Amara Omeokwe
speaker
439 appearances
11 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2020
last heard Dec 2023
Amara Omeokwe’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
A lot of employers have struggled to get the supply of workers that they need, and that has played into the inflation picture as well.
The big question for the inflation picture as we head into the new year is what is the Fed going to do?
So the Fed raised interest rates very sharply and quickly to try and get inflation under control.
They've been on pause for a little while as they assess how those interest rate hikes are affecting the economy.
And so the next question is, how long are they going to hold interest rates at the high level that they raised interest rates to?
And then when might they actually start to cut interest rates?
When might they actually say we feel good enough about where inflation is that we can actually start to bring our interest rates down from this restrictive stance that we have them in?
So that's what we'll be watching for in 2024.
Although inflation has cooled, we are still seeing higher prices for a lot of items.
So Americans have been experiencing higher prices for their everyday items.
We really saw steep increases for those common things that we use every day and that we need every day, whether that be groceries, gas, rent.
And that basically meant that Americans' purchasing power declined.
And relative to what inflation was doing, we didn't see the increase in wage gains keep up over the last two years.
One of the economists I spoke to for my story pointed out that, yes, although we now have wages outpacing inflation for the first time in two years, really, when we look at what the trend was pre-pandemic, real wages, that is inflation-adjusted wages, are below that trend.
So although people's paychecks are better keeping up with inflation right now, they're still not where they would have been had the pre-pandemic trend continued.
So really, the labor market is on quite solid footing, and it's actually a lot stronger than many economists had expected, than the Federal Reserve had expected.
And that is actually creating complications for the Federal Reserve because the Fed is on this campaign to lower inflation.
They've been raising interest rates since last year.
in an effort to cool the economy, to pump the brakes on the economy a little bit.
And nobody really expected the labor market to be as strong as it has continued to be.
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