higher than average for all workers, but low given the profession’s schooling requirements. According to a report last year from the American Institute of Architects, an industry group, few architects have annual salaries above the $100,000-to-$120,000 range, and many make less, a decade or more into their careers.

The organizing campaign at SHoP appears to have been touched off by the economic uncertainty introduced by the pandemic, as well as the toll on employees of working long hours remotely. “Many of us feel pushed to the limits of our productivity and mental health,” employees wrote in a letter to the firm’s leadership announcing the union in December.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/business/economy/shop-architects-union.html

Mr. Biden has pledged to cut U.S. emissions at least 52 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade, and the administration is counting on solar power to play a significant role in reducing emissions from electricity production. A recent Energy Department report found that solar energy could provide up to 40 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2035, compared with its current 4 percent.

But much of the world’s supply of solar panels comes from China, which has spent heavily on industrial subsidies to support its industry.

According to estimates by Wood MacKenzie, a consultancy business for global energy, China dominates all stages of the solar supply chain, producing between 60 and 80 percent of the world’s polysilicon, wafers, crystalline silicon cells and solar modules.

A White House statement said that the tariff decision was “a significant step forward in the President’s comprehensive effort to rebuild a strong North American solar supply chain that will help create good jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign suppliers, and meet the President’s ambitious clean energy and climate goals.”

“We’ve been consulting with all sectors of the solar industry, and they all agree that the Section 201 tariffs are not — on their own — going to bring back solar cell production or grow module production to a point where it can supply U.S. needs,” the statement said, referring to the provision of the Trade Act that allows the United States to impose tariffs.

In February 2018, former President Donald J. Trump followed the recommendation of the International Trade Commission, an independent panel that reviews trade cases, in imposing tariffs on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells to help protect the domestic industry. The tariffs would start at 30 percent, and then decline by five percentage points each year over the course of four years.

Those tariffs were set to expire this month. But several manufacturers, including Auxin Solar, Suniva, Hanwha Q CELLS USA, LG Electronics and Mission Solar Energy, petitioned to extend the levies, arguing they were still needed to support the domestic industry.

In November, the members of the International Trade Commission recommended extending the tariffs, saying that the measures had helped domestic producers but that they continued “to be necessary to prevent or remedy serious injury to the U.S. industry.”

Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/business/economy/president-biden-extends-solar-tariffs-with-major-caveats.html

Ms. Lummis said it was “her understanding” that Ms. Raskin had called the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City about the matter, which Ms. Raskin neither confirmed nor denied during the hearing. The Kansas City Fed had no comment.

“Senator Lummis engaged innuendo with no facts presented to back up her false claims,” Chris Meagher, a White House spokesman, said following the hearing. The White House did not dispute that the Fed granted the Reserve Trust’s account while Ms. Raskin sat on its board.

Ms. Raskin served on the board of Reserve Trust from 2017 to 2019. The company was granted a Fed charter in 2018. Master accounts give companies access to the U.S. payment system infrastructure, allowing it to move money without partnering with a bank, among other advantages.

The company, which could not be immediately reached for comment, advertises on its website that it “is the first fintech trust company with a Federal Reserve master account,” and describes the advantages that confers.

Mr. Lummis suggested that Ms. Raskin may have financially benefited from her involvement with Reserve Trust. Ms. Raskin cashed out stocks in the firm for more than $1 million in 2020, her husband’s newly updated financial disclosures showed. That transaction is reflected as capital gains income on her own financial disclosures. Ms. Raskin is married to Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat.

It is unclear how, or whether, Ms. Raskin’s private sector dealings will influence her chances. Mr. Katz at Capital Alpha said it was probably not going to determine the outcome, but noted that “it’s not nothing” and it “could gain some legs.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts and a critic of the revolving door between regulators and private sector, seemed to hint at the issue during the hearing.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/business/economy/federal-reserve-sarah-bloom-raskin.html

The I.M.F.’s data shows that average food inflation across the world reached 6.85 percent on an annualized basis in December, the highest level since their series started in 2014. Between April 2020 and December 2021, the price of soybeans soared 52 percent, and corn and wheat both grew 80 percent, the fund’s data showed, while the price of coffee rose 70 percent, due largely to droughts and frost in Brazil.

While food prices appear set to stabilize, events like a conflict in Ukraine, a major producer of wheat and corn, or further adverse weather could change that calculation, Mr. Bogmans said.

The effects of rising food prices have been felt unevenly around the world. Asia has been largely spared because of a plentiful rice crop. But parts of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America that are more dependent on imported food are struggling.

Countries like Russia, Brazil, Turkey and Argentina have also suffered as their currencies lost value against the dollar, which is used internationally to pay for most food commodities, Mr. Bogmans said.

In Africa, bad weather, pandemic restrictions and conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Sudan have disrupted transportation routes and driven up food prices.

