Alberto Musalem

We have availed ourselves during this period of...

unofficial data dearth, let's call it that, with private sector data.

We have been in close contact with all of our constituents, businesses, households, community leaders in our district.

So I feel we have a pretty good sense of the economy.

But I'm very much looking forward to seeing the official data releases because they are the gold standard, and they'll provide additional information.

Well, what are companies in your district telling you?

You know, they are saying that consumption has been resilient.

They're saying that growth has been fine.

They're saying the labor market has softened a little bit.

They see many more applicants per vacancy.

They report compensation growth somewhere between 3.5% to 4%.

So things look reasonably okay.

That's exactly what's happening.

So we estimate that the real consumption growth...

of the high-income folks and of the low-income folks hasn't been about the same.

But, as you said, the higher-income households are consuming from the wealth effects they have in the stock market and home prices, by the way.

Lower-income folks are taking on more debt.

They're taking on more credit card debt.

And that's how the economy has been thus far.

By and large, when I look at consumer finances, if you look at consumer balance sheets, by and large, for the economy, they're okay.