Mr. Erlich is one of the authors of a book addressing the history of racial exclusion in the building trades. He notes that the original Boston Residents Jobs Policy in 1983 came out of the fight by Black workers for jobs on building sites. But it had to include residents and women to gain white political support and overcome the opposition of union leadership.

“There is a legacy of racism, which by no means has been eliminated,” Mr. Erlich said. “I respect folks in the community that complain that things are not changing fast enough. And they are not changing fast enough.” Still, he argues, unions realize that “they need to become less homogeneous and reflect the demographics of the city.”

And he warns that the nonunion contractors that will hire workers of color do not generally provide training or a career path, as unions do. The work is often more dangerous, he says, and it pays nothing like the wages in union shops.

The Limits of Patience

Workers of color who make it into the unions acknowledge the opportunities that membership provides. On a sunny October afternoon in Dorchester, a roomful of apprentices and journeymen and women, assembled by Local 103 to talk to a reporter, lauded the union’s efforts to broaden its ranks and called for patience.

“Diversity doesn’t happen overnight,” said Sam Quaratiello, a recent graduate of the apprenticeship program who is of Asian descent. Walter Cowhan, a Black journeyman, argued that the union had become far more diverse in his 20 years of experience. Still, he said, if workers of color are to become more prominent on job sites, training is essential. “If you don’t prepare the work force, directly bringing in Black and brown workers could undermine the whole process,” he said.

But among some of those pushing for racial equity, patience is wearing thin. Mr. Watson offered the words of the Black author and activist James Baldwin: “You’ve always told me it takes time,” Mr. Baldwin said in the 1989 documentary “The Price of a Ticket.” “How much time do you want, for your progress?”

The building unions are “huge obstacles” to that progress, said Angela Williams-Mitchell, who heads the Boston Jobs Coalition, a community organization dedicated to increasing opportunities for people of color. “They do not open their doors to create access for communities that have historically been excluded.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/06/business/economy/unions-race-boston.html

And an update to that gauge on Friday showed that wages climbed 0.4 percent in October, which is roughly in line with recent monthly price increases. Over the past year, that measure is up by 4.9 percent. But the data on hourly earnings have been distorted by the pandemic, because low-wage workers who left the job market early in 2020 are now trickling back in, jerking the average around.

The upshot is that the tug of war between price increases and pay increases has yet to decisively swing in workers’ favor.

Whether wage gains eventually eclipse inflation — and why — will be crucial for economic policymakers. Central bankers celebrate rising wages when they come from productivity increases and strong labor markets, but would worry if wages and inflation seemed to be egging each other upward.

The Federal Reserve is “watching carefully,” for a troubling increase in wages, its chair, Jerome H. Powell, said on Wednesday, though he noted that the central bank did not see such a trend shaping up.

Recruiters do report some early signs that inflation is factoring into pay decisions. Bill Kasko, president of Frontline Source Group, a job placement and staffing firm in Dallas, said that as gas prices in particular rise, employees are demanding either higher pay or work-from-home options to offset their increased commuting costs.

“It becomes a topic of discussion in negotiations for salary,” Mr. Kasko said.

But for the most part, today’s wage gains are tied to a different economic trend: red-hot demand for workers. Job openings are high, but many would-be employees remain on the labor market’s sidelines, either because they have chosen to retire early or because child care issues, virus concerns or other considerations have dissuaded them from working.

Grocery store managers in Dallas are earning as much as $175,000 in base pay compared to $125,000 before the pandemic, Mr. Kasko and his colleagues said, and employees are being nabbed away from firms like his for six-figure-salary recruiting jobs at corporations.

Emily Longsworth Nixon, 27 and from Dallas, is one of Mr. Kasko’s employees. She herself is fielding five or six messages each day on LinkedIn trying to lure her away, she said, and the tight labor market has upended how she does her job.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/business/economy/wages-inflation.html

At the same time, far fewer people are working than did before the pandemic. About five million jobs are missing compared to February 2020. But that shortfall is hard to interpret, because businesses across the country are struggling to fill open positions and wages are quickly rising, hallmarks of a strong job market.

For now, the Fed is betting that inflation will fade and the labor market will lure back workers, who might be lingering on the sidelines to avoid catching the coronavirus or because they have child care or other issues that are keeping them at home.

“There’s room for a whole lot of humility here,” Mr. Powell said, explaining that it was hard to assess how quickly the employment rate might recover. “It’s a complicated situation.”

Officials have already been surprised this year by how much inflation has surged and how long that pop has lasted. They had expected some run-up in prices as the cost of dining out and air travel bounced back from pandemic-lockdown lows, but the severity of the supply chain disruptions and the continued strength of consumer demand has caught Fed officials and many economists by surprise.

In their November policy statement, Fed officials predicted that this burst of inflation would fade, but they toned down their confidence on that view. They said previously that factors causing elevated inflation were transitory, but they updated that language on Wednesday to say that the drivers were “expected to be” transitory, acknowledging growing uncertainty.

“Supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic and the reopening of the economy have contributed to sizable price increases in some sectors,” the statement added.

The Fed is willing to tolerate a temporary bout of quick inflation as the economy reopens from the pandemic, but if consumers and businesses come to expect persistently higher prices, that could spell trouble. High and erratic inflation that persists would make it hard for businesses to plan and might eat away at wage increases for workers who lack bargaining power.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/business/economy/fed-taper-bond-buying.html

With language like that, he was declining to embrace the use of “open-mouth policy,” or of essentially trying to assuage inflation fears by using more specific language to suggest the Fed had a hair-trigger readiness to take immediate action to head off higher prices.

He appeared to be applying the lessons of the 2010s labor market in setting the central bank’s course. Over that decade, unemployment kept falling lower, with participation in the work force rising higher than many analysts had thought plausible. With hindsight, the Fed may have erred by raising interest rates prematurely, slowing that process of labor market improvement.

In a 2021 context, that means allowing more post-pandemic healing of the labor market before assuming, for example, that many of the Americans who currently say they are not in the labor force will return as public health conditions improve.

“There’s room for a whole lot of humility here as we try to think about what maximum employment would be,” Mr. Powell said. The last economic cycle, he said, showed that “over time you can get to places that didn’t look possible.”

He also appeared to be deploying another lesson from the 2010s — namely those learned in the 2013 “taper tantrum” when global markets went haywire as Chair Ben S. Bernanke moved to taper the Fed’s bond purchases.

A key lesson of that era is that tapering needs to be telegraphed far in advance, and separated as much as possible from the decision to raise interest rates. In that episode, markets experienced a double-whammy as they envisioned both a winding down of the Fed’s bond buying and rapidly raising rates.

With his assurances Wednesday that the Fed wasn’t in a hurry to raise rates, Mr. Powell was essentially trying to avoid that problem.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/upshot/powell-fed-rates-inflation.html

China accounts for nearly 60 percent of global steel production. Its use of a common steel-production method causes more than twice as much climate pollution as does the same technology in the United States, according to estimates by Global Efficiency Intelligence.

In its announcement on Saturday, the Biden administration also said it had reached a deal to ease the tariffs that former President Donald J. Trump had imposed on European metals while the governments work toward the carbon accord.

The United States would replace the 25 percent tariff on European steel and a 10 percent tariff on European aluminum with a so-called tariff-rate quota. In return, the European Union would drop the retaliatory tariffs it imposed on other American products, like bourbon and motorcycles.

Under the new terms, 3.3 million metric tons of European steel would be allowed to enter the United States duty-free each year, with any steel above that volume subject to a 25 percent tariff.

European producers would be allowed to ship 18,000 metric tons of unwrought aluminum, which often comes in the form of ingots, and 366,000 metric tons of wrought or semifinished aluminum into the United States each year, while volumes above that would be charged a 10 percent tariff, the commerce department said.

To qualify for zero tariffs, the steel must be entirely made in the European Union — a provision designed to keep cheaper steel from countries including China and Russia from finding a backdoor into the United States via Europe.

Supporters of free trade have criticized the Biden administration for relying on the same protectionist trade measures used by the Trump administration, which deployed both tariffs and quotas to protect domestic metal makers.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/business/economy/biden-trade-policy-steel.html

The SALT limit resulted in tax increases for wealthier Americans beginning in 2018, particularly higher earners from high-tax states, and helped Democrats capture some House seats that Republicans previously held in New Jersey, California and elsewhere.

The deduction is largely used by wealthy homeowners who itemize their deductions and live in states and cities with high taxes, which tend to be led by Democrats. Democrats accused Republicans of using the cap to pay for other tax cuts for the rich and to penalize liberal states.

“My guess is the majority of Americans with a net worth of $50 to $300 million would get a tax cut under the Build Back Better plan with a full repeal of SALT,” Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard who was the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama, said on Twitter on Tuesday. “The bill would do more for the super-rich than it does for climate change, childcare or preschool. That’s obscene.”

But several lawmakers in the New York and New Jersey delegations have warned that their votes for the domestic policy package hinged on the inclusion of the provision, and Democrats have haggled for months over a possible solution.

“We’re still going at it over it,” said Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the Democratic chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, who joked on Tuesday that he had earned “a Ph.D. in the SALT deduction because it’s been argued from every perspective I can think of.”

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget described the repeal of the SALT cap as a “regressive” tax cut, estimating that it would cost $90 billion a year in lost government revenue. The wealthiest would make out the best, with a SALT cap repeal distributing more than $300,000 per household in the top 0.1 percent of earners and only $40 for a middle-income family over the first two years.

“With the SALT cap repealed and current tax rates retained, in fact, the reconciliation package might actually offer a net tax cut for most high-income households,” the group said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/02/us/politics/salt-cap-tax-deduction.html

The Fed decision comes at a complicated political moment, as Mr. Powell’s future hangs in the balance. President Biden’s administration is deliberating whether it should keep the Fed chair on when his term ends early next year. It is also debating who should serve in two other roles: vice chair and vice chair for bank supervision.

Janet L. Yellen, the Treasury secretary, told Reuters that the decision would come “reasonably soon,” and told CNBC she had advised Mr. Biden to pick someone who was experienced and credible, and had praised Mr. Powell to him.

On Tuesday, Mr. Biden was asked whether he had decided on a Fed chair nominee, if he would detail what he was looking for in candidates and whether he was worried about having too little time to get nominees confirmed. The president responded: “no, no, and no.”

“I’m not going discuss it with you because that’s in train now, we’ll be making those announcements fairly quickly,” Mr. Biden said during a news conference in Glasgow, Scotland, where he’s attending a global climate summit.

Whoever leads the Fed in 2022 will have their work cut out for them. The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge climbed by 4.4 percent in the year through September, more than twice the central bank’s annual goal, and with airfares rebounding, rents picking up and couches and used cars still hard to come by, it seems likely that unusually strong price pressures will last into next year.

“If we see signs of relief on the supply side, it will leave the Fed comfortable to continue to guide that the end of tapering does not mean the start of hikes,” Michelle Meyer, chief U.S. economist at Bank of America, and her colleagues wrote in a recent analysis.

“But the Fed will need to hike earlier if supply-side constraints and elevated inflation persist, wage inflation picks up and inflation expectations continue to climb.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/02/business/economy/fed-jerome-powell-rates-inflation.html

After the company threatened to bring in replacement workers, the employees were dismissive. “No one can find workers now — where do they think they’ll find 400?” Ms. Glazar, the local union official, said shortly before the strike ended. “That’s the only thing that keeps us smiling out there.”

There were also indications that Heaven Hill was running low on inventory as the strike wore on, crimping the company’s ability to age and bottle alcohol that it produced in Louisville. “We could see the truck movement had slowed down from week one to week six — there were not near as many trucks in and out,” Ms. Glazar said.

Josh Hafer, a company spokesman, said, “There may have been some small-scale products impacted, but not to any large degree.”

Still, the workers were under enormous stress. Their health benefits ended when their contract expired, and some workers found their insurance was no longer valid while trying to squeeze in a final doctor’s appointment.

And while jobs in the area appeared plentiful, many workers preferred to stay in the whiskey-making business. “I like what I do, I enjoy everything about bourbon,” said Austin Hinshaw, a worker who voted to strike at the Heaven Hill plant. “I have worked at a factory before, and it’s not my thing.” In late October, Mr. Hinshaw accepted a job at a distillery in town where he had been applying for months.

A few days earlier, Heaven Hill management had worked out a new agreement with the union. The proposed contract included a commitment to largely maintain the existing overtime pay rules for current workers, though it left open the possibility that future workers would be scheduled on weekends at regular pay, which grated on union members. The company also offered a slightly larger pay increase than it had offered just before the workers’ contract expired in September.

In a statement, Heaven Hill pointed to the generous health benefits and increased wages and vacation time in the new contract.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/01/business/economy/strikes-labor-pandemic.html

“This is a big first step in speeding up the movement of materials and goods through our supply chain,” Mr. Biden said. “But now we need the rest of the private sector chain to step up as well.”

Mr. MacGuidwin praised the announcement but said it had come too late to make much difference for Catch Co., which had been working through supply chain headaches for many months.

The company’s problems first began with the pandemic-related factory shutdowns in China and other countries, which led to a shortage in the graphite used to make fishing poles. A worldwide scramble for shipping containers soon followed, as Americans began spending less on movies, travel and restaurants, and more on outfitting their home offices, gyms and playrooms with products made in Asian factories.

Shipping rates soared tenfold, and big companies turned to extreme measures to deliver their goods. Walmart, Costco and Target began chartering their own ships to ferry products from Asia and hired thousands of new warehouse employees and truck drivers.

Smaller companies like Catch Co. were struggling to keep up. As soon as Apple launched a new iPhone, for example, the available shipping containers vanished, diverted to ship Apple’s products overseas.

The timing could not have been worse for Catch Co., which was seeing demand for its poles, lures and other products surge, as fishing became an ideal pandemic hobby. The company turned briefly to air freighting products to meet demand, but at five or six times the cost of sea freight, it cut into the company’s profits.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/business/economy/global-shipping-delays-shortages.html

Senator Deb Fischer, Republican of Nebraska, championed and secured more modest legislation — tucked into the Republican tax cuts of 2017 — that gave small businesses a tax credit to fund family leave. She argued against broader versions, since many companies already offer employees paid leave.

“If you have two or three employees, you cannot afford to do paid family leave because you can’t afford to hire somebody to take their place, which is why I think the tax credit that we have in law now is really beneficial,” Ms. Fischer said.

According to the White House, fewer than a third of small businesses with 100 or more employees offer paid leave. Only 14 percent with fewer than 50 employees do. Ms. Fischer conceded that few small businesses have taken advantage of her credit, but she blamed the Treasury Department, under Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, for dragging its feet on issuing detailed regulations and promoting it.

To Democrats, those proposals are not true leave. They are either loans off other needed benefits or too limited to make a difference. Ms. Gillibrand said that optimally, a stable, generous family and medical leave plan would be an “earned benefit” like Social Security and Medicare: Workers would pay into the system and claim the benefit when they needed it, regardless of where they worked or how much they earned.

But, she said, taxing workers has become politically difficult. Her 2013 bill envisioned family and medical leave insurance, financed by a small contribution from employers with each paycheck.

This year, the Biden administration and Democratic leaders opted to fund paid leave out of general revenues, bolstered by tax increases on the wealthy and corporations. They said the program was part of a broader “human infrastructure” effort to help children and young parents, which included child care support, a child tax credit and universal prekindergarten — and therefore didn’t need a dedicated funding source.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/us/politics/paid-family-leave.html