Joseph Siegle, the director of research at National Defense University’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, estimated that 106 million people on the continent are facing food insecurity, double the number since 2018.

“Africa is facing record levels of insecurity,” he said.

While shopping at a market in Mexico City’s Juarez neighborhood on Thursday, Gabriela Ramírez Ramírez, a 43-year-old domestic worker, said the increase in prices had strained her monthly budget, about half of which goes to food.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/business/economy/food-prices-inflation-world.html

Still, prices are rising even faster. For months, the higher inflation rates have prompted concerns about a cost-of-living crisis in Britain, as the budgets of households, particularly low-income ones, are squeezed by the highest food price inflation in a decade, expensive energy bills and other rising costs.

For 2022, the bank’s measure of households’ net income after taxes and inflation is expected to fall by 2 percent from last year, and fall again in 2023. In November, the central bank had projected a 1.25 percent decline for this year.

Since 1990, that measure of income has only fallen twice before on an annual basis, in 2008 and 2011.

Eventually, the squeeze is expected to hamper the overall economy. Growth in gross domestic product is “expected to slow to subdued rates” over the next few years, according to minutes of the rate-setting meeting which concluded on Wednesday, with energy and goods inflation cited as the main reasons. The central bank also expects the unemployment rate to rise to 5 percent, after falling to 3.8 percent in the first quarter.

That economic slowdown — along with higher interest rates — is expected to push inflation back below the central bank’s target by 2024.

On Thursday, policymakers also voted to begin reducing the bank’s bond holdings, made up of £875 billion in government bonds and £20 billion in corporate bonds. The bank will stop reinvesting the proceeds from bonds as the debt matures.

Interest rates are likely to rise again in “the coming months,” policymakers said. But Mr. Bailey warned against making assumptions about how high and how fast these increases will be.

“We face a trade-off between strong inflation and weakening growth,” he said. Given this uncertainty, he added, policymakers “will, it scarcely needs to be said, remain very vigilant.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/business/economy/bank-of-england-rates.html

Still, the January data will be unusually confusing because Omicron’s impact will affect different particulars in different ways.

Two Measures of Employment

The number that usually gets the most attention, the count of jobs gained or lost, is based on a government survey that asks thousands of employers how many employees they have on their payrolls in a given pay period. People who miss work — because they are out sick, are quarantining because of coronavirus exposure or are caring for children because their day care arrangements have been upended — might not be counted, even though they haven’t lost their jobs.

Forecasting the impact of such absences on the jobs numbers is tricky. The payroll figure is meant to include anyone who worked even a single hour in a pay period, so people who miss only a few days of work will still be counted. Employees taking paid time off count, too. Still, the sheer scale of the Omicron wave means that absences are almost certain to take a toll.

The jobs report also includes data from a separate survey of households. That survey considers people “employed” if they report having a job, even if they are out sick or absent for other reasons. The different definitions mean that the report could send conflicting signals, with one measure showing an increase in jobs and the other a decrease.

Economists typically pay more attention to the survey of businesses, which is larger and seen as more reliable. But some say they will be paying closer attention than usual this month to the data from the survey of households, because it will do a better job of distinguishing between temporary absences and more lasting effects from Omicron, such as layoffs or postponed expansions.

But economists have also cautioned not to minimize the impact that even temporary absences from work could have on families and the economy, especially now that the government is no longer offering expanded unemployment benefits and other aid.

“There isn’t that much Covid relief funding sloshing about anymore, so absences from work may actually reflect a meaningful decline in income,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at the employment site ZipRecruiter.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/business/economy/jobs-report-covid-omicron.html

Even if Russian oil shipments are not interrupted, the United States and its allies could impose sanctions or export controls on Russian companies, limiting their access to equipment, which could gradually reduce production in that country.

In addition, interruptions of Russian natural gas exports to Europe could force some utilities to produce more electricity by burning oil rather than gas. That would raise demand and prices worldwide.

What can the United States and its allies do if Russian production is disrupted?

The United States, Japan, European countries and even China could release more crude from their strategic reserves. Such moves could help, especially if a crisis is short-lived. But the reserves would not be nearly enough if Russian oil supplies were interrupted for months or years.

Western oil companies that have pledged not to produce too much oil are likely to change their approach if Russia was unable or unwilling to supply as much oil as it did. They would have big financial incentives — from a surging oil price — to drill more wells. That said, it would take those businesses months to ramp up production.

What is OPEC doing?

President Biden has been urging the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to pump more oil, but several members have been falling short of their monthly production quotas, and some may not have the capacity to quickly increase output. OPEC members and their allies, Russia among them, agreed on Wednesday to stick to a plan for increasing production next month by a relatively modest 400,000 barrels a day.

In addition, if Russian supplies are suddenly reduced, Washington is likely to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to raise production independently of the cartel. Analysts think that the kingdom has several million barrels of spare capacity that it could tap in a crisis.

What impact would higher oil prices have on the U.S. economy?

