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Journal Article
Pandemic-Era Liquid Wealth Is Running Dry
Households accumulated more liquid assets beginning in 2020 than would have been expected without the pandemic. These “extra” liquid assets have dissipated, but their evolution has differed significantly by income group. While middle- and lower-income households hold substantially less liquid wealth than implied by pre-pandemic projections, the level for higher-income households remains close to its pre-pandemic path. Over the same period, credit card delinquency rates initially dropped and, more recently, have steadily risen as pandemic-era liquid wealth was depleted, especially for ...
Journal Article
Do Low Survey Response Rates Threaten Data Dependence?
Monetary policy is forward-looking and dependent on policymakers’ economic outlook. When the outlook is deemed highly uncertain, policymakers may put more weight on incoming data when making monetary policy considerations. However, falling survey response rates suggest employment and inflation data may have become less reliable. Analysis of payroll employment and consumer price inflation data shows that data revisions over the past few years have been in line with their pre-pandemic averages. This suggests that these data have not been an outsized source of uncertainty in recent years.
Journal Article
Rising Wildfire Risk for the 12th District Economy
The growing risk from natural disasters is a key economic effect of climate change. Severe wildfires are a leading example, and they are particularly important for the western states that make up the 12th Federal Reserve District. Analyzing data on wildfire hazard and economic activity confirms that these states are substantially more exposed to wildfire risk than the rest of the country. This gap in regional wildfire risk is likely to grow over time as climate change continues.
Journal Article
How Much Did the CARES Act Help Households Stay Afloat?
Widespread job losses starting in mid-March last year forced many households to rely more heavily on nonemployment income and liquid assets on hand to continue buying what they needed. Federal assistance through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act helped boost household resilience—the ability to sustain consumption despite the loss of employment income. Data suggest that the aid increased household resilience by 15 weeks, chiefly through enhanced unemployment insurance benefits. Among racial groups, this benefited Black and Hispanic households the most, raising median ...
Journal Article
Tracking Business Sentiment in the Western United States
Information the San Francisco Fed collects from businesses and community sources for the Beige Book provides timely insights into economic activity at both the national and regional levels. Two new indexes based on Beige Book questionnaire responses track business sentiment across the western United States. The indexes track data on economic activity and inflation, serving as early indicators of official data releases and helping improve near-term forecasting accuracy. The latest index readings suggest weakening economic growth and intensifying inflationary pressures over the coming months.
Journal Article
The Rise and Fall of Pandemic Excess Wealth
U.S. households accumulated significantly more wealth following the pandemic onset than would have been expected without the pandemic shock. Overall excess household wealth—measured as households’ inflation-adjusted net worth beyond pre-pandemic projections—peaked in late 2021 at $13 trillion, then rapidly fell to zero in late 2022, where it broadly remained through the third quarter of 2023. This rise and fall can be attributed mainly to financial assets, particularly equity holdings. Similarly, real liquid asset holdings currently sit below pre-pandemic projections despite a ...
Journal Article
Monetary Policy Through the Lens of Market-Based Inflation
Some goods and services prices are not directly observed and must be indirectly derived for measuring inflation. This nonmarket-based inflation category has been an important factor keeping headline inflation elevated over the past two years. Because indirectly deriving prices introduces measurement uncertainty, one monetary policy approach would be to focus solely on directly observable prices. Applying this through a well-known monetary policy rule suggests a notably lower federal funds rate. However, other rules that account for the implicit uncertainty that policymakers face would leave ...
Journal Article
From Hiring Difficulties to Labor Hoarding?
Businesses faced challenges finding enough workers to fill job openings early in the pandemic recovery. One view suggests that, as economic growth moderated relative to the strong bounceback in economic activity in the early pandemic recovery period, some businesses started hoarding labor to avoid the potential difficulty of recruiting workers in the future. Evidence from Okun’s law—which theorizes that economic output tends to fall as unemployment rises—is consistent with this view. The results suggest that businesses partly adjusted production by changing the number of hours for ...
Journal Article
Will Rising Rents Push Up Future Inflation?
Rising rents account for a significant portion of recent inflation. Estimates of how rent inflation typically responds to two leading indicators—current asking rents and current house prices—can help forecast the path of overall inflation for the next two years. This method predicts that higher rent inflation could add about 0.5 percentage point to personal consumption expenditures price inflation for both 2022 and 2023. These potential additions are important in light of the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target.
Journal Article
The Rise and Fall of Pandemic Excess Savings
U.S. households built up savings at unprecedented rates following the strong fiscal response and lower consumer spending related to the pandemic. Despite recent rapid drawdowns of those funds, estimates suggest a substantial stock of excess savings remains in the aggregate economy. Since 2020, households across all income levels have held a historically large share of savings in cash or other easily accessible forms. Estimates suggest that those funds could be available to support personal spending at least into the fourth quarter of 2023.