A big jump in oil prices would push gasoline prices even higher, and that would hurt consumers. Working-class and rural Americans would be hurt the most because they tend to drive more. They also drive older, less fuel-efficient vehicles. And energy costs tend to represent a larger percentage of their incomes, so price increases hit them harder than more affluent people or city dwellers who have access to trains and buses.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/business/economy/oil-price.html

But that backdrop could start to change as the Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates, which have been set near zero since the start of the pandemic, to curb inflation.

The Fed indicated last week that it was on track to begin increasing rates at its next meeting in March. Investors are predicting the central bank could usher in five rate increases this year, bringing rates to a range of 1 to 1.25 percent.

The Fed has also been keeping long-term interest rates low by buying government-backed debt and holding those securities on its balance sheet. Those purchases are set to wrap up next month, and last week, the Fed signaled it planned to “significantly” shrink its bond holdings.

Esther L. George, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, suggested during a speech this week that the Fed’s big bond holdings might be lowering longer-term interest rates by as much as 1.5 percentage points — nearly cutting the interest rate on 10-year government debt in half. While shrinking the balance sheet risks roiling markets, she warned that if the Fed remained a big presence in the Treasury market, it could distort financial conditions and imperil the central bank’s prized independence from elected government.

As rates rise, so does the amount that the United States owes to investors who buy its debt. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if interest rates rise in line with their own forecasts, net interest costs will reach 8.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2051. That would amount to about $60 trillion in total interest payments over three decades.

“A larger amount of debt makes the United States’ fiscal position more vulnerable to an increase in interest rates,” the C.B.O. said in its long-term budget outlook.

In a recent report, Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, pointed to the C.B.O.’s prediction that the average interest rate on 10-year Treasury notes would rise from 1.6 percent to 4.9 percent over the next 30 years. He estimates that if interest rates exceed that forecast by just a percentage point, it will mean another $30 trillion in interest costs during that time.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/us/politics/national-debt-30-trillion.html

“Companies are doing all they can not to bake in any gains that are difficult to claw back,” Dr. Schneider said. “Workers’ labor market power is so far not yielding durable dividends.”

The changes that make work lower paying, less stable and generally more precarious date back to the 1960s and ’70s, when the labor market evolved in two key ways. First, companies began pushing more work outside the firm — relying increasingly on contractors, temps and franchisees, a practice known as “fissuring.”

Second, many businesses that continued to employ workers directly began hiring them to part-time positions, rather than full-time roles, particularly in the retail and hospitality industries.

According to the scholars Chris Tilly of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Françoise Carré of the University of Massachusetts Boston, the initial impetus for the shift to part-time work was the mass entry of women into the work force, including many who preferred part-time positions so they could be home when children returned from school.

Before long, however, employers saw an advantage in hiring part-timers and deliberately added more. “A light bulb went on one day,” Dr. Tilly said. “‘If we’re expanding part-time schedules, we don’t have to offer benefits, we can offer a lower wage rate.’”

By the late 1980s, employers had begun using scheduling software to forecast customer demand and staffed accordingly. Having a large portion of part-time workers, who could be given more hours when stores got busy and fewer hours when business slowed, helped enable this practice, known as just-in-time scheduling.

But the arrangement subjected workers to fluctuating schedules and unreliable hours, disrupting their personal lives, their sleep, even their children’s brain development.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/business/economy/part-time-work.html

“While it might be tempting to err on the side of caution, the potential costs associated with an excessively large balance sheet should not be ignored,” she said. She suggested that shrinking the balance sheet could allow policymakers to raise rates, which are currently set near-zero, by less.

Mary C. Daly, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, also argued for an active — albeit still gradual — path toward removing policy help.

The Fed is not behind the curve, she said on a Reuters webcast, but it needs to react to the reality that the labor market appears at least temporarily short on workers and inflation is running hot. Prices picked up by 5.8 percent in the year through December, nearly three times the 2 percent the Fed aims for on average and over time.

“We’re not trying to combat some vicious wage-price spiral,” Ms. Daly said. Still, she said she could support a rate increase as soon as March, and hinted that four rate increases could be reasonable, a path that would slow things down while “not pulling away the punch bowl completely and causing disruptions.”

Even so, she said it would be “misinformation” to suggest that officials are coalescing around a clear path forward — the Fed will have to figure out how rapidly rates will increase as it learns more about the economy.

Wall Street economists increasingly expect a rapid pace for rate increases this year: Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan both expect five rate moves in 2022, and some Fed watchers have suggested as many as seven are possible. Markets are pricing in a small but meaningful chance that the Fed is going to raise rates by a half-point in March, instead of a more typical quarter-percentage-point increase.

Officials have been careful to emphasize that they do not know what is going to happen next with policy because the economy is so uncertain — rents are rising and supply chains remain messy, which could keep inflation elevated, but government support programs are waning, which could weigh down demand.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/business/economy/fed-inflation-economy